My Worst Fear.

This world is a scary, scary place but every once in a while, especially living in a small town, it starts to feel safe. It feels warm and happy and it feels like bad things only happen to other people, people on the outside, people out there. Unfortunately, that's not true and it took something very scary and very real happening to a friend of mine yesterday to bring me right back to reality. My WORST fear.

Yesterday, my friend "K" (I don't want to use her name to protect her and her family, although she has given me permission to talk about her experience on my blog), took her 2-month old and her 2-yr-old boys to Walmart. She got what she needed, and made her way back out to her vehicle. While her oldest son was sitting in the big part of the cart, she took the baby (who was strapped into his carseat) and turned to put him in the car, when she turned back around, she watched in horror as a man wrapped his arm around her 2-yr-old and pulled him out of the cart. K immediately started screaming and hitting the man as hard as she could until the man dropped her son, she then threw him in her car as quickly as possible and locked the doors before falling to the ground. Another couple heard her screams and came over to help. They did call 911, but the man got away. K was able to memorize his license plate and the make/model of his vehicle, one or both of which was apparently stolen. Walmart's surveillance camera's caught the whole thing on tape and also showed that the man/men had basically been stalking the parking lot all day, probably waiting for this opportunity to present itself.

As soon as she shared her experience, I LOST it. I sobbed. At first for her, but then just out of complete fear for myself and every other mother out there that could potentionally be targeted. Then she told me how much she had thought of me afterwards- more tears. I cried off and on all day over this. I'm absolutely terrified of this every.single.week. I take these kids to Walmart with me by myself every week and deal with this anxiety for the same reason- I have three kids, and only two hands. My kids don't want to stay in carts anymore, they want out, they want to walk/run around. If they get even just a few steps ahead of me, it would be SO easy for someone to snatch them up and what am I supposed to do?! Go after them and leave the other two behind?! Stay with the other two and let someone run off with my baby?! And every week I fret over loading/unloading one kid while the other one or two sit in the cart. How do I even return my cart?! Leave my kids in the car while I walk away?! I don't think so. I'm TERRIFIED of this EXACT thing that just happened to someone close to me! It CAN happen! To ANYONE! And I try to plan my weekly trips so that Nathan and I can go together or I can leave the kids at home with him while I go, but that rarely works out. Plus, he's leaving and I'm going to be doing this on my own now. So now what?!

I'm afraid, but even I start to back off because I don't want to live in fear and I don't want to believe it can happen to me. And it's HARD. It's hard and it's exhausting and it's time consuming to be THAT cautious all the time. And then something like this happens. E could have been gone. Just like that, in the blink of an eye- she watched a stranger grab her child and he could have been gone. I know I'm all over the place right now, but I am freaking out. That could have been anyone. It DOESN'T just happen to other people. It DOESN'T just happen in big cities. It can happen to you, it can happen to me. Anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Hold your babies tight. Don't take your eyes off them for a second. So what if it's hard? So what if it takes a minute longer? It's worth every minute we have those sweet things next to us.