My parents are serving a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They are serving in the Micronesia Guam mission. It was just over a year ago when I dropped them off at the MTC. They are doing wonderful things for the people in Guam and they have never seemed to be happier or more fulfilled! Anyway, we are living here in Las Vegas, NV a mere 10,000 miles away from where they are serving. My husband is a 3rd year medical student getting ready to take his first board exam at the end of June and I stay at home with my two sweet little girls! Now that we have a little back story here is what happened on Memorial Day evening 2016.
I was exhausted from a day full of chasing my kiddos around all morning getting ready for the pool party and BBQ with friends that we would go to around 3. After the BBQ we got news that Eric's older brother Pete and his wife Leah were going to be going to the hospital to have their son that evening because her water had broken. A very exciting day all around. I had finished cleaning up and was heading to bed just before 11. I went through my usual routine, crawled into bed and said goodnight to Eric (who was going to be up for the next few hours studying more). I was thinking about how excited I was that Pete and Leah were about to be parents when I honestly felt like I hit a brick wall in my mind.
All of a sudden I just knew something horrible happened. I shot up in bed and turned to Eric and I told him that something was wrong...of course like any rational person he asked me what was wrong and all I could say was that I didn't know but something wasn't right and I had to do something about it. Of course as a mom my first instinct was to check on my daughters, both were sleeping soundly and had no sign of a problem. Well where do I go from here? What was I thinking about when I got this feeling? Pete and Leah, I promptly texted Pete to tell him that although I sounded crazy I thought something was wrong and I just wanted to check on Leah. He replied that she was in good spirits and they had just arrived at the hospital. Yet again, nothing to be concerned about.
At this point I was feeling like maybe I was just really tired and I had made the whole thing up in my head, after all everyone was okay, so what should I worry about? Well, I just couldn't shake the feeling so I thought again about who in my life could be in danger or hurt or any number of less than ideal scenarios. My parents faces popped into my head... They are 10,000 miles away on a small island serving the Lord, what could go wrong? Finally, I picked up my phone and send a short email to my mom, it read…
Hey,
I know this sounds so strange but I just have this feeling that something is wrong and it won't go away. I don't know what it is that's wrong but I can't shake the feeling. I just wanted to check in and make sure you're both doing well. I don't want to ignore a prompting like this...
In other news Pete and Leah are on their way to the hospital to have the baby. Her water broke this afternoon and she's been contracting ever since.
Love you,
Ashley
Simple but it got the point across right? Well I generally don't get super speedy replies from them, they are very busy, so I decided to take another shot at getting some rest. It took a while but I finally dozed off for a bit. I did not have a good nights sleep, actually I spent most of the night laying in bed staring at the ceiling just trying to figure out why I had this feeling. I didn't look at my phone again until morning (generally when I look at my phone when I can't sleep it just makes things worse, I get sucked into Facebook, Pinterest, etc). Well 6am rolls around and I figure I should just give up at this point, if it hasn't happened yet it surely won't, besides I have to get up in an hour anyway to get ready to pick up my niece and nephew for the day. I look at my phone and see my mom's reply, it came in about 45 mins after I sent her my original email...
We are doing fine! We are going to the Stevens (military couple) to help them with a member that wants help with Family History. When we get back to the apartment tonight I will email you, you will probably be asleep but you will know we are safe when you get up in the morning.
Keep me posted on Leah and Pete!
We love you!
Mom & Dad
Well, its official at this point, Ashley Rigg has lost her marbles. I had just spent a sleepless night worried about NOTHING!!!! Ugh why? Well, I carried on with my Tuesday just like most Tuesdays which are just a string of slightly organized but mostly chaotic activities, I mean what do you expect with 4 kids under 5? That night I got home and went through the painful routine of bedtime alone...Mila couldn't get into bed fast enough and Claire was doing everything in her power to avoid bedtime. Pretty standard. Well I finally get the girls in bed and I slowly trudge back downstairs to tackle the dishes from dinner that I had so skillfully been avoiding. Then I remember that I have a half eaten Blizzard in the freezer, mmmm SCORE! I decide that while I enjoy my slightly frost bitten Blizzard I should see if my parents are on Skype, to my delight I saw my mom was online! Nothing makes me feel better after a crazy day than a nice chat with my mom!
We exchange pleasantries and fill each other in on how our days went. We talked about how cute my new nephew William is and how excited we are for Pete and Leah's little family. We talked about our plans for the rest of the week and then I finally brought up what had been bugging me all day long. My strange feeling the night before. She told me that they were getting ready to leave to visit the Stevens (as you read above, they live about 30 mins away) when she saw my email, she decided to take a quick couple seconds to reply, told my dad what I had said, asked him to be extra careful on their drive and then they hit the road.
This is the part that made me lose my breath and brought tears to my eyes. As they were driving they came across a horrific accident, a taxi van and a Lexus had hit each other and it was not a pretty sight. The front end of the Lexus looked like it had been torn off and the van wasn't in much better shape. It had literally just happened, emergency vehicles hadn't even been on scene yet. She told me that she was so grateful that she saw my email when she did because it stalled them just long enough that they missed the accident. If they had left when they had planned they could have been right in the middle of that mess. The Lord truly works in mysterious ways, I thought that I was losing it the night before when I sent that email but I am so glad that I listened to that prompting. I can't imagine what might have happened had I not. My parents mean everything to me and I am so grateful that they taught me about promptings and how important it is to listen to them no matter how small and insignificant they may seem. To me it was just a silly thing to do but it could have saved both of them from being hurt and to me, that is worth a hundred sleepless nights!
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