Not an innocent one among the bunch

In recent days I've been considering the various times my children have caused my hair to turn gray. As I pondered these events, I mistakenly claimed that one of the seven was alone innocent - from birth never causing my blood pressure to spike.

Although Hannah never put me through sleepless nights of prayer and concern over infant malnutrition, rabies, typhoid, hepatitis, possible leukemia, whooping cough, or brain concussions (like her siblings!), I can think of at least three occasions in which I hit the panic button concerning her whereabouts. The first, through no fault of her own, was when a new Guatemalan household helper decided to borrow Hannah and show off the little American baby to her friends about half a mile away. How could I forget the frantic search for both the maid and Hannah, and being told casually that they were last seen walking down the highway away from our house.

Another time we lost Hannah from the same house when we had no local employee to suspect of foul play. She was a young toddler when she escaped through the front door which had been left ajar. After a frenzied dash down the lane to the highway, we began a more thorough search closer to the house, including down at the stream which ran adjacent to our property. Eventually we found Hannah carefully hidden, crouched in the corn field across from our house, grinning triumphantly as though the victor in a well-planned game of hide and seek.

The third time Hannah disappeared (why did I ever think this child was innocent?) was equally terrifying and hair-graying. All six of us, for Hannah was still the baby of the family, were in northern Mexico ministering to migrant workers in a squalid camp with open sewage canals running through the makeshift housing quarters.

The boys, ages 5, 6 1/2, and 8, were either with their dad doing shack-to-shack visitation(since technically there were no doors to go "door-to-door"), or else helping to duplicate gospel recordings in the back of our team's pickup truck. With only 2 1/2-year-old Hannah to look after, I likewise was visiting with the tenants, trying to assess which language each family spoke. Somehow Hannah vanished. Prayerfully hunting for her through the camps, we eventually discovered her sitting in one of the workers' one-room huts sharing their evening meal -- once again having shortened her mother's life.

No, after recalling these stories, I have to admit truthfully that all my children share the responsibility for my premature aging process. It's no wonder I look almost 50, instead of my not-quite-49 years. They are to blame. All seven of them. There's not an innocent one among the bunch. I'm just thankful they have all lived to hear the tales.