Generations of elementary school children have read The Boxcar Children series, but I imagine that there are only a few that reacted to them in the same way I did.
I did not begin to hope that a wealthy relative would save my siblings and I from an orphanage. Instead, I began to plan for how I would handle it if my parents died.
As the oldest child in my family, I imagined I would shepherd my younger siblings through the difficult time. I knew (in the hubris of youth) that I could provide for them.
This has been on my mind over the last several years as the health of my mom's parents has been declining. Nathan and I have discussed what we would do when they pass. I'm as ready as I can be, so when my grandpa was hospitalized several weeks ago I wasn't upset. Instead, I felt a strong and inexplicable urge to go to Utah for a visit.
I say inexplicable because I had no reason to say why this hospitalization was different than any other in recent years. But it was.
Nathan was supportive, so we packed our family up in our mini van and drove to Utah. As we traveled I learned that my grandma is also doing poorly.
There was the explanation for this gut feeling.
We needed to see both of them.
While there will likely be more to share from this experience, for now I want to simply state how important it is to follow your gut feeling.
There might not be a logical reason for your feeling, but you will rarely regret following your intuition.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://rachelahanson.blog/2020/02/20/follow-your-gut/