Rosie and a Rainbow

This past week, we had new floors installed in the majority of our home. On day one, they ripped up all of the old carpet and jackhammered the tile. The tile removal created a lot of dust in our home. Like, you could taste it when you walked through the room. Our bedroom doors were sealed off, and we weren’t hanging out in the rooms where they were ripping up flooring, so even though the dust was heavy in the main rooms, I wasn’t concerned because we were closed off in other rooms. Everything seemed to be going as expected.

Before bed, that first night, I did a quick Google search to see if the tile dust was actually safe for us to be around. In all the prep we did to get ready for the floors, it never occurred to me to look into the health risks. Article after article started popping up talking about the tile dust being harmful, poisonous, dangerous to breathe, even life threatening.

It had been a long, loud day of demo, and instead of winding down, I started panicking because we were probably all in grave danger. I wondered if we should immediately pack up and go to a hotel.

We decided to stay home.

We had fans running. We’d set up filtration units to remove dust from the air as quickly as possible. Everyone else went to sleep, but I tossed and turned for hours. I felt trapped and in a spiral. Everything felt like it was collapsing around me.

There was no furniture in the house, except in the rooms where everyone was asleep. I couldn’t hang out in the empty rooms because they were all filled with the poisonous dust. So, I turned off the alarm and went out on the front porch. As I sat there in the cold, listening to instrumental music, I began to pray. But I wasn’t even sure what words to say. I just started asking questions. Did we make a mistake? Should we have just kept the flooring we had? What if staying in our home during this floor renovation makes us all sick? What if …

My nervous system was clearly dysregulated. Forget fight or flight - I was frozen in fear.

The what ifs, the anxiety, the panic seemed to escalate. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I couldn’t calm down. As I sat there, I sensed the Spirit prompting me to ask for help, but everyone was asleep, and I didn’t want to wake them.

However, when I came back inside, I found my 18 year old coming out of his room, wondering why the alarm had been turned off and why people were going outside. I told him I was freaking out about the floors and the dust. He asked me where Rosie was?

Rosie is a weighted, pink dinosaur.

I told him I wasn’t sure. He said he thought she was at the end of my bed. I found her, got back in bed, and placed her on my chest. Within moments, I started to feel better. My nervous system began to regulate, and I could feel the panic evaporating. This was exactly the help I needed.

As I lay in bed, listening to all of the sounds around me, I knew I wasn’t alone. I was still afraid, but God was with me in the midst of it. No judgment, just love.

The next day, I had to run to the bank. As I sat, waiting for my transaction to be complete, I looked up and saw a faint rainbow peeking through the clouds. It was there for maybe 30 seconds, and then it was gone. I found myself smiling and crying in my car as I thought about that rainbow and what it meant to me.

A reminder of God’s love.
A reminder that God is near.
A reminder that all will be well.

In the midst of my panic, God wasn’t mad at me, wasn’t disappointed with me, wasn’t ashamed of me. God just loved me where I was, with the feelings I had. God reminded me I was safe and seen.

May we all show and be shown this same kind of love and safety as we go about our days.

~  Melissa