happy birthday month to my hero!

my husband is my hero.  for a number of reasons, but one story in particular i will share with you.

it was about two years ago (almost exactly two years ago, come to think of it).  we had four foster kids aged 11 months, 23 months, 2 year and 4 years old (siblings).  i was driving them home from LA during rush hour from one of the twice weekly visits.  i exited off of the 405 to the lakewood blvd exit.

now if you are not familiar with this highway or this exit, just know that its a very busy highway and this exit is busy all day, especially during traffic hour.  its so busy in fact, that most of the ramp is two lanes, until it narrows to one right before merging onto the street.

right as the exit ramp was ending and we about to merge onto lakewood, i push the gas and nothing happened.  no matter how hard i pushed nothing happened, the engine was dead.  after we glided to a stop i tried to re-start the car, change gears, push on the gas some more but to no avail, the car was dead (later we found out that the transmission was shot).

we were stopped in the middle of the lane.  fortunately, cars were able to squeeze around us to one side, but they clearly weren't happy about it.

i was freaking out.  my mind was racing.  do i get all of us out of the car?  but how could i cross in front of all that traffic with four young kids safely?  i decided to call alex.

as soon as i explained what happened he said "i'm coming".  and i knew we would be safe.

it took about ten minutes for him to get to us from where he was at.  ten minutes wasn't too bad, but it was a long time to wait in a car of nervous children asking lots of questions while people are honking and yelling at you.

but then i saw him.

he had parked his car and ran to come rescue us.

all by himself he pushed our van out of the way of traffic to the side of the road.  my man did that for us! (we are fortunate that he is so strong :) )


after that a few other people offered to help push us to a parking zone where we could leave the van, and we packed all four kids plus alex and i into our little hyundai and went home.


but i will never forget that night... my hero dropping everything to rescue us, the relief i felt when i saw him and my amazement at his strength to push our entire van by himself.

i am so fortunate that God has blessed me with you alex!