while rearranging my daughter's room, i put her turtle night light on a small plastic chair near the wall outlet until i could think of a better place for it. i never though of a better place for it and i'm not even sure that i even tried to.
last week while cleaning up the kitchen after dinner i noticed she was abnormally absent and it was very quiet in the house. this could really only mean trouble. i snuck down the hall to find her playing on her bedroom floor with her dolls and i got all emotional thinking about how big she was getting so quickly.
back in the kitchen and only a few minutes later she came running in crying about her finger. i asked her to show me what had happened and instead of showing me her finger she ran back to her room. that's when i saw her turtle night light on the floor taken apart. at first i thought she was just sad that the turtle's shell had come off but then quickly noticed how hot the small 15 watt light bulb was under the shell.
i checked her finger and sure enough it was red but not burnt - thankfully! we ran cold water over the boo-boo finger and i told her not to touch the turtle again. and ya know what i did? i reminded myself to find a safer spot for it and i put it back together and back on the small plastic chair.
the next day we had family over a good part of the day. after everyone had left and we were cleaning up the toys, i noticed a burning type of smell in her room. immediately i checked for the turtle night light. it was where i left it but as i leaned closer and breathed in deeply i could tell the burning smell was coming from that night light.
squeezing the clamps and removing the shell this is what i found:
the wattage label had been slid up around the bulb and had started to melt. i'm betting this was part of little gracie's exploring her turtle night light yesterday.
it felt like my heart had jumped out of my body as i realized how foolish i had been to, let's face it, ignore that still small voice that kept quietly reminded me to move that night light for months.
not only did i not move it yesterday after gracie got a slight burn but how close were we to a near catastrophe! maybe i'm being a little over-thoughtful here but this probably could have been prevented and perhaps even turned off when not needed. this could have turned into a bad situation had it caught fire, especially while we were all asleep, in our beds! a fire in my daughters room! i was a mess over this yet very thankful that this is all that happened. and angry that i had been so lazy not to have taken care of this all those other times i had thought about it. that still small voice reminding me time and time again, nicely to move that night light. i am so very thankful He was still only reminding me, only this time in a much louder voice.
is this what it takes to get my attention? am i too busy to hear and respond right away? too going-going-going that even though i hear, i forget, and right away? or that i just simply ignore? yikes! i don't want to have a fire to get my attention.
moral of the story? if their is something that i need to do, i need to just do it right away. to listen to that still small voice before it becomes a loud shout. while i'm thinking about it, i'm gonna go check all the fire alarms in the house too. right now while i'm thinking about, not putting it on the back burner to forget about - no pun intended!
thank you Lord for all those quiet reminders and thank you for waking me up to recognize the importance of those quiet whispers of "hey you need to __________" fill in the blank. even if it took a loud shout to get my attention, it really could have been much worse and i am so very thankful that it wasn't.
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