Hard day...

We had a really bad afternoon yesterday.  One of my children chose to run off and we wound up having to call the police to help locate them.  Thankfully, about an hour later they were found.  They chose to cross a major high way on their bike.  Very very scary and I am so glad that they were not hurt.  Today, I am pretty shaken up still.  Having a runner sometimes is very hard.  Staying in front of their thought process and all this stuff is very hard as this child is very smart and can be very manipulative.  The thing that really gets me is that the child had gotten angry, I thought they were over it, and just a few short minutes later they were gone.  I had 3 people looking for them and we couldn't find them.  After 15 minutes and asking another older child walking down the street and asking them if they seen my child and finding out that they were seen by the field behind our neighborhood that can lead back into some stores or some other neighborhoods and driving back there and not seeing any sign of them...we decided to call the police.  Another citizen, called in to report a small child that was riding their bike on a side of a very busy highway and they matched my description that we just gave the police disbatcher.  They found my child about an hour after they left!  So thankful for another citizen's call in as that helped us find them.  They had stolen money from one of their siblings and had spent the money in one of the shopping strips.  The cops major concerns was that they had crossed a major highway.  My child still doesn't seem to understand how serious all of this could have been.  He almost ran at school on Tuesday at recess and we had this problem a few weeks ago and the cops had to be called to locate my child as they got into a neighborhood behind the school.  Now, this happened and I had to go inform school that they may still be a running risk.  I'm having a hard time getting my head around all of this still, but I am just so relieved that my child is ok.  However, I'm going to spend the day trying to bless others and spend a lot of time in prayer and self-care today.  Taking time to not focus on my problems and just be thankful that my child is safe, but I'm just going to get out there and try to help someone else and bless others.  I have a headache too, so I see some self-care in my near future too until the kids get home from school later.