My son had to have emergency surgery recently. He’s fine now, but this isn’t really about that. When I got the call that he needed surgery and had to be transported to the only surgeon on call at 2 am, I made arrangements for my other children and jumped in the van to go meet up with my son and my husband.

I made my way cautiously down the main highway toward the hospital. I had praise and worship music playing, I was singing and reassuring myself that my son would be fine. This wasn’t that big of a deal. And then I crested the top of a hill close to the ER and I saw an ambulance pull out and onto the road, headed for another hospital. My son’s ambulance was four stoplights ahead of me, lights flashing, pace hurried.

I was undone.

It didn’t matter that I was 99% sure of the outcome of the evening, nothing prepares a mama for watching her baby’s ambulance careen down a highway. Or for being just far enough back that all she can do is watch and try not to run any red lights.

I sobbed, I cried out to Jesus. My prayers that had been calm and surface beforehand became short, choppy phrases yammered out in hiccups and broken wails. I talked to myself, I talked to God, I called out a few rejoinders to the ambulance driver I’d never met. And then… surrender. The tears stopped rolling down my face. I’d gone from clutching everything tightly in my hand to just leaning in and unclenching my fists. Whatever happened… I was resting in Him for strength. I drew a deep breath and whispered my thanks for a faithful God who held that ambulance and its contents more firmly than I ever could.

Later, when we were home and my boy was resting upstairs, I sat on my porch to breathe a prayer of thanks. I relived that vision of the ambulance flashing ahead, the parental terror it invoked. And I heard His voice: “I can relate. I see those I made in my image, who I love, are suffering… I see the emergency, I see the need. My desire is to restore, protect, and Be Beside.”

And in my tiny, human way, I had a moment of clarity. I absorbed that fierce parental love that will slay dragons and collect speeding tickets to save a child. I thought about the moments when my kids aren’t in physical danger, but their souls hang in the balance. I want to swoop in and save them then, too. But I’m about as good at saving souls as I would be with a scalpel. There’s nothing more terrifying, or more necessary than placing your kid in the hands of someone else, even if Someone Else loves them far more than you do.

And make no mistake, worried parent. His love is the lights flashing, sirens blaring, tearing down highway 280 with a total disregard for red lights kind of urgent. His pursuit is relentless.

Because God didn’t just watch helplessly from the hill behind, wringing his hands and wondering what to do. No. He came down the hill, he rescued us from the very worst emergency: sin and separation from Him. And then He called us daughter… son. And every time those sirens wail, the lights spin in frantic concern, He is with us. Not following behind at a safe distance, but with us, moving and acting according to His plan that is far greater than we can conceive of.

So on the days when the sirens wail or the scalpel cuts the soul rather than skin, I’ve no choice, no greater gift, than to rest us all in Him and surrender to the ferocity of Love that stops for no red light.

Glory to the One who hears our Siren Song and does not leave us alone in our emergency.