Scare of my life!

I woke up this morning like it was any normal Monday. The dog was driving me nuts, so I got up and shut him out of my room and went back to bed for the last 20 minutes I could get away with before getting children up for breakfast.
When I got up the dog was outside. Weird. I didn't hear any kids up and out of bed. I went around waking kids up. Cody wasn't in his bed, so it must have been him. Sam wasn't in his bed, either. I found Sam on the floor by the heat register. He was sprawled out soaking up the warm air. I figured Cody must be on the coach or in front of a register in the living room.
Nope.
Where could he be? He must have gone to morning swim practice. That would be weird, though because he doesn't enjoy it and he didn't wake Devon up to go.
As the morning went on I became worried. Devon said that he heard Cody get up and it seemed like something wasn't right, but he didn't know what, but he wasn't worried.
Donnie went to work and the kids went to school. I couldn't bring myself to go to work until I knew where Cody was.
I called his homeroom teacher before school started and let her know I was concerned. I needed to hear from her if he was or was not in class when it started.
She called me about 1/2 an hour later. She'd checked around the school and he was not there.
I made the call to the church to get prayer, but instead of just praying for the situation both my pastor and youth pastor scoured the city parks and streets for several hours looking for him.
I dropped the little ones off at Grandma's house and started looking. I reported him to the police, and then went looking some more, checking his friends' houses. I took Devon out of school to go looking for him. (he knows the town from a teens perspective) I stopped by the school to get his current picture to bring to the police. They had beat me to it!
While I was there the principal came to talk to me and he got a call that there was a kid with possibly his description walking along the highway towards a large city.
We had the school's officer call out a patrol to go follow that lead. I didn't go because they were going and I went home to wait for them to bring him home. More than an hour went by with no word.
Donnie headed home. He couldn't deny the fact that he was probably a runaway. We had really hoped he was skipping school because of some issues that had been on-going.
My friends really wanted to help, but I didn't have anything that they could do. I wanted to do something but I didn't have anything to do.
I finally broke down and asked for the word to go out on the prayer chain.

Within 30 minutes of the prayer going out friends were showing up at my door and then the phone call came from my good friend Jody that she had found Cody and was bringing him home. If she had left minutes earlier than she had, she would not have seen him. It was a very clear God thing.

He is not talking much yet, but the school situation has really gotten bad and he just can't take it anymore. But we have to press on. School is not optional. So now I have to figure out how to keep him schooled and not so miserable that he would run off. Home school didn't really work with him, he would NOT do the work.

I am so relieved that he is home and safe. He was very messy and looked like he had gone through a lot. My heart is broken for whatever is causing such anguish in his life. And I want to scream at him for scaring us so badly! And for not talking to us about how bad it is all affecting him! We are just loving on him for now.

The terror of having a missing child is unbelievable. I had no idea if he was skipping school, running away, was kidnapped when he went outside with the dog, or was kidnapped or run over when he had run away, etc. The nightmarish situations just pummel through your mind constantly. Trying to maintain a grip on sanity takes every thing you've got.

I am wiped out. But still have to carry on.