I haven’t felt like I had too much to write about for a while now, but
Sissy Belle said something the other day that I just had to share. But first, a
little background.
Adaleine broke her wrist last week :( It was a complete accident and
really nobody’s fault, but the poor thing rode a zip-line straight into a tree.
Both bones in her wrist/arm are broken.
As heartbreaking as it was to see my little girl in pain and distress, I
could not have been more proud of this girl. The x-ray tech, the nurses, the
receptionists, the doctors…everyone was so impressed with this little
seven-year-old girl walking around holding her mangled wrist and bearing the
pain without complaint.
Now don’t get me wrong—she cried. She was in a great amount of pain and
if she had let herself she could have screamed and wailed with the best of
them. But this girl is the toughest kid I have ever encountered when it comes
to handling pain. Her resilience and strength the whole afternoon and evening
after it happened took me back four years to when she got burned and never
complained about the pain. Seriously.
But what was more striking to me was not her toughness, it was her
composure. Like I said, she didn’t wail and moan. She was calm when they were
looking her over, quiet even in the pain of moving her arm around for x-rays,
and relaxed even when the anesthesiologist inserted the IV in the back of her
little hand (complete with chippy sparkle nail polish.) Even when they wheeled her off in
her bed to put her to sleep so they could set the bones, she smiled back at us.
Time and again there were comments, “I have adults that don’t handle this as
well as you!” and “I wish all my patients were this calm” and “My kids would be
having a FIT right now!”
We asked her the day after it happened why she was able to be so calm.
Her response without hesitation was, “Because I knew God could take care of me.”
Wow. My little Adaleine has such a grasp of God’s sovereignty that even
when her little bones are snapped and she’s scared in a hospital, she can still
cling to God’s peace and power. It brought tears to my eyes to know that in
the moments when I couldn’t be with her—in the OR when they started the meds
that would put her to sleep—in those moments she was relying on her heavenly
Father to protect and comfort her.
“Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.”
Psalm 105:4
Every once in a while, my kids teach me a lesson or two.
