Painful Repetition

About two weeks ago my lovely middle daughter, Miriam, fell from a table and landed square on her chin. Yes, that landed us into a lovely room--without a view--in our local emergency room. But it did have a nice privacy curtain and antiseptic smell. The itinerary for such grand accomodations? Five stitches. Hardwood floors are extremely unforgiving, folks. What began as a football-shaped gash turned into what looked more like the laces on a football, rather than the ball itself. Which was a nice change in appearance.

The thing was, we had just been through this type of situation a little more than a month ago with our youngest daughter, Rebekah... A piggybank attacked her forehead and won. She received three stitches, just in her hairline. What I realized through all of this was that even though the head injury was a lot more gruesome--it looked like a bloodbath because of the nature of head injuries--I had a much harder time with the chin injury. Of course I knew why.

Our darling Miriam had a much more serious trauma when she was just 12 months old. Boiling Chicken Soup fell onto her face, neck, chest, and down her left arm, inflicting 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 8% of her body. We immediately flew into emergency mode, seated up the older and younger, and just about willed wings onto our car to get us to the ER. I’ve never seen my husband break more road laws.

This trauma lasted 4 days in the burn unit of Children’s Hospital, and another 14 months of treatments, doctor’s visits, and therapies. I personally had to administer her treatments of scrubbing burned tissue daily, fitting therapy suits onto her 23 hours a day, and driving into Detroit more times than I cared to for evaluations. Of course I had the help of my hubby and amazing friends... I couldn’t have done it without them. But I was the one who had the training to administer these tedious and painful treatments. And every day I got to work on my daughter, knowing that it was for her good, but also knowing that I was causing her physical pain. Hmmm...

So, back to the present event. I couldn’t even look at anything the doctors/assistants/nurses were doing to her for this chin split--which was actually on scar tissue from her aforementioned burn. I felt queasy. I felt woozy. I felt like blacking out at any moment. I realized that all these feelings and emotions were erupting out of a very quiet and hidden place in me. It hurt like nothing else to see my daughter injured again... in the same place. I didn’t like it. It hurt me.

Today as I sat pondering all this, I actually realized something. Through these events, I have learned a bit of what God goes through when we, as His kids, injure ourselves repeatedly. The fact that I had been down this road with her before really speaks volumes of repeat offenses. I couldn’t take it. It hurt me so much to know that she had re-injured her chin. That we were in need of medical treatment again. And that I would have to change the dressing daily until the stitches were to come out.

It pains our Father to administer the treatments that are for our own good. But He does it faithfully, because He knows if he doesn’t, even worse things will happen. Knobbly scar tissue, atrophied muscles, infection, death. These are the things He doesn’t want to see happen to His children. Don’t run away when He is administering your treatments. Just lean deeper into Him during those times. Let His love comfort you. Let it be.