VBS. ER. Letter Soup.

This week is Vacation Bible School in the evenings with the cousins. I joked it should be named after our family, instead of "Cosmic Adventure" or whatever they're calling it. Seven out of the ten cousins are there. Anyway. The kids are SOOO excited about it, it doesn't start until 5:30 p.m. so most of the day is spent obsessing about how many more hours and minutes until we can go to VBS. This works out really well for me, the kids are accomplishing a lot of cleaning and organizing. They'll do anything to make sure they can go to church at night. And then I have three hours of calm while they're playing and learning about God. Except...

Not today. I dropped them off, walked home, sat down to do a little work on the computer and... Ring! "Amy, you have to come and get Shelly." Crying in the background. Hop in the car and race the half mile to church to discover my injured daughter laying in the leader's lap with an ice pack on her face. From what I can peice together, she was running and ran into the gate of the fence that surrounds the playground. I can picture her looking back instead of looking where she was going. But this is no time for lectures about watching where you're walking. She was sobbing. Screaming at moments. Her eye. I tried to wait it out, see if it would get better but two and a half hours later and I'd had enough. Emergency Room here we come.

Two hours after we walked in, we left in pretty much the same condition, Shelly still crying in pain and me wondering if it was worth it to go. They confirmed she has a scratch on her cornea, gave us some goop to put in her eye every six hours and sent us on our way. They put some drops in her eyes that supposedly numb it, but she was still crying. I almost was too. I hate seeing her in pain. I prayed and prayed for her, begged God to fix her eye, heal her pain, take it away, give it to me instead, anything so she wouldn't be tortured with it. He blessed her with stretches of sleep, she's been sleeping now for awhile, only briefly interrupted by waking with pain, and I'm thankful for the sleep.

As we sat in the ER, I sang to Shelly, and when she drifted to sleep I prayed silently. I remembered that the Lord tells us to praise Him, even in difficult times, and I turned my thoughts to how thankful I am for each thing around me at that moment. Thankful for Shelly in my life, my precious little girl. Thankful that we live in a place with easy access to expert medical care. Thankful that we have the money to pay for the care, to pay for the car to take us to the ER, to pay for gas in that car... I am so blessed. I am so thankful that a scratched cornea was the worst of our worries today. I know of so many families whose children are sick, burdened with much bigger problems than ours. And I hated to see Shelly in so much pain. But I praised God for His gracious gifts to us and I realized why He tells us to praise Him, even in the hard times. Because when we find a way to praise, the problem in front of us seems not quite so big anymore.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
~James 1:2-4