The Faith of a Child

Last night, my heart stopped.  I don’t know for how long…time was unimportant to me.  We had just finished dinner and the kids were so excited about how beautiful the weather was, so Jake, Nick, and Emma decided to go for a bike ride.  We did the standard reminders to wear bike helmets and stay together, and off they went.  Awhile later, Jake came back inside, and I didn’t ask questions.  I assumed they were back from their ride and that Nick and Emma were playing on the driveway.  It turns out I was wrong.  

The front door was open, with the breeze coming in through the screen door to let fresh air in the house.  The next thing I knew, someone was banging on our front door and ringing the doorbell.  I could hear a woman’s voice, our neighbor, yelling as I was rushing to the door, “Your little girl fell on her bike!!  It’s really bad!!”  I took off running, rushing past her on the front stoop as she ran after me, saying something about her daughter seeing my little girl fall and that she hit her head pretty bad.  I paid no attention to her…her words just ran together to me as I raced to the corner where I could see my Emma lying in the street with Nick standing over her.  What I saw when I got there will never, ever leave my mind. 

 

I have never been so scared…my baby girl was covered in blood.  It was running into her eyes and down her cheeks.  She was crying and screaming, and Nick was sobbing.  Rob was right behind me (he had stopped to put his shoes on, which was a very good thing since he had to carry Emma home) and so he asked her some questions, and then scooped her up to run home with her.  We grabbed ice packs and washcloths and raced to the hospital.  The whole way there as I held her in the back seat, she was in a state of panic.  She kept asking me, “Why was I on my bike? What was I doing? I thought I was having a dream!” It scared her that she couldn’t remember, so she just kept chanting what she did remember…her name, where she goes to school, her birthday, the names of her sisters and brothers, the names of her friends.  I kept telling her it was fine, and she didn’t need to be scared…but I was scared.  I was more scared than I ever have been.  I kept telling myself to calm down, to trust God and just to pray.  But trying to keep my focus on that was so hard.  I kept giving in to the panic…kept feeling like I was drowning in fear.  As we spent the next 5 hours in the ER as they did x-rays and CT scans, cleaned and stitched her wounds, and dealt with her nausea and vomiting, fear kept taking hold.  Feeling anxious, I called on some of my girlfriends, begging for prayers for peace, for healing, and of gratitude that she was wearing her helmet.  I would love to say that once I did that, I was able to remain perfectly calm, but that wouldn’t be true.  It was still such a struggle for me. 

 

After what seemed like an eternity, they finally came in and told us the CT scan looked perfect and that our focus would now just be on healing the cuts and scrapes.  Emma perked up shortly after that, and started to remember things…she remembered that Nick took off to go around the block and she decided to go, too, but chose to go the opposite way and was going to “meet him halfway.”  I know my Emma, and my guess is she decided to beat him to the halfway point, and so was riding fast.  She remembers turning the corner (which was covered in gravel), but that is it.  Clearly, the loose gravel sucked her bicycle tire over and that is how the accident happened.  Poor Nicholas came around the corner and found her like that.  He was so upset, and so worried about her.  He is such an amazing big brother and stayed right with her while the neighbors came to get us.  I am so, so proud of how much my children love each other, and that was never clearer to me than last night.  From Nick’s devotion to her on the corner to Kate’s jump-into-action attitude, thinking to grab Emma’s American Girl magazine to distract her and running to get her water at the hospital or to get the nurse to help when Emma was getting sick, to Jake’s concern and compassion, and Megan’s panic when she learned of the accident and felt helpless being so far away and anxiously waited to be able to talk to Emma on the phone…those five little people of mine are amazing individually, and amazing together.  They love one another with a fierce devotion and they stick together, no matter what.  When the ER doctor came to tell us the CT scan showed nothing, he said, “Well, it didn’t show nothing.  It showed you have a brain.  I know how sisters can be, so I don’t want to give her something to give you a hard time about.”  My girls just stared blankly at him.  I said, “I bet your sister wouldn’t do that to you.”  Kate said, “Maybe the boys would,” and smiled at Emma.  Emma just looked at her and said, “Not about something like this.  They would tease me about other things, but they wouldn’t tease me about this.”  She’s so right.  She knows how much she is loved.  She knows how scared we all were.  And she knows that she is not alone.  What she really knows about not being alone, though, is the true lesson in this story for me. 

 

As I sat holding Emma’s hand after they had finished the stitches, she said, “Well, that sermon was really good for me today!  God really IS with us always, even in the pits!”  Wow.  Just wow.  My children teach me something every day.  Today, my Emma taught me to have faith.  To trust.  To believe.  Because He is, and He was, and He always will be with us, in the good and in the not-so-good.  “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28  And that is a very good thing.