Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

My husband is a doctor. A family-medicine-turned-emergency-room-doctor, specifically. I love this fact. I love that he knows so much about all the injuries I face as a mother of four young children.

In the eleven years we have parented together, our kids have had stitches from making unplanned contact with tile floor, asphalt, a coffee table, a dining room table, the handlebars of a scooter, a brick wall, and a Thomas the Train windmill (possibly thrown at one child by another, but I won’t get into that right now.) We have also had two broken wrists from separate decisions to ride a bike down a steep driveway and a grassy hill, respectively.

Seriously, how do all you moms do it without a doctor in the house? Despite having my husband there, we’ve still had to make multiple trips to the ER for things that have happened while he was away. Kids have so many little things go wrong. Rashes. Cuts. Bruises. Coughs. Sore throats. Allergies.

It’s crazy.

But last week, it was a much simpler problem. My ten-year-old son Elijah (who goes by the nickname “Sidge”) had something small pop off his braces. Being as I really wanted to avoid a one-hour round trip to the orthodontist for a thirty-second repair, I asked my husband to try to fix it.

He had Sidge stand up against a wall in our bathroom, I shined a flashlight in Sidge’s mouth, and John got to work on repairing the broken brace using some little medical tools he had on hand.

Just a few minutes in, I found myself nearly in tears. Sidge had passed out. Too long with his knees locked and his neck cocked back had resulted in him doing a faceplant onto the bathroom floor.

Again, I was glad to have my husband with me as Sidge started making seizure-like movements. John informed me this was completely normal when someone has passed out and is coming back around.

As my husband finished fixing Sidge’s braces with our son now lying on his back so he wouldn’t accidentally lock his knees, John turned to me and said, “Isn’t God cool?”

I LOVE getting to write for The Glorious Table. Here is another place I had the honor of writing for them. To read the piece in its entirety, jump over to THE GLORIOUS TABLE.