Well, we had our first trip to the ER last week. Before you freak out, let me tell you that everyone is fine!!!
We were playing outside just before Jason was due to be home from work. Our front porch has a tiny step, about 1-2" high. Jonathan was going up and down it, and one of the times he stumbled, fell, almost caught himself, and landed on the brick garden paver. Since he's fallen down about 30,000 times (or so it seems!) I didn't think anything about it until I saw that there was blood everywhere. He had a GASH on his cheek under his eye to the right of his nose. It was about an inch long, 1/4 inch wide and deep. I took him inside calmly (pretty amazing for me huh!! :) ) and set him on the counter so I could get a better look at it. I cleaned it with wet paper towels to get off as much of the blood and debris, and then just poured water over it. There was lots of screaming and wailing and arm flailing during that bit.
I called the Ped and they said to go to the emergency room. By that time, Jason came home and as he was walking up I said "Jonathan's hurt, get him in the car while I get some things"... things meaning more snacks and water. By that time, Jonathan wasn't crying, but smiling and being silly, but we still needed to get it checked out.
We saw no less than 12 people from the steward who greated us and gave us the paperwork to fill out to the cleaning lady who waited for us to be finally checked out. All in all Jonathan saw 3 nurses, 3 doctors all of whom said he'd need stitches. We left with no stitches, thank goodness!! After the doctor cleaned and evaluated it, she said that instead of a laceration it was a deep scrape and gash. It was too far apart to even close with stitches. By that time it wasn't bleeding, and was already starting to heal. They basically cleaned it, though no better than I had done at home, and put some neosporin on it and told us to apply twice a day until it was healed, then use Mederma and sunscreen to keep scaring to a minimum.
The next day we saw that not only did he have the gash, but scrapes all over his poor little face and he had a little bit of a black eye. Facial wounds almost always look way worse than they are. Less than a week later, his scabs have almost fallen off except for the deep scrape. By the end of the week he should be scab free. Hopefully he will be scar free too.
The past two days his scabs have really started falling off, but there have been one or two that got some extra help. You know, I'm learning lately in life that God can take any thing, even ordinary things like scabs to make a point.
Looking at Jonathan's wounded, scabby cheek reminded me that we are all wounded and scabby in different ways. We've all been hurt by someone or something, we all have scabs and scars from this thing called life. Wounds, especially scrapes tend to usually heal from the outside in. They look awful for a while, get scabby, and then the scab falls away, ideally. Sometimes though the area gets infected or reinjured, setting us back on healing time. Sometimes we are impatient and pick the scab too early causing our wound to hurt and bleed again. Isn't it like that with life too? When we leave the wound alone, nature takes over and heals. Granulated tissue cells clump together to form shiny pink flesh...under the surface of the scab. If we allow God to work in our lives, in the wounded parts instead of being impatient and trying to solve the problem ourselves, we have a greater chance at healing better.
Often times we get hurt over and over in the same ways, and that causes an infection of the soul to set up...bitterness, anger, etc. We want to heal, but we can't let it go. We want to get this scab off and close up the wound, but we don't allow it to happen because we keep picking at it and don't do anything to combat the infection.
God is the ultimate healer. If we let Him do His work in His way without trying to take charge, He will heal our spiritual wounds. We may be left with a bit of a scar...a reminder of what happened and how far we've come, but a scar usually means that healing has taken place.
