Last weekend my four year-old and I went to the mall.
We found a spot near the store we were to go in, and she climbed up through the front seat to get out of my driver door.
Things were going as usual, and as I began to close the door behind her for some unknown reason she hesitated from her gait toward the back of the car.
The next second and a half went by in slow motion.
As I saw the hesitation, my gaze was shifting from watching her to watching where the car door would close behind her. In the middle of the change of view, I heard the car door's "chunk" closing sound.
I simultaneously began to hear the cry as my eyes saw the driver door fully closed (no cracks or ajarness whatsoever) and my daughter's finger only partially visible outside the airtight, shut door.
I know it hurt like hell, and opened the door as soon as I could get to it.
I picked her up and then looked at her hand. It just so happened the side I saw first was the side the door had closed on (the non-palm side).
It was not bleeding, but the skin was heavily indented in a weird configuration. The skin was solidly compressed halfway through to the palm side of her hand in a quasi figure-8 shape, as if drawn by a two year-old. Kind of circular, but with other lines and shapes blended in.
I was amazed skin so deeply compressed that far through the finger was not bleeding.
The door had squished and imprinted this side, and though not bleeding it looked ugly, awkward...painful. There was no doubt from the wailing that it hurt immensely.
The palm side of the finger had a thin cut where the outermost phalange (?, section of finger) met the second phalange from the end. It was bleeding very slightly (on the surface, not dripping), the skin broken just enough to bring out the red stuff.
My heart then split in two directions.
Comforting my daughter as much as humanly and compassionately possible being one of them.
As for the other...there is a song I heard some months ago called Cry Out to Jesus. That's a very weak description of the fierceness and depth with which I called out to the Man about what had just happened.
I was humanly aware of the possibility of a broken finger, and I was keeping alert for the ongoing reactions of my daughter to see if that was a possibility to address.
At the same time, I was leaning on the Man as ferociously as I did when the rusty nail impaled my foot a few months ago, which I blogged about here.
I had picked my daughter up, and was holding her in one arm while my other arm both hugged her to me and also was cupped over her hand which she held close to her body.
My heart was laid out bare on her behalf.
For what must have been three solid minutes I must have simply called out for Jesus to help us, just saying it with my heart and lips over and over and over.
Initially we were by the car, and at some point during those few minutes we began to walk toward the mall as she continued to cry and as I continued to cry out to the Man.
As we neared the door to the mall and the crying started to subsist from wailing, I decided to check how the finger looked.
I was surprised, and not surprised.
The back (non-palm) side of her finger, the side which had been closer to the slamming door, where the skin had been compressed half way through toward her palm, was spotless.
No indentation whatsoever.
No redness. No swelling.
No marks of any kind.
No hint at all of the weird configuration the completely closed door had left on half of her left ring finger.
Her finger was as flesh-colored and normal appearing as all her fingers.
The mild cut on the palm side, along her phalange joint, was still cut but the blood was not oozing out. It was staying put, visible at the surface but not going anywhere.
My daughter was still crying, of course. We had stayed by my car until wail had subsided to cry, and even these several minutes later she was still crying and somewhat upset.
I knew that if the finger had been (or remained) broken that the pain would still be cause for a wail these several minutes later. And she would have repeatedly been saying "Daddy, my finger hurts, my finger hurts".
Her comments were about her finger having been caught in the door, not about continued pain.
It's very probable the mild cut on the palm side will heal completely and not scar at all.
I wish, though, that it would scar.
To be a lasting reminder of the Man's touch and compassion in that hour.
2 comments:
I'm glad God picked a good daddy for your daughter, one of tenderness and fierceness, one who accepts the healing and the scars of Jesus.
your comment pricked my thinking:
isn't it interesting that the Body (in general) seems to obsessively pursue scar-free living?
Funny how God wants us to grow up and mature, to become meat eaters instead of milk drinkers.
He's pretty blunt about what takes place to spur this growth.
Funny how from a human perspective we have no problem when people talk about learning from mistakes, or learning the hard way, or the school of hard knocks stuff.
And yet when there is talk of life in God following a similar pattern, people get 'offended' and start yakking the proverbial "how could a loving God..."
I am so effen tired of this thinking.
I've had it with the teddy-bear, feather-down portrayal of the Man. It perturbs me to no end.
Unfortunately, I live in the wrong society, the wrong period, the wrong era, the wrong something, to view the Way as I do, because I do accept the scars as well as the healing. You're right.
And accepting scars seems to be a foreign tune these days. It's certainly not being spoken of much among Followers.
I know you didn't post the comment for this end, but I can't think of a higher compliment than what you said about accepting scars.
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