The One Who Can

Road Maps

Would ye learn the road to Laughtertown,

O ye who have lost the way?

Would ye have young heart though your hair be gray?

Go learn from a little child each day.

Go serve his wants and play his play,

And catch the lilt of his laughter gay,

And follow his dancing feet as they stray;

For he knows the road to Laughtertown,

O ye who have lost the way!

-Katherine D. Blake

I held my son's sleeping form as my tears made trails down my face down to his golden hair. Half praying, half crying, I thanked the Lord for my son, for his life. I thanked God for protecting Edison that day, for saving him when we could not.

At lunch we were enjoying egg salad sandwiches and plums, huddled around the small table in the kitchen. Edison suddenly let out a strange cry and burst into tears. We saw the plum he was eating, but not the pit. Oh no, we thought, he swallowed the pit! He was still breathing, so for a moment we didn't know what to do; probably both of us were wondering if a plum seed can go through the body safely.

Then he started gagging, and I administered back blows with him laying facedown along my lap, every now and then sweeping my finger to try to get it out. But to no avail; he continued to cry and gag and cough up lots of fluids. I was encouraged that air was still passing through but my fear was that the seed would lay flat and cut off the air. I prayed continuously it seemed, an un-ending script of "Oh, Jesus, help him, oh Jesus, please!". As we panicly searched a medical book for whether we should give the heimlick to him, he suddenly gagged forcefully and the pit flew up into his mouth. Thank you Lord!

I held him close and rocked him until his sobs ceased, and he immediately took me up on the offer of some yogurt.

There was one time in Costa Rica when Sophia almost squeezed herself outside of a balcony railing thirty feet above a concrete patio. I watched this with horror; I was too far away to stop her, and Dustin had thought she was with me and was nowhere in sight. Fortunately one of our friends standing near saw her and pulled her back. The night that followed I broke down in sobs, thinking of what may have happened to my little girl. Sometimes it's a curse having an active imagination.

So with Edison; my mind raced through what could have happened, that my little boy could have...I couldn't even complete the thought.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a very protective nature about my kids. In a country where it's normal to hold babies on the lap in the car and ignore seatbelts, I'm a staunch carseating, seat-belt-buckling safety warrior. I keep a steel grip on their little hands when walking near busy roads, and I only let trusted friends take care of them. It's not because I'm an intensely worried person; I'm just intensely in love with my children, and if something happened to them that I could have prevented, a large part of my heart would die and shrivel up.

But one of the first things you learn as a parent is that you really don't have control. Even the most diligent parent can find their child playing with the electrical socket for that one minute when they weren't looking. We simply can't protect them from everything.

That hit home while Edison struggled, gagged, and cried. "I can't help him!", I thought, and prayed to the One who could.

So, as I lay there with my son sleeping sweetly, alive and beautiful; I gave my fears and my love and my son to the Lord, knowing that He IS in control, that He sees every moment, even those stolen minutes when I don't.

May we learn to trust more fully Him who watches over us!