Today’s special edition post is from Tova Dad, my favorite daughter and Virtual Assistant. She lives outside of Amarillo with her husband and their two daughters.
I bet you’ve been in a situation, or watched one, in which you said or thought,
“Just let’m have it!”
“They’re just asking for it!”
“They’re getting a little too big for their britches.”
“Somebody needs to take him down a peg or two.”
(If you aren’t from the South, choose a phrase from your own vernacular that encourages violence. I can’t help you much more than that.)
These phrases almost exclusively indicate that an offender needs a whoopin’ (sorry again, yankees).
There are couple of people in my life who are really skilled at de-escalating situations in which I would rather hand out a whoopin’, and one of them is my husband. Working in the mental health field, he is frequently called upon to bring calm into a stressed environment.
Outside of work, he is a picker (again, yankees, just do your best to find a southerner to translate) and frequently induces stress in his wife and children for his own amusement. I’m exaggerating, but he definitely gives ‘chaotic good’ in interactions with our kids and me. I have often said that running his mouth will be his demise.
There’s really only one other category that in which he struggles: illnesses and injuries.
Don’t tell him about any interesting medical events you have experienced. Don’t let him see blood. Vomiting is contagious. He doesn’t want to see you touching your eyeball while you put in your contacts. Asthmatic coughing is worth a visit to the ER.
In contrast, I wanted to be a veterinarian for most of my life, and I love all the grisly medical stories, watching friends get stitches at the hospital, and dealing with illnesses, injuries, and medications in our children and pets.
However, becoming a father really made my husband a different man. He truly does so well with our children’s illnesses and injuries, though I’m still the designated distributor of medications and asthma issues. If our kids had a blowout diaper, he took his turn without a single complaint. If someone skins their knee, he willingly bandages the injury. And if someone vomits on themselves in the night, he changes the bedding and cleans up anything else in the room while I bathe and redress the child.
Yesterday, we had a very unexpected injury with our 6-year-old.
Both sisters were happily playing with one another while I was in another room preparing for company, when I heard the cry that meant ‘I am really in a lot of pain’ rather than ‘I am mad about something not going my way.’
I hurried toward the crying, while the crying hurried to me, and we met in the middle. Her shoulder hurt, and through the crying explanation and testimony of the older sister, I learned that the youngest had been shoved backward towards a chair with hard armrests and when she landed on the back of the armrest, her shoulder got hurt.
A quick look under her shirt and comparison with her other shoulder revealed that she had, without any question, dislocated her shoulder.
I have had a few dislocations with each of my knees, but my incidents usually had a quick resolution of the joint sliding back in on its own, or an automatic shove back into place I unthinking facilitated. So my tolerance for injuries does not include any videos of limb dislocations.
I kept outwardly calm on my way to get my husband out of the garage, but I was mentally preparing to cancel our evening meal with our friends, and considering which nearby clinic could get her shoulder back in the quickest.
I told my husband that I needed him because our daughter had dislocated her shoulder and he quickly came back in the house to see it as well. I anticipated a mirror of masked panic from him, and said to the kids, “I think we probably need to go to the doctor.”
Astoundingly, my husband said, “Can I try to fix it?”
I think my brain short-circuited for a second before I could respond. “Are you sure?” I asked.
He was.
He took ahold of her forearm and said to her, “Relax. Let me have it.”
I’ve shared before how the Holy Spirit guides my attention. Like a little tap on my mind and a whisper in my heart that says, “Pay attention.”
This was such a moment.
Our little girl trusted her Baba as he gently and slowly moved her arm through 2 short movements.
And then it was back in!
I was speechless.
He told me that he had frequently seen his high school wrestling coach put back dislocated shoulders in that way. But aside from him getting the shoulder back in, I just couldn’t believe that he wasn’t loading up to go to the hospital as soon as he saw it. Because that’s what I was planning!
After a round of hugs, we returned to our tasks to prepare for guests, and I allowed my mind to return to the moment the Holy Spirit spoke to me. The moment when he asked for her trust and she gave it.
I recalled parts of these verses of scripture (then looked them up today to make sure I had it all right):
“O Lord, I give my life to you. I trust in you, my God! …Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Remember, O Lord, your compassion and unfailing love, which you have shown from long ages past” (Psalms 25:1-2, 4-6 New Living Translation).
Some times, we feel the Holy Spirit whisper in the little moments. Other times, it’s more like a whooshing wind breaking through the barrier of our attention in the big moments.
But so often, the Holy Spirit’s words are the same: “I’m with you. You are not alone. I love you. Let me carry this pain. Let me have it.”
So this is my reminder to us all today that whether it’s a little moment, or a big moment, the best thing you can do is take it to your Father, and let’m have it.”
