Letting Gratitude Win

We have an injured one in the house today. Our youngest was at a camp retreat this weekend with the junior highers from her school and fell off a Blob. What's a Blob? Apparently a large inflated thing that you jump on to knock another person off the other end into the water. Great fun -- if you jump to land on your bottom. Kiddo apparently missed those directions.

The good news is, it looks like it's not a terrible injury. The swelling went down pretty quickly, so it's likely just a sprain or something and not a fracture. We're hoping we won't need to get an x-ray today.

The other good news is, the incident prompted her to say, "I have such good friends!" They rallied to her side when she was in pain and having to miss the fun. One friend packed her stuff for her. Others made her laugh to distract her. She does have good friends. So glad God brought us to Summit.

The bad news: she hurts. At least she did for a while. The doctor at the camp gave her ibuprofin and she was quite comfortable on the way home. When that wore off later in the evening, however, she was in serious pain. And the first pain-killer we grabbed out of the cabinet was acetaminophen. Not the same stuff at all, apparently. It did little or nothing to curb the pain. Poor girl was absolutely miserable all night until we figured out our mistake the next morning. Ready to eliminate the Tylenol from all of our bathroom cabinets. Worthless stuff.

The other bad news: she can't walk. We're hoping that won't be for long, but it is for now and it is a huge aggravation for her. I sympathize so much. I had surgery on my foot several years ago, and I vividly remember the pain (they finally gave me happy drugs that made me wonderfully loopy and entertaining) and the hassle of trying to live life on one foot.

You can't carry anything when you're using crutches. You have to slide on your butt up and down stairs. Going to the bathroom is a hassle even. She said yesterday that a couple days ago, she would have loved the chance to do nothing but sit on the couch all day . . . and now she was dying to get up and go someplace else.

That's one of the lessons I learned in my time on crutches: gratitude. Gratitude for the little things. Just being able to put weight on two feet is a little thing we all take for granted, but it's huge. How difficult life gets when you can't do so, even for a short time.

Our daughter is learning that gratitude now. I was feeling it in full force from the minute I got the phone call from camp. It's a minor foot injury. Hallelujah! It could have been terribly broken. She could have broken her whole leg. She could have whacked her head or landed funny on her spine and shattered something there. We could have spent Saturday evening sitting around her in an emergency room, praying desperately. Such visions floated through my head when I was listening to her principal tell me over the phone, "Eastin's had an accident . . .

But it's only a minor foot injury. Hallelujah!

Gratitude and aggravation. I'm joyfully letting the former win out in my heart. But then, I'm not the one on crutches today.