We’ve just got back from Boston this week. Selah (our 9-year old) had major surgery (she had an 8-inch benign tumor removed from her right leg; the incision goes from hip to knee cap).
Here is a list of discoveries when walking with your child through pain:
- They do not have an adult-level concept of pain…
At least for me (Ben) as a wanna-be macho man, the philosophies of ‘no pain, no gain!’ ‘Suck it up!’ ‘Embrace the pain!’ ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body’ ‘what doesn't kill you makes you stronger’ and so forth and so on, have no bearing here.
All the child knows is, ‘This sucks. Make it stop.’ They don’t even really care about the “why” either. They just need it to go away.
There is a purity about how honest the child is about the pain, however, that should be instructive to us as parents…
In our grown up world we learn to not just romanticize the pain but lie about it too. We pretend that these little physical and emotional wounds didn’t hurt and that their not still there-just festering. And in so doing, we are certainly not becoming “macho men/women,” it’s just the opposite. For what is a festering wound after all, but pain that we let become infected and spread further immobilizing the body (or soul)???
We can take a cue from our children here in their brutal honesty about the pain. Tell the truth and heal.
2. Giving them a positive vision to hold on to feels irrelevant (but is still necessary)
In the weeks leading up to our trip/surgery, I had told Selah she will be, ‘getting a new leg!’ Which is true by the way-in the long run-she has been radically delivered from a benign, yet nevertheless meddlesome lesion, but that doesn’t lessen the blow of her words to me after our first PT session, “I don’t like my ‘new’ leg daddy!”
As a coach, my mind was reeling about how to respond to that! Quickly I understood, ‘okay this is a little person who is doing something for the first time; now how does that feel?!’ My mind when to little girl pioneer hero’s that she would recall… and there it was: Laura and Mary from “Little House.”
While the whole “positive vision” exercise was still mostly a stretch, at least we had an image to hold onto in our minds. (And a week later this vision is still a clear and specific something to hold onto, something graphic and something you can use repetitiously.)
3. Remember your own oxygen mask
Someone much smarter than me said something like this, ‘your health rises and falls to the level of your habits.’ When push comes to shove, your habits will carry you or you’ll become undone.
Here’s a better one: “everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.” - Mike Tyson
Listen: the objective is taking care of the hurting child (the spouse as well and the rest of the children too, by the way), but if you can’t make the connection between your self-sustaining health and your ability to care for those nearest to you who are hurting and broken, I’m not sure how far you will make it...
Waking up after the 1st night in the hospital, was like a gut punch… didn’t have my chargers, headphones, books, half the things I needed and for some dumb reason I actually expected to get some rest… in the hospital. To wake up from that and jump into the hardest 1st full day was brutal.
That night I thought about doing some stretches, ultimately that was an afterthought. But by day 2 I knew that I had to get some walking in, some stretches, extra long hot shower, good food and beverage and we were back in the game.
4. Community is key
My mom helped with booking flights and wheelchairs and snacks for the plane. My sister and brother-in-law made the fearless decision to actually come with us and if the predicate of 7 nights and 8 days holed up with our crazy brood wasn’t enough, they’ve been cooking and cleaning and driving and organizing and planning and consoling and just overall being present and steady during a significant time of need.
Our primary and extended families are the lifeblood of our survival when we are bleeding and require a transfusion.
There’s nothing brave about suffering alone.
But somehow in this cultural moment its considered vainglorious to suffer and die alone. This apathetic and superficial martyrdom is not what we are called to.
This blog (and our family) exists to inspire families to do hard things, but not merely for the sake of martyrdom. Rather for what those hard things produce in and through you. Its grit. It’s emotional, physical and spiritual toughness.
One of thee most vital ingredients for that indomitable spirit and that grit to mature is through the support of family and friends, through community. If we can be a part of that community for you, by the way, we couldn’t be happier!
5. When so many people are praying for you, there’s nothing you can’t do
I won’t go in to the whole long story but our whole lives raised as Christians, we never once really embraced the power of prayer-it’s theological meaning or it’s practical potential.
One day a pastor from another church came to do a training on prayer for some of our leaders and I don’t know maybe it was the Holy Spirit or maybe it was just good timing, but when he suggested that when people pray they are partnering with Jesus to affect actual, tangible results in this natural realm, we believed him!
Really for the first time, we started to believe that when people pray, things change.
That was the first great awakening on prayer.
The second one was on the chief importance of “intercessory” prayer. We began to whole-heartedly embrace the idea of recruiting and developing a team-small, medium or large- of dedicated prayer warriors who will cover you, your family and maybe even your organization (if you’re a leader) in prayer.
We’ve since read more books and received more training on the power and practice of prayer, but the major point in this is two-fold:
1, when you believe as we do about the tangible results of people praying, it takes on a new dimension of force or power and;
2, when you know, for a fact, that over a hundred people (the whole church had been notified of Selah’s health and our trip) are praying for you at any given moment, can you imagine how humbling and consoling that is?!
We know it’s easy to take for granted the pointer on prayer from the “pastoral couple on the so-called Christian blog,” but don’t blow past the truth of this point. Trust us when we tell you, it was (and is) vital.
Because we have made it our mission, as a family, to embrace hard things, this holiday season we are thankful for pain and suffering, yes-even in our children. The Lord is giving us an opportunity not just to model it as adults, but to have our children be living testimonies in overcoming too... and for that we are indeed thankful.
What hard things are you thankful that God brought you through? Why? What was produced in and through you and others by that difficulty?
As always, thanks for reading and thanks joining our movement of grit & grace…
-Ben & Rylee
