When Life Is Hard: That Time My Kid Spilled Nail Polish In His Eye

So, last week, my son spilled this in his eye.

Before you start judging (kidding -- I know you've already started judging, and it's ok), I just want to ask one question: whose kid HASN'T spilled nail polish in their eye?

Ok, I get it. You can put your hands down now. It's just me, as usual. I'm convinced God allows these ridiculous things to happen to me just so YOU get a good laugh. And probably so I learn some stuff. I'm starting to put two and two together and realize that I must be a slow learner, because He feels the need to provide me with ample opportunities for growth and refinement. #ThankYouGod #ButReally

So, last week my youngest spilled nail polish in his eye. Yes, he's ok. He can still see just fine, as was evidenced by the detailed picture he drew on my kitchen floor this morning. #GodBlessHisTeachers

Last Friday I was out for the day while he was at home with a babysitter. I was working and trying to cram a million things into a babysitter-length span of time. It was shortly after lunch, as I was sitting down to have a meeting, that my phone rang. It was my sitter. #OyVey 

I debated answering the call. If I answered, chances were good that I'd be on the receiving end of some sort of bad-news phone call or serious discipline issue. If I ignored the call, chances were good that I'd be distracted by my meeting and would forget about the ensuing drama, putting off an inevitably bad situation for a little while. #Procrastination

Of course I answered the phone. What kind of mother do you take me for???

"Hi, Susan. Is everything ok?"

 I could tell immediately from the screaming in the background that, no, things were not ok.

"Susan, what's wrong? What happened?"

"I don't know what happened. I'm just not sure. I was downstairs doing the dishes and Foster was playing fine. All of a sudden I heard him screaming and he came down the back stairs holding a bottle of nail polish in one hand and covering his eye with the other. I pried his hand back and...um...somehow -- I'm not sure how -- he spilled nail polish in his eye. Oh, yeah, and he dropped the bottle and it shattered all over the floor and now there's nail polish on the (newly painted) walls."

Sigh.

I stood up, grabbed my laptop bag and purse, announced that, unfortunately, I was unable to have a meeting because my kid SPILLED NAIL POLISH IN HIS EYE, got in the car, and started driving home.

My emotions? Well, if I'm being honest, they were a mixture of fear (that my son would lose his vision or see through rose-colored retinas for the rest of his life) and rage (that my son was playing in nail polish to begin with), with an eerie dose of calm in there, too (after all, what's done is done).

I pulled up the driveway, threw the van in park, and ran into the house, looking for my son and prepared to head straight to the ER. I expected hysteria. Instead, I found him sitting at the kitchen table, calmly eating a snack, perfectly content and in zero pain.

I immediately envisioned myself on a deserted island, sipping a mojito and nonchalantly lounging my size-four body next to the lapping waves, in order that I might not blow a size-fourteen gasket.

Thankfully, my superhero sitter had the sense to flush his eye out with lots of water, and also to give him food (in that order). His eye wasn't even red, and he said it didn't hurt "even a nothing bit." 

When I asked him what he had been thinking doing, he told me he'd been exploring his sister's room upstairs and had happened upon this bottle of nail polish in one of her zillion pouches of useless crap.  He then thought it would be fun to use it "like makeup." He wanted to have the face of a Cover Girl beauty, I suppose, and let me say, he didn't miss a spot. He painted his entire (ENTIRE) face in nail polish. Including his eyelids. He filled the brush with paint and dripped it onto his eyelid (translation: into his eye) to become "bootiful." 

Once I was certain he was okay (and after I had called the pediatrician and been told that I could just keep an EYE -- couldn't resist -- on it instead of taking him to the ER, as they had initially counseled me to do), we had yet another conversation that I had never foreseen myself having before I had children. It was the whole, "we don't paint our faces with nail polish" convo. You know, you've had it, too. Or not.

I ended up going back to my meeting. Later that evening I made it home just in time for him to stand on the sofa (which is forbidden in our home) and topple over, puncturing his scalp on the corner of a toy organizer next to the couch and bleeding all over our cream-colored carpet in our new (to us) home. And you know what I mean when I say that head wounds bleed PROFUSELY. 

Nail polish on the freshly painted walls. Check. Blood spattered all over the white carpet. Check, check. Frustration threatening to spill over into tears and "I quit's." Check, check, check.

There's no doubt about it: life is hard. It's full of unexpected emergencies and "I-never-saw-that-coming's" and "is-this-really-my-life's??"

And what's more, I know that my bad days are nothing compared to the experiences of many others. I read an online journal update written by a mom whose newborn baby who simply wasn't feeling well now is fighting for his life while undergoing the most intense chemotherapy his tiny body can withstand. I cry for a friend whose marriage is in serious distress and is facing some difficult, painful decisions. I watch parents care for their child, a sweet boy who was born with severe disabilities and will never function without round-the-clock care, day after day after day after day after day. I read of the mom of two precious children who mysteriously took ill and died weeks later, leaving behind a devastated husband and two girls who will grow up without their mom.

THAT is hard.

However, if I can, I'd like to say this (hopefully without sounding like I believe myself to be the authority on all things hard and spiritual, and without sounding insensitive or like I'm spouting off just another "church-y" response):

Hard is where HE is.

It's easy to feel like, in the middle of crappy days and seasons and years and decades, HE is light years away. I don't blame you if you feel that way, because I have felt it, too. However, our feelings don't always (or usually) dictate what is true, and what's true is what God's Word says. Read what Paul wrote (inspired fully by God) in his second letter to the church at Corinth:

"All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too."

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Don't you just adore the end of that section of Scripture? We have PLENTY of hard times, but they will NEVER surpass the good times of His healing comfort. "We get a full measure of that, too."

Hard is where His HEALING is.

It's tempting to run from hard. Who wants to embrace the moments when life feels like it might crush us under the heaviness of our situations? I'll be the first to admit that I often want to cut and run and breeze over hard. But I don't want to run enough to miss out on where HE is, and where His HEALING is.

Sometimes, God calls us to hard stuff. To walk through painful situations. To embrace agony. 

Sometimes, God calls us to heart stuff. To walk with Him, no matter how hard. To embrace His sufficiency for us.

If you're walking through a storm, a "nail-polish-in-the-eye" kind of day (or worse), know that I'm praying for you even as I type these words. He is good. He is near. He is all about your healing and restoration. He is about your HEART.

I, on the other hand, am all about the 409. Spray, that is. 409 spray on the floors of my kitchen, on the walls, on the freshly-painted cabinets. On the cream-colored carpet in my bonus room. 

Yes, I'm all about the 409. And Him. And Healing. But especially the 409.

Feel free to laugh!

Dependence Day

Today is the 4th of July, which, here in Georgia, means several things:

1. Tens of thousands of people who haven't exercised since January 6 all got together this morning in downtown Atlanta to run the world's most popular 10k, the Peachtree Road Race. My social media platforms explode every year on 7/4 with pics of friends at the starting and then the finish line. I like to look at the afore-mentioned pictures while I lounge in my bed, not running. The one I saw today of my eight-month pregnant friend at the finish line who'd barely broken out in a sweat was especially guilt-inducing for me (you know who you are, Lisa Adams).
   
   
2. Everyone and their brother piles into their family sedan and drives toward Lenox Mall or Stone Mountain Park in an attempt to secure front-row seats to the biggest fireworks shows in town. This brings the already awful Atlanta-area traffic to a complete standstill, resulting in things like babies being birthed on the sides of highways and other thrilling things of that nature.
   
   
3. More grills are fired up and working at one time in the southern US than they are any other day of the year (I might or might not have completely made this stat up, but I have a gut feeling I'm right, so go with it). Independence Day is a Big Green Egg owner's Christmas (except for the actual Christmas when they get the latest Big Green Egg accessories they've been drooling over). Men all over Georgia are geeking out and going all Alton Brown on us as they attempt marvelous meat concoctions never before tasted by mankind.
   
   
4. Someone, somewhere, at some parade or fireworks extravaganza, feels the need to take our nation's anthem and sing it loud and proud Whitney-Houston style, but Whitney they are not. We've all heard it being butchered by the most well-meaning and patriotic citizens you'll ever meet. Their patriotism, however, doesn't generally compensate for their lack of skill, know what I mean?

Basically, to sum up Independence Day here in the south, just see below:

Good ol' Independence Day.

We are a people and a country who pride ourselves on our independent spirit, aren't we? We celebrate our freedom to be whatever and whoever we want. Businesses and organizations use "independent" as a buzz word to signify a lack of bias or governemnt control. Schools use "independent" to describe a method of study in which students are responsible for their own learning. Women's rights groups use "independent" to signify that women don't need a man to function in life or to achieve happiness (cue Beyonce).

The dictionary defines INDEPENDENCE: freedom from the support, control, influence, aid, or the like, of others.

Our society champions the cause of independence. And while that's often well and good, the concept of independence is often a hard one for me to swallow, mainly because the message of the Gospel of Christ, which is a message I wholeheartedly believe, teaches quite the opposite.

Where the world teaches a person to stand on her own two feet to get by, the Word teaches that she must fall broken before the Lord, fully aware of her own neediness and inability to function apart from her Heavenly Father. (Psalm 51) (John 15:1-10)

Where the world teaches a person to carve her own path and create her own destiny, the Word teaches that one's life is part of a Master's plan. (Proverbs 16:1, 9)

Where the world teaches a person that she's smart and savvy and can trust her own intuition, the Word teaches that true wisdom can't be found apart from God and His Word, and that we can't trust our own sinfully-bent minds. (James 1:5-8) (1 Corinthians 3:18-20) (1 Corinthians 1:25) (1 Corinthians 2)

The entire message of Jesus Christ can be summed up in one word: DEPENDENCE.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding..." (Proverbs 3:5) 

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death..." (Proverbs 14:12) 

"I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth..." (Psalm 121:1-2) 

"I say to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you...'" (Psalm 16:2)

God has always worked from his own unique operating system. He sent His only Son, the King of all mankind, to be born to human flesh without fanfare in a tiny, stinky barn filled with field animals. The world opts to welcome royalty with glitz and glamour and worldwide celebration. And He still operates this way, and the followers of Jesus Christ are still called to live a lifestyle that is contrary to everything this broken world beckons us toward.

To get ahead we must consider ourselves last.

To gain wealth we must give generously.

To lead others we must serve them.

To truly live we must die to ourselves.

To gain true freedom we must become completely dependent.

Each year, on July 4, we celebrate our country's freedom from the rule of Britain.

Each minute of each hour of each day of each year, those who follow Christ must celebrate Dependence Day.

Lord, that we would walk in dependence on You, and You alone, today and every day.

And when we are faced with images like the following and find that we do, in fact, share our  American citizenship with this guy, remind us that this is not our home and that, in heaven, people won't stick fireworks in their butt cracks (or at least I assume they won't, but I guess we won't know for sure until we get there).

Feel free to laugh!