THE GOOD DOCTOR

When my youngest was four years old, she suffered a traumatic head injury. I called a neighbor - "I need you at my house NOW!" - buckled Helen in her car seat, grabbed a sibling, and drove 90-miles-an-hour to the nearest hospital emergency room.

"Keep talking to her! Make her stay her awake!" Big Brother was a trooper. My heart raced and tears streamed down my face as I bulleted down the highway.

At the ER, staff fastened Helen into a bunting board, a device that swaddled her small body tightly. The board made her immobile so that she couldn't thrash around while the doctor treated her wound. Helen was already crying when we reached the ER, but after they put her in the bunting board, her wails went through the roof. Pain was one thing; the terror of being completely immobilized against her will, that was something altogether different.

"You will have to step out into the hall." A young woman in blue scrubs led me to the door, then closed it behind me.

From the other side of the door, Helen's screams ripped at my soul. I leaned against the wall for support, then sank to the floor. Curled up in a ball, knees to chest, I buried my face in my bloody hands and wept. Big Brother curled up next to me on the floor, and his small voice - "I'm right here with you, Mommy. You are not alone." - and the warmth of his small body provided a comfort disproportionate to his size.

A few minutes-that-felt-like-hours later, the screaming subsided. The door opened. "Mrs. Kendall, you can come in now."

One of the hardest things I have ever had to do as a mother is to entrust the welfare of one of my children, when they are suffering greatly, completely to another.

"Can I hold her?"
"No."
"Can I stand next to her and touch her, so that she knows I'm here?"
"No."
"Can I at least be nearby, in the same room?"
"No. You must step outside and wait."

And, as hard as this has been in situations where my children's physical health was concerned, it has been ten times more difficult in situations where their hearts and souls have been concerned.

When Helen suffered that head injury many years ago, I had no choice but to trust the ER doctor who treated her. I had no medical training, no technical skill, no ability to help her. I could weep for her and pray for her, but, as much as I loved my daughter, I was not qualified to treat her wound and alleviate her suffering. The best I could do for her in that terrible moment was to take her to the doctor and release her from my hands into his. I had to trust the doctor, because he was the only one who possessed the knowledge and the skill to help her.

Likewise, I find that often, when it comes to painful spiritual growth, to heart wounds, to dark nights of the soul, I can do nothing to fix the broken places deep inside my children's hearts or souls. The best I can do for my children is to take them to the Great Physician and place them in His hands. As I weep for them and pray for them, I must trust God to heal their hurts and to restore them to joy and to spiritual vigor, because He alone possesses the wisdom, skill, and power to do just that.

It is a terrible place to be, in that shattered, time-warp world on the other side of a closed emergency room door. But even in that terrible place, God does not leave us without comfort. He is such a good, good Physician - I can trust him completely with my children, their bodies and their hearts and their souls. And when I find myself curled up in a ball on the other side of that door, moved by my children's groans to tears and to prayer, God never, never, never leaves me - "I'm right here with you. You are not alone."