Cries of a Broken Heart

We recently took our little guy to his 1-year doctor appointment. As is standard, or so they tell me, he had a finger prick to test his lead levels. We live in a house that’s 100 years old, so we know that it’s realistic to assume he’s been exposed to lead. And, as we feared, his levels tested slightly high. They weren’t high enough to panic, but high enough that we needed to bring him back for a venous blood draw to get a more accurate level. We paraded him into the doctor office for the procedure. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy, but in my mind I was expecting something similar to getting a shot. I expected he’d be mad but then get over it and we’d walk him out of the office with a Band-Aid and be on our merry way. I was really unprepared for what it would actually be like. What I didn’t know, is that they don’t do a whole lot of venous blood draws in the office. They mentioned that they’d “try” there at the office and if it didn’t work they’d give us an order to have it done at the hospital. I suddenly wasn’t feeling so confident and at ease.

They asked me to hold him down while another nurse held his arm, and a second nurse attempted to find his vein with the needle. I watched my baby lying helplessly on the table, attempting to thrash his arms and legs in futility. Initially he was just mad about being made to lie down. But, then as they stuck him with the needle repeatedly, digging it around in his arm, the tears began to fall from his eyes and he cried his cries of sadness and pain, and probably also fear. He eventually didn’t fight much, but mostly just lay there in defeat while he cried, which broke my heart even more. As I watched the tears streaming down his cheeks and listened to his cries for help, my mommy heart was crushed. I prayed silently that they would hurry up and find the vein to get this over with. They weren’t successful.

 I held him for a couple of minutes in an attempt to reassure him while we discussed trying his other arm, or just doing it at the hospital instead. We elected to attempt his other arm since we were already there, and I just wanted this nightmare to be over quickly rather than make another event of it all. Once again, I held my poor little guy down to the table and prayed that they would accomplish what they needed to do. This time they did manage to get a vein. Part of the way through, the blood stopped flowing and I was concerned the ordeal was not actually over, but they determined they had what they needed. I felt relief. Relief, and an enormous pull to hold my baby close to me.

I think both Ethan and I left that office feeling a little traumatized. I felt bad even putting him down to put him into his car seat. I just wanted to hold him close and reassure him. I wanted to snuggle with him and let him feel like the world was safe again. I wanted him to know that I loved him and that I hate for him to feel pain and sadness. I wanted him to know that my heart was broken with his. I know that he didn’t understand why it all had to happen, and even if I were to try to explain it to him, he wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it all. The more I reflected on the experience, the more I made the parallel between this situation, and those situations when it feels like God is just pinning us down subjecting us to pain we don’t understand.

I can think of times in my life that I was scared and hurting. I cried out to God asking him to deliver me from the situation, but he didn’t. It endured on in spite of my most heartfelt prayers. I felt angry with God, asking why he would leave me there like that when I knew he was able to rescue me. It’s easy to see God as the bad guy. It’s easy to demand answers from God in response to our “why?” But, the reality is that God knows what’s for our good, and he knows that things that are good for us don’t always feel good. He knows that we can’t always grasp the explanations for why, even though we think we can. But, here’s what this situation showed me. God’s heart breaks with ours. He wants nothing more than to comfort and hold us in the midst of the pain. He wants to reassure us that we don’t need to be afraid and that it’s all going to be okay. He wants us to know that he’s there and that he loves us more than we’ll ever understand. He wants to tell us that he never wanted all of this for us, but we live in a world that is filled with sin that corrupts his creation. However, and here’s the best part, he has a plan to make it all right again. He has a plan to do away with sin and evil and bring justice, thus creating a world that is perfect and without flaw. He can see the ending that we can’t. Even though it’s hard for us to understand much of the time, we can trust that he does love us and he longs for us to allow him into our brokenness. Just like everything in me longed to comfort my baby, God longs to do the same for us. We only need to let him.