I don't know where to register or categorize what has happened. I'm not okay, but I will be. Because that's the hope I have in Christ.
I've never been particularly sympathetic to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Deep down inside, I imagined it to be an excuse. I mean, we have to give it to the Lord, and get over it, right?
Then why am I still crying?
It happened Sunday. Some would find reason in the fact that we didn't go to church. Trying to dodge bad weather, we wound up moving in the wee hours of the morning. Yes, we're moving to North Wilkesboro by August 31st.
At 10:30 am, no one was awake. So, I let them be and took my Bible with me, to sit by the pond. I don't know that it was a replacement for the fire and fervor of the new pastor down the road, who nearly knocks over the pulpit in his exuberance. But I found solace.
Soon enough, Megan as promised took Melody to the "back to school kick-off" at the lake. Miranda met with her best friend to trudge up Stone Mountain. McKala was napping at the Parks'. Michael's back at school in Virginia, and Mike was in Florida.
My little guys asked if I would walk them through and down the creek as I had given my word to do before we move. I wasn't feeling quite up to it, so I let Madalynn swim in the pond. Macklynn couldn't. because while he was swinging the hammer at the old computer parts I'd gifted him to destroy, he hit himself with the claw on the back of the head. That's after he shocked himself in an outdoor receptacle while plugging up an extension cord last week. Not too many days before that, he and Madalynn were in a wreck with their Daddy on 421 because a car cut them off. And a couple of weeks before then, a piece of metal target deflected and propelled into his arm.
All that I could handle. Even having the pediatric cardiologist coming in with x-rays before they returned him to me after his birth. Even the encephalitis and meningitis he had simulataneously that crippled him when he was only 4 years old. And the three times he's had serious nail punctures. I've mentioned in some circles that he's my barometer. He suffers when I'm out of line.
But this. This was out of the blue.
We had just entered the house, the three of us. Only the two of them can remember the sound. All I can remember is the light, the carport lit up like the 4th of July. Literally.
Then he ran through the door, screaming bloody murder. It was terror, horrifying! His hand was marred with blood and black powder. I knew it was mutilated as he dropped himself into my desk chair. I grabbed a moving blanket from the floor, wrapped his hand and pressed against his leg.
Madalynn was changing from her bathing suit and grabbed something, anything to put on. Neither of them had on shoes. He didn't even have on a shirt, and it didn't matter. We weren't waiting; we were leaving. Now.
Agony. The screams of agony are haunting me still. My God, the suffering. In between the excrutiating pleas for relief, he managed to tell me to turn on the radio. He said, "Turn it to KLove!" a request I don't recall him ever making. As if my heart were not crushed enough, my soul groaned that he was seeking comfort from the Lord in his panic.
The bridge! It was out. I had to take an alternate route.
The exit ramp! It was closed. I had to go to the next one and circle back.
All the while, he was screaming, not crying, screaming. And contemplating amputation. He knew. We both did. We knew we had done wrong. That mortar cylinder had been in the medicine cabinet for how long?! Why didn't I just throw it away when I cleaned it out?! Why of all times, did he have to disobey?! As prone to accidents as he is, they're virtually never because of defiance. Why did it have to look so much like a smoke bomb?! But God bless him, he had the wherewithal to run out and drop it in the driveway, so that it wouldn't start any more fires than it already had. Blood splatters trailed him all the way out there and back in front of my desk.
We made it. No thanks to the general public for moving out of the way, regardless of my flashers being on.
We ran through security as I tossed my purse into the chest of a guard. "There's a gun in there."
I didn't give the check-in nurse a chance to talk. I said, "I'm going in."
They got him out of triage in a hurry. The only glitch we had was the IV. The first nurse dug, with no success. We kept assuring him that help was near. It was as if his desperate pleas were being ignored. He reared his legs up while another nurse had to be called in. The one at his feet was near tears herself.
I put my head down on the rail and cried for the first time. Out of mere frustration. That I couldn't keep my word. I had been forcing him to look into my eyes and be still, promising him that they would stop the pain. The waiting seemed like forever.
When the medicine coursed through his veins, I finally got a chance to see his hand. Even though it was blasted apart, everything was there, all his fingers. Oh, thank you, God!
The doctor called a plastic surgeon at Baptist to double check his decision to fix it right then and there. Despite the holes and burns, Macklynn could still move and feel his fingers. So, they determined it was safe to begin surgery.
Surgery. That means the OR, operating room, right?
They began prep in front of Madalynn and me. She had been sitting there so sweetly, with so much hurt in her face, her bare feet and wet hair.
The RN and doctor didn't agree on what was procedure, but the doctor trumped and went about his business. He explained every step of the way after he put him under with Ketamine. It's the stuff we're given before we're given real anesthesia. He assured me that missionary doctors even use it to perform appendectomies.
So there he lay, his eyes wide open but unconscious to the fact that Doctor Tom, who reminded me some of Doctor "House," was washing his wounds with what amounted to a caulking gun, flooding his wounds with sterile water, then injecting syringes full of novacaine.
The nurse told me they don't sedate adults for burn procedures, so I was most glad at that point he was a child.
Then another "too good to be true." Dr. Tom got the nurse's attention. He said, "Look at his digital nerve. Completely intact." In the chasm between his thumb and index finger, his beautiful nerve was untouched. The doctor was amazed, amazed that his thumb wasn't blown completely off his hand to start with. You see, after I finally got someone on the hospital's phone (because I still don't carry a cell), Megan and Melody got there. And I switched up with them and could hear through the curtain parts of a story the doctor was telling them as they stood tight by Macklynn's bedside. Turns out the doctor is a certified pyrotechnician, because his brother-in-law is a professional one, who incidentally has done The Olympics. Incredible.
Shortly thereafter, Miranda arrived, then McKala and her Timothy. They got to see the upside, and I'm glad for them for that.
Macklynn was uncommonly mannerly to everyone after his awakening. I think he grew up five years in one day. He knew what he'd been spared.
So, when I was given the advice to "switch" him for his disobedience when he gets better, or that it wasn't worth Mike missing overtime for, or that my story was getting long, or that at least it was his left hand, or whatever else people can dream up; I grew bitter, really bitter. More so, towards those who didn't grace us with their voices at all.
Very few calls came in. Most of them were men, specifically Mike's coworkers and volunteers, broken by the prospects for this young fellow. I was surprised to learn just how empathetic men are to the risks that they know their gender are prone to. I blame the rest on social media. Megan posted a picture but because she didn't want to start an uproar over the cause, she didn't put many details except that they virtually had to reattach his thumb. Is that not a clue?!
Is that not a cue? To get off the networks and dial an actual number and put a voice to it?!
I grew more and more discontent over the disconcern.
Can't anyone tell how upsetting this was?! Can't anyone tell that I'm hurting too?! Doesn't someone know that I might not be over this?! I'm not okay?! But that's selfish. I'm not the one who was hurt. I can't help it. I'm not good with this just yet. The devil penetrated my space. He got past my hedge, and he tricked and tormented one of my very own.
But you say, it all turned out good. Don't tell me that. I'm still mad at you. I'm still hurting. Don't you know that your Bible says to, "weep with them that weep." Let me have this. I might lose it all if you don't. Yes, I know it isn't about me, and that's why I've been keeping it to myself. Because the strong don't ask for help.
Then, yesterday. I was going through the piles of books I've procrastinated to make decisions on. "Hinds' Feet on High Places." Back in Georgia, almost 20 years ago, a recently converted woman gave me a copy. She was worried about my circumstances, even though she'd lose her own pregnancy. I remember asking ignorantly if she imagined her babies with angels' wings. She was wise and sober minded enough to say, "No." People don't turn into angels. In trying to soothe her, I made a complete idiot of myself. We do that, and we believe people are okay when they're not. Because it's easier for us that way.
I have learned much. I have learned that I will check on people, up close and personal. Even recently, I've dropped that ball myself. Going forward, that changes. I will drop my agenda for that of my LORD. He tells me to take care of His people and if I have to drag my kids along, then they'll be better for it than having their noses stuck in some book.
But thank God for the words He gave Hannah Hurnard in this one, "But the High Places of victory and union with Christ cannot be reached by any mental reckoning of self to be dead to sin, or by seeking to devise some way to discipline by which the will can be crucified. The only way is by learning to accept, day by day, the actual conditions and tests permitted by God, by a continually repeated laying down of our own will and acceptance of his as it is presented to us in the form of people with whom we have to live and work, and in the things which happen to us. Every acceptance of his will becomes an altar of sacrifice, and every such surrender and abandonment of ourselves to his will is a means of furthering us on the way to the High Places to which he desires to bring every child of his while they are still living on earth."
