Josiah's Broken Arm

It was the first warm week of April in the East Tennessee mountains; the first opportunity to let the kids roam free outside with their friends.  There is a small pack of them on our street.  Usually 4-5 kids, aged 5-11, with the occasional older kid and the occasional Annie bringing up the rear at 2.  This group has spent a lot of time together over the past couple of years, and we’ve spent a lot of time in the yard with them.  And in this crowd there is a bully.  We’ve known about this group dynamic, and have been more or less involved in parenting this as it happens.

But on this particular Monday evening, we are inside getting ready to host a dinner, and the kids are in the tree house in the backyard.  We hear the thud and the scream, and rush outside to see Josiah lying on the ground in front of the tree.  From the tree house we hear a chorus of, “she pushed him,” and register the words; but our focus is on our son on the ground, with the broken arm.

Over to the ER (where he knows which flavor of Popsicle he likes best), an X-ray and a cast, and we’re back home that night.  The arm doesn’t hurt so much anymore, but Josiah is very upset.  “She pushed me!” he says over and over.  What would you do with this?

Eventually, he goes to sleep and we go downstairs.  We’re sitting on the couch in the living room, and my blood is boiling.  This is my son, my only son, the one I love; and he has been hurt, maliciously not accidentally.  Hot tears are running down my face. 

And it is just a week after Easter.  The Spirit through Katie reminded me of this story.  There was a Father whose Son was hurt, maliciously not accidentally by the people who were supposed to be His friends.  The Father must have felt this pain, and more in a way I cannot imagine.  And the Son looked down from the cross and said, “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

So we tell this story to ourselves, and to our son, and we become part of that story.  Josiah has a grasp on grace and forgiveness, and we are reminded.  And we go back out in the yard; we speak to the bully and her parents, telling them about what happened, that it mattered and that it was wrong, and that they’re forgiven.  It’s not a perfect story, and still awkward on our hill.  “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”