Camping Drama

All he did was stub his toe.

On an axe, mind you.

The sharp end of the axe, to be sure.

Which sliced off the top of his middle toe. Almost. It was hanging by a thread.

But still.

It rearranged our day and became the most dramatic event of our camping weekend.

My family went camping at Grand Beach this past weekend. Saturday lunch was winding down and we were trying to decide in what order to do all the desired activities when my middle son came back to the picnic table from changing into his swim trunks in the tent, barefoot, and stubbed his toe on the axe leaning against the fire pit.

Cry in pain. Grab and cover. Peak. See blood. Freak out.

I quickly grabbed a wet cloth and covered his toe. Then I peaked too. I saw blood too, and also a clean diagonal slice across the tip of his toe – including across his toenail. Fortunately, as a mom, I have been able to develop a few skills in covering up a freak-out for the benefit of my children. I wondered if he'd need stitches.

Our resident medical person, my good husband, came to take a look. He, too, figured we'd need to find a doctor. Fortunately, Grand Beach has a doctor stationed near the beach. We loaded the patient into the van. I held his toe in the wet cloth and tried to keep it from bumping around too much.

He's a great kid. He has this skill whereby he can zone out anything that is vaguely objectionable to him. This is a skill that can be slightly aggravating to a certain person when that person tells him to clean his room, say, and he is looking and nodding, but that certain person can tell it's just not registering. Or he'll start the job and then get distracted by a comic book lying on the floor. But today, that skill was highly valuable. It wasn't a minute into the ride to the doctor and he was reading a comic book, freak-out forgotten. When we discovered that the conveniently located doctor only worked an hour and a half in the morning and one hour in the evening, and was currently out, our handy resident medical person bandaged up his toe and I covered it with a sock and shoe, and he merrily went on his way, running and then swimming in the lake with his socks and shoes on.

So often that is how it goes. The same trait can be one of our greatest strengths and one of our challenges. The trick becomes honing that trait to serve us and our fellow human beings instead of being controlled by it.

           "Live as children of the light (for the fruit of the light consists in all

            goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord."

                                                                     Ephesians 5:9-10

                                                                         

By the way, we did see the doctor later in the day and he did not need stitches. The doctor bandaged his toe up and said it was better to let the flap dry up and fall off on its own. Which it has.