The image I can’t get out of my head is of my 13 year old son standing in the bathroom, no shirt, a pile of band-aid wrappers scattered across the counter and his attention on the band-aid he is applying to his elbow. His pale skin is splotched all over with spots of bright red- the remnants of a schoolyard altercation. He fell while running and scraped up his elbows, his hip, his wrist, his knuckles.
Until then- until I passed him as he stood tending his scrapes in the bathroom- what happened was just some horseplay taken too far, an effort to secure social status. Having never been a middle school boy, this meting out of social strata is something I don’t understand and in which I’ve never taken part. It is important for our son to stand up to the guilty kid, to accept his apology and demand his foolish act never be repeated.
That all feels like part of being 13, being a boy, and trying hard to stand up for yourself.
But the visceral reaction I had when I saw him in the bathroom I can only call proof that I am his mother.
How dare someone trip my kid- my one-time-all-time-baby- regardless of his goal or thought? My son’s pain and discomfort are all due to someone else’s flippant decision and I burn with what I feel is righteous indignation, hurt to the core by this kid who didn’t mean for things to go this far. My son’s pain is mine.
In an effort to move on, I tuck it in, literally bite my tongue to stave the tears, and walk down the hall.
A few hours later it occurs to me.
I am small.
These relatively little scrapes, these bruises and raw spots, are nothing compared to real pain, real injury, real loss. How will I handle those when they come?
And I shrink smaller still when I consider the love of my heavenly Father, the One who sent His only Son, sinless and serving others until His death, dying on the cross for sins- committed and yet to come.
Everything is relative and I take comfort in the thought that this here and now- scraped raw by a mistake- is so little, so minor, so small.
So forgivable.
Who am I to hold onto this hurt, to relive this pain, to feel justified?
The smaller I feel, the larger I realize God is, in His love for me, in His capacity to endure pain so that I might live. And I am so grateful that He is perfect, that I am the flawed one ruled by a perfect One. What a relief that is, what a leader to follow, to try hard to be like, to love.
His love and forgiveness smooth over every hurt, soothe better than any band-aid.
I keep Him in my heart and try to be bigger.