LOOK OUT BELOW!

Last night, our church had a wiener roast at the home of one of our members. We hadn’t been there 10 minutes when I heard Aleita screaming and crying. There are times when your child screams and cries and you know it is just because their sibling is teasing them or because they just got in trouble for doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. The screaming and crying coming from my child was neither of those. Her shrill shrieks were different somehow - - more guttural and urgent. It is one of those things that you can’t explain to someone who is not a parent - - but to those of us who have kids, we know the difference immediately. Her screams immediately alerted me that something was very wrong with her.

Aleita and the other kids had been playing out in the side yard, a little ways away from where most of the adults were gathered. Some of the kids were kicking a ball back and forth. Some were tossing a football around. Some were taking turns on the tire swings. Aleita and Maggie and a few others had been playing up in the treehouse. However, as Aleita went to come down the ladder, she lost her footing and fell about 12 feet from the top of the treehouse. As came hobbling up the driveway, along with Maggie helping her along, Chris and I rushed out to meet them. Her body was racked with heaving sobs and her face a mess of tears and snot. Chris picked her up and carried her back to the picnic tables where we could sit down and assess the damage.

I was completely assuming we were going to have to leave the wiener roast and take her to the E.R. to set a broken bone - - most likely a wrist where she had caught herself as she landed. However, after calming her down a bit and running her through a gamut of tests, such as having her wiggle fingers and bend her wrists and elbows and knees, we discovered that the damage actually was all surface level. After falling 12 feet from a treehouse, her collateral damage consisted of two scraped fingers, a tiny scrape on her wrist, and a few grazed places on her torso. I was catching my breath and saying a silent prayer to God that she was ok, and Aleita was more concerned as to whether or not she could have a band-aid for her owies. Her comment about the whole ordeal was, “I didn’t like that very much.” After washing her hands and applying a few bandages, she quickly returned to running and playing with the other kids (though we did request she stay OUT of the treehouse for the remainder of the evening.How is it that kids are so incredibly resilient? If it were me, I think I would still be lying underneath the treehouse, flat on my back, waiting for someone to come along and scrape me up. Aleita was simply thrilled to be going to school with Batman band-aids on her fingers, armed with a cool story to tell about falling out of a treehouse.