Powerless Part 2

As a parent, one of the most helpless times you can have in your life is when your child is sick. There are certain steps you can take depending on the illness, medicine, doctor, humidifier, lukewarm baths, but ultimately all you're trying to do is speed up the healing process. You have to wait for the body to do its work.

This is the way Sheryl and I have been with Connor for the last little while. He will get these incredible coughing fits that make his little 2 year old body sound like a 50 year old man who's smoked 2 packs a day for 30 years. They're strong and powerful and ultimately do absolutely nothing to alleviate anything. His tonsils are huge and he get sinus infections that cause drainage which causes him to cough and cough and cough.

This last Friday and Saturday were two of the worst that I've ever heard from him. It would be no exaggeration to say that he coughed at least every five minutes and sometimes when he coughed, he'd moan in pain because it hurt. He had a slight fever and sometimes his coughs were so long and so sustained that he would throw up.

And I felt powerless. There was only so much Sheryl and I could do for him. We took him to the doctor. We started him on an antibiotic. We gave him cough medicine. We stayed up to comfort him through the night. But none of it felt effective. And honestly it was frustrating. We WANTED to fix him, to make him better, but nothing we did seemed to help. He'd get a little better for a while, then another coughing fit would hit him.

We prayed. We had friends pray. We had elders pray. I might have considered sacrificing a chicken to Jobu the god of curve balls.

Like I said yesterday, I hate feeling powerless. I hate not having control over the situation. And it's funny, I don't mind God having control, but if He's going to have control, I'd like the outcome to be the one I want. It's when the outcome isn't what I want that I tend to believe God isn't in control.

Connor's doing better and we're going to have his tonsils removed after he turns 3, hopefully alleviating a lot of his issues. We're grateful to God for his overall health and what a great kid he is. And we'll trust that God is in control, even if it mean long nights awake with a coughing and hacking 2 year old.