Preparing Your Steps

Halfway through our Discipleship Training Class, my daughter stuck her head in the door of our classroom and motioned for me to come into the hall. "You need to call James!" she whispered when I got to her. "He couldn't get you, so he texted me."

When I got my grown son on the phone, he spoke the words that no mother ever wants to hear. "Mom, I'm hurt, can you come get me?" I jumped into my car, and headed to him as quickly as I could safely get to his house, some 20 minutes away. My heart pounded as I worried about what I would find. All I knew at this point, was that he'd been playing basketball in the afternoon before going into church, and had butted heads with another young man.

I walked into his apartment, to find him lying on the couch with a wet washcloth pressed to a wound about an inch long. After another half hour of trying in vain to stop the bleeding, I put him in my car and drove him to the emergency room. The doctor examined him, and asked him questions about the injury. She then looked at me and proclaimed that he had a slight concussion. They would glue the cut closed, as it was too wide and not deep enough for stitches.

A few minutes later, a nurse came in with pain medicines, and a tube of medical adhesive. She handed James the pain killers, and then went to work on his forehead. She finished up and left the room to get his discharge papers. About 10 minutes later, she stuck her head into the exam room.

"Mr. Carpenter, I forgot to ask you...Have you had anything to eat tonight?" When he told her not since lunch, she turned to me. "You'll want to get him something pretty quickly. Those pills I gave him had codeine in them, and they'll make him sick if not."

Sure enough, by the time we got to the nearby pancake house, (one of the few things opened by this time of night) he was starting to look green around the edges. I handed him a box of Cheezits to get something on his stomach while he was waiting for his food. We spent the next hour watching him eat and laughing as the medication took effect and he began to say things that didn't make much sense.

James escaped getting sick that night. But I thought about the whole incident in relation to my Christian walk. How many times do I make a mistake and then try to coat it over so it doesn't get me into trouble? Or make a decision without praying about it, only to go back and ask God to bless it at the end? Sometimes, God has pity on me, and everything works out ok...like the cheese crackers that prevented James from getting sick. But other times, it's just not enough. And like Hydrocodone hitting an empty stomach: The realities of life hit me, and I'm left to suffer the consequences.

A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. -Proverbs 16:9