“Have mercy on me O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.” Psalm 6:2
The last three weeks have not been easy for me. During the second half of the Duke-UConn Final Four men’s basketball game on a Saturday night, I received a telephone call that any parent would dread. My sixteen-year-old daughter had been involved in a serious automobile accident. “You need to hurry,” I was told.
My daughter lives with her mother, two hours from my home. My wife and I, along with my daughter’s brother, who lives with me, threw our clothes together, and drove as fast as we could to the medical center to which she had been taken. When we arrived at 1:30 on Sunday morning, we saw twenty to thirty high school kids waiting outside the emergency room, crying uncontrollably. We soon learned that my daughter’s best friend had been killed in the accident, and that the seventeen-year-old driver had been flown to another hospital in critical condition, where he died six-days later.
Victoria was listed in fair condition, fortunate to be alive. All four occupants of the single-car accident, including my daughter, were thrown from the vehicle, which eyewitnesses saw roll over four times. She sustained eight fractures and has since endured two major operations to repair her broken body. Yesterday, she returned home, wheel-chair bound for the next four months. She has a long, hard road ahead of her.
Words can’t describe how hard it was for me to watch my daughter suffer. I love her so much and would have gladly taken her place. I later thought about that and realized how much Jesus loved us. He took the pain and suffering that we deserve for the sin in our lives.
The Bible teaches us that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) I believe that promise and can honestly say that I saw a lot of “good” in what can only be described as a tragic episode in my daughter’s young life. We saw, and felt, the prayers of thousands of Christians, hundreds of whom visited us at the hospital. My faith in youth has been restored by what I witnessed. I met kids who cared, who loved my daughter, who genuinely hurt for what she and my family were enduring.
But the most cherished moment of the last three weeks was one of the most painful experiences for me. The afternoon and evening after my daughter’s second operation to remove her tailbone and repair her broken ankle and heel, she experienced intolerable pain. We had been told that it would come and go in episodes, at levels that medication could not mask. I cried as I watched her writhe on her hospital bed, screaming out to God, “O Lord, please take this pain away from me.” I never want to watch one of my children hurt like that again!
I thought about my daughter’s prayer later that night. She could have asked for the doctor first, or she could have begged the nurse for another shot of morphine. She ultimately did both of those things, but the first thing she did was pray to God for deliverance. She knows the Great Physician!
Today, I am grateful for life. I thank God for sparing my daughter. But most of all, I am grateful that she knows the Lord and understands that she can turn to Him first for any need that she has. “Train up a child in the way that (s)he should go and when (s)he is old, (s)he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
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