In the Hard Times

My four year-old daughter got her tonsils out on Thursday, so we are on day three of the recovery.  This has been one of the hardest experiences of my life.  I don't for a minute question the decision that we made to get them taken out.  Even with her not being sick at the time her tonsils were infected at the time of removal.  According to the dr. her surgery went great.  Her recovery has been so hard.  First of all you know how hard it is to see someone you love hurting especially when you know there's not really anything that you can do about it.  It is so much worse when it's your child.  That sweet innocent face in so much pain, and so upset.  There have been quite a few tears shed in these three days and not all of them were hers.  She has also been so angry, and I know that mostly from the pain and her not understanding what's going on, but that doesn't help me.  Yesterday she had a good day and now I feel like it has just given me some false hope and made today harder to deal with.  Yesterday she played some and ate by choice, she remained hydrated.  Today I had to threaten not to be with her just to get her to eat anything all day and I had to explain that she would have to go back and stay at the hospital if she wouldn't drink more for me while I stood over her to make it happen.  All she has done today is sleep and be ugly.  Which is not bringing out the best side of me.  I had done ok until this evening and then I feel like I broke.  After her asking me to go get her something to eat then her refusing to eat it again after stopping to get medicine to make her tummy ache feel better and her refusing to take it, but her following me around grabbing on to my legs, I had to close myself in the bathroom and cry.  Just like that first day I started to pray.  I just don't know what to do.  I don't know how to do it.  I don't know how to make it better.  God give me strength to be her strength.  Give me peace in the situations I cannot change.  Please God help to lighten my load, I need you to carry it because I can't.  In my head I know that all this is probably normal.  In recovery you have better days and worse days, but knowing and feeling aren't always the same.  I know that God will give me the strength and the direction I need.

Tonight I was reading in Amos for a Sunday School class I probably won't attend tomorrow and I feel like some of that reading is applicable here.  In Amos it talks about how no disaster will fall on a city without God knowing.  God knows everything that happens and it is all a part of His divine plan, even this.  I know that God has a purpose for all the things that we go through.  That knowledge may not always make it easier to walk through these times.  It may not keep me from hiding in the bathroom to cry because I'm at my wits end.  But what it does is that it keeps me praying.  While I'm crying in the bathroom I prayed.  While I lay awake during the night because neither of us can sleep, I prayed.  And tonight before I go to sleep I will pray.  I will try to be grateful, but above all I will be honest and humble.  The hard times happen for a reason and God is with me.