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Family Camp ~ Stretched and Bent

Yesterday Anna was running and playing with Isaac, like almost everyone does at a family camp. Isaac being the strong, lanky, and fast young man that he is, he jumped off a wall to get away from his little sister who was chasing him.

Anna being the tenacious, feisty, young lady that she is was putting her all into catching him. As she took the leap off the wall to continue the pursuit of her brother she realized it was farther down than she wanted to jump so she grabbed a rail with her left hand. She heard a pop and pain ran through her arm.

Since it was Family Camp she didn’t want to miss anything. So she kept her arm tucked close to her side ~ bent at a 90 degree angle ~ and put that cute smile, the one that only she has, on her face and continued to play. During the day she play Frisbee and all the other things that the young people were doing.

That evening around 10:00pm I saw her holding her arm. I was sure that her elbow was dislocated. I called a friend who was at the conference who is a doctor. He came to where she was playing with the other young people and examined her. While he was talking with some of his ER coworkers, I review the process of retracting a dislocated elbow. It wasn’t a very pretty process.

After additional examination the three of us decided, especially Anna, that we should go ahead and do the procedure without going to the hospital and without pain medicine ~ since none was available.

It was hard to sit there and watch the tears flow from my sweet daughter’s eyes yet it was a joy to see her stand up to the pain that was necessary to bring about healing. It wasn’t easy for her. It wasn’t easy for me. I wasn’t easy for the doctor. He kept saying, “I am so sorry for hurting you!”

Anna understood that at times the healing process causes pain. Restoration takes hard work. Yet she never lost her joy during the process. I thank God for my beautiful and joyful daughter.

Comment(1)

  1. REPLY
    Heidi Goerl says

    Oh, what a story! Thanks for wrapping it into the gospel at the end. Well done!

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