Our sick pot
My poor sweet Ethan, my oldest boy the 10 year old, was recently sick with strep throat. He threw up, I will spare you the disgusting details of the event, it was gross. So I brought him a big pot. As a child growing up whenever one of the children were ill mom would bring a pot to put beside our bed just in case we could not make it to the bathroom. We seldom left our bed if we were ill. We were to sleep or read but always rest. Now my children have a sick pot as well.
It is such a hopeless feeling as a mom to be out of control of making our children happy and healthy when they fall ill. It’s as though you have to watch the life being sucked out of them without a choice. Thank God we live in a civilized country with medications that can heal our children in a matter of hours and not cripple them for a lifetime. Meijer even carries some antibiotics for free. Even with this knowledge that our children will recover it is still difficult to watch them suffer. It seems that my entire world shuts down when one of my children become ill. I pay close attention to the clock and actually write down when medication has been given. The night crawls slowly listening for the coughing, feet scrambling to the bathroom and checking for fever through out the night.
Thank God there is a light at the end of the tunnel. When our children’s color returns to their cheeks, when they decide they want to eat and sit at the table again and when they decide they have had enough T.V. to last them the next month. When I clean out the pot and then sterilize it and put it away. Then I disinfect again, clean the sheets, blankets and bathrooms, open the windows and pray that the germs don’t take up residence in the next child. After the illness is over I always sit down with my children and say “We need to thank God that he answered our prayers for you to get better. We need to be appreciative for how good you feel right now.”
Having a sick child is awake up call to realize how little control we actually have. We need to relinquish the imagined control to God and pray that He will guide us to do the best job possible as a mom.
That God will give us;
the strength to carry our sick child to bed,
the endurance to stay up the night to check for fevers,
the lack of smell to clean up the vomit and disinfect
and the unconditional love to hold our children through it all without a second thought of getting sick ourselves.
Thank you God for all that you give each mom
without You we could do none of it!
