We love nachos.
The kind with the gooey cheese sauce mixed with a little hamburger and some of my homemade garden salsa. They are best-served piping hot off the stove with a dollop of sour cream and some chopped onions.
About a month ago, that’s exactly what we had prepared for supper. While my Wilbur finished the nacho cheese, I sat on the living room floor fixing the front axle on my three-year-old’s favorite tractor. Getting an axle fixed on a plastic tractor is not far from a miracle itself, but the miracle was still in the making.
I heard my husband call the children to the table and the stampede of little feet that followed. From my vantage point, I saw the baby crawl around the corner of the cupboards making his way toward the table.
Just then, I heard the crash and the screaming start.
The leaf of the table had broken off and fallen to the floor taking the pan of piping hot nacho cheese with it. Not only that, but my three-year-old who had leaned on the table to look at that delicious cheese sauce landed headfirst in the nachos all the way over his eyes.
Wilbur grabbed him and ran him to the shower. I threw the pan on the still-standing part of the table, plopped the baby in his sister’s arms, and made sure no one else was burned. Then as those three kids continued to cry, I ran into the bathroom to help with my injured child.
By this time most of the sauce had been washed off, but he was still screaming a horrific scream of pain and fear and shrieking, “I wanna ban-aid” over and over again. Wilbur called my mom to watch the other children while I wrapped him in a blanket and threw some clothes in a laundry basket. With that, we rushed out the door headed for the ER.
At this point, we didn’t know the extent of the burns or even if he could see.
He was still so worked up his eyes weren’t focusing on anything and he wasn’t answering any questions, just screaming and crying.
After dropping the children with my mom, we headed straight for the nearest hospital which is in the town about thirty miles from our house. As we drove, I prayed over my son, sang to him, and finally saw and felt him relax some.
We rounded a curl about six miles from home and saw a tractor parked by some hay bales. Knowing his love for tractors and hay, I tried to engage him by saying, “Look, there’s a tractor. Do you think it was stacking those hay bales?”
My little boy turned his head, took a deep broken breath as his sobs subsided, and proclaimed, “It’s tinda wike Grandpa’s wed tractor. Maybe he put the bale up on top.”
My heart leaped for joy and a flood of relief rolled over me as tears well up in my eyes and I breathed a prayer of thanks to God.
My little boy could see!
After that, he fell asleep until we arrived at the ER where we were taken care of by a couple of wonderful, compassionate nurses who took vitals, listened to what had happened, and offered reassurance all while being patient with my shy little guy.
By this time, the burns were beginning to blister, and it was rather evident that just the left side of his forehead was badly burned. When the doctor arrived, he had a look and diagnosed the burns as 2nd-degree burns covering roughly 12 square inches. We were given instructions for keeping the burned area clean and to give pain medication as needed for the pain he would experience.
The pain he would experience. Not if he experienced pain. The pain he would experience.
As we picked up a pizza to replace the nachos, drove the thirty miles home, and gathered the kids from my parents, I kept thinking about the pain. I have had a few burns in my life, one when I was a child and bumped my elbow on a charcoal grill. I remembered the pain that little two-inch burn caused. I remembered the pain a small touch of the curling iron yielded. And I remembered the pain I experienced when a jar broke and spilled hot water on me giving me blistering burns.
I remembered the pain and did my best to prepare myself for a long sleepless night of trying to comfort my little boy as he endured the pain they said he would experience.
But to my amazement, he slept just fine. So well that I found myself checking on him to make sure he was indeed still conscious and breathing.
In the morning, he got himself dressed like normal. He played like normal.
As I carefully rubbed salve onto the burn, I found myself saying how painful it looked and how sorry I was that he had a bad burn.
He wrinkled up his nose like he does when he’s puzzled and said,
“Mommy, my burn nebber-ebber hurts.”
Friends, God still works miracles.
My little guy’s head from the crown to the bottom of his nose was dunked in piping hot nacho cheese, but only a small portion of his forehead and a few spots in his hair had burns. His eyes were totally covered, but they had no damage. A twelve square inch 2nd degree burn never-ever hurt after the initial pain.
God still works miracles. Not all of them are big. Not all of them are noticeable at the time. But God still works miracles.
