What Little Boys Are Made Of

Caden Thomas, a 4 year-old, was playing near the sidelines at an intersquad collegiate football game when he got slammed into a padded wall because a play went out of bounds. Fox News has snapped up the story after a few days in the local media headlines here in Colorado. Apparently the little guy had a huge gash in his forehead. They took him to the hospital where, aside from the obvious wound, he was okay. He's even started talking about the experience a little bit.

"It was kind of scary 'cause I got bonked by the football," the boy said, hugging his own football. "It kind of hurted."

As a parent, nothing scares you more than when you know something's wrong with your child. The day we brought his little sister home from the hospital, my then 4 year-old son fell while playing in the backyard, cutting a gash in the back of his head that was over an inch long. I had been sleeping upstairs, recovering with my wife from three sleepless nights in a hospital room, when my mother came in and woke me up by saying, "Steve, you have to take your son to the hospital."

Who needs caffiene when you've got adrenaline?

When I got him to the hospital, we checked in at the station and waited in the ER waiting room. No one had been right there with him while he was playing, so I began asking him what happened. He told me he couldn't remember.

Adrenaline boost number two kicked in.

Doing my best to keep my voice level, I told him it was important for him to remember and tell me what happened. Again, he said he didn't remember. Then a light clicked on over my head. What was it like being a 4 year-old in this experience? Aha! I told him, "Bubba, you're not going to get in trouble."

"Well, I was standing on the bike [tricycle], when I fell."

Bubba had been warned before about standing on his tricycle. He actually thought I would discipline him for falling! But that's how we think when we're guilty. We're convinced that we're going to "get it" because we made a mistake. I'm persuaded that God knows our hearts, he knows when we know we've screwed up and he doesn't bring correction unless we need to learn something. God disciplines those he loves as sons, but as the world's best parent, he knows when his sons need correction.

I held Bubba's hand as he lay in the room getting his stitches and let him know that falling off the trike was more than enough of a lesson for him. A few weeks later, following the doctor's instructions, I removed the stitches and he was good as new, much like Caden will be in a few weeks. Boys, it seems, are made of Nerf foam and rubber, and thank God for that.