As I wrote earlier, our young son was tackled in rec council football practice last Thursday. He fell on his right arm and sustained a shoulder injury bad enough to warrant a trip to Patient First the next day. After taking x-rays and saying it's a shoulder sprain, the doctor referred us for further evaluation.
We took Joel to see a sports medicine specialist today. He took one look at the x-rays and diagnosed a fracture of the growth plate .
The good news: it's a stable fracture, thus requires neither cast nor surgery (I didn't think it would)
and Joel can already use it much better with less pain than he could Thursday.
The bad news: no contact sports for the next 3-5 weeks. The arm is to stay in a sling for rest, and we are to have Joel do the range-of-motion exercises assigned. To be honest, he doesn't seem all that upset because he has been having a hard time loving a certain boy on the team who puts him down every time Joel makes a mistake.That 8-year-old says "you suck!" whenever Joel messes up. We have been having to help Joel pray for him. Last night it broke my heart to hear him so angry that he couldn't even speak the boy's name in prayer. I know how that feels, the bitterness toward offenders. Joel is calling him his "arch nemesis" and we're telling him to pray for his enemy, to do good to those who persecute him, to love with the help of Jesus, that it does hurt nonetheless to be treated like that. I also told Joel that the boy's father or other people in his life are probably saying those things to the boy when he messes up, and that he is probably hurt and angry and just passing on the mistreatment. So sad!
If you're the praying kind, please ask God to give us wisdom and love for this mean boy. As a mom, I want to shake the kid who says "you suck!" to my son, but I have to keep preaching the same gospel to myself. My one and only Arch Enemy, Satan, has already been defeated by my Warrior King, Jesus.
2 comments:
I'm glad his injury isn't too bad. I'm sorry about the kid on his team, it's always hard to deal with people like that, but of course we must all learn. Harder on the moms sometimes! The grandson of one of my neighbors is like that with my kids. He's like 6 or older and is always making fun of them, oddly enough, since they're half his age. Makes the mama bear come out in me. :)
Aw, Danielle, that's terrible! I'm sorry.
Since posting this, I asked Joel, "On a scale of 1-10, how upset are you that you can't play football for a few weeks?" He said, "!0." I asked him, "Even with your troubles with that boy?" And he said, "EVen with his troubles with ME!"
Oh, in case you're wondering, we are not naive enough to think Joel has not provoked any of the insults or at least retaliated with words. It would not surprise me to find that the name "poopyhead" might have been involved. Just sayin'. He claims innocence, that he has thought of getting back at him, but that's all. And so we bring him back to what Jesus says about hating others in your heart. Painful lessons here.
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