This picture was taken a few weeks ago. Eli was having some minor surgery, but as many of you know, surgery for a 3-year-old is never minor. When your child is taken from you, knocked out, cut on, comes back loopy with tons of chords sticking out of him, it’s never a fun encounter.
I prize myself on being a tough father. I’m that “it will be alright” kinda dad who can grasp that bumps and bruises are learning tools. I was not expecting the kind of emotional turmoil that I went through that day. I don’t know if it was the first time that my son was out of our protective care or what it was, but it was hard. It was hard holding my son down for strangers to do things to him that hurt.
When he began to wake up, he laid on Mom a good long while and seemed content. Later, they needed to check on him and begin to remove connected wires and such, so he was handed to Dad (thanks, a lot!). Eli looked up at me and said, “Daddy, I want to go home. Take me home, please.”
“I will in just a minute baby, but you have to let these people make you feel better.”
When they started to work on him and I had to hold him down, the look in his eyes was something I had never seen before.
If his eyes could talk, they would have said, “Daddy, they are hurting me! Make them stop! You’re bigger than them, you always protect me, get them off of me now! Why are you holding me down and letting them do this to me?”
As the last IV was yanked from his restrained little frame, my son began to scream and his blood came spewing all over me. His blood was on my hands. It was on my shirt, pants, and drops were literally all over me. As I continued to promise him this was for the good, he eventually calmed down in my arms (look again to see how loose my grip is on him in the picture). He was traumatized. And in that moment, while I watched his blood drip down my arm that was holding him down, I thought of another father and son who knew something so much deeper:
Isaiah 53:10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief
when his soul makest an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall seet and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Today, I am thankful for a Father who spilled His Son’s blood because that present pain was worthy to be endured for the healing that would come from it. I am thankful for a Son who wasn’t forced down by His Father, the grip was never tight, for Jesus laid down willingly. Thank You for the blood.
Travis Agnew serves as the Lead Pastor of Rocky Creek Church in Greenville, SC. His most recent book is Just (About) Married.
Thank you for this wonderful message today!
What a humbling yet powerful way to be reminded of God's gift to us when He gave us His own Son to bleed and die for us. As a parent I too know what it is like to have to hold your child down for his/her own good to receive what is best for them. It's heart wrenching. What must it have been like for the heavenly Father to watch Jesus be beaten then nailed to a cross? Not for the good of His Son but for the good of someone like me? Amazing Grace!
Very true. Thanks for sharing! Hope Eli is doing well!
He's doing great, thanks!