Two months ago Mary smashed her thumb in a door at church. We were teaching Sunday School that day and we got the room all squared away, got our stuff and started down the hall. I was in the lead and Mary was with Rich. The next thing I knew I heard Mary screaming at the top of her lungs and I looked around and there she was with her thumb caught in the heavy door of our classroom. She stepped behind Rich and for some reason decided that the door needed to be closed. She put her left hand on the door jam on the hinge side and reached in with her left hand got the door handle and decided to give it a hard jerk and forgot that her hand was in the door jam and pow it smashed her thumb really bad. Rich lunged back and opened the door. I looked at her thumb and my heart sank. The nail had been hit so hard that the it had been ripped from the base right at the cuticle. I felt so bad for her. We quickly wrapped it up in a band aide and paper towels and headed for our van outside with Mary crying all the way and saying, "I am going to die!!!" We reassure her that she would not die and that we were taking her to the emergency room at the hospital to have an x-ray done on it. When the PA unwrapped her thumb and took a look she said, "Oh dear" and quickly went and got the doctor. She had not seen that before and wasn't sure what to do. So the doc came in and looked at it and said that she would need an x-ray and then a numbing shot and then they would try and tuck the nail back into the cuticle. Thankfully the x-ray showed that nothing was broken and then came the tough part, 2 very painful shots in the thumb to numb it. She shed a lot of tears but she held still and got the shots. It went numb but they were not able to get the thumb nail back in. So they put some tough sterile strips on it to hold the nail in place. The doctor said because there was so much trauma to the cuticle area that there was a chance that the nail would not grow back. My heart sank again. I knew that would be a hardship not to have a nail on your thumb. When we got home we gave her some pain medication and she went to sleep. I got in bed and was very tired from our long ordeal and concern for Mary. I prayed before I went to sleep and asked God if he would please let Mary's thumb nail grow back normal and a small still voice spoke to my heart and said that it would be just fine and she would have a nail grow back normally. I then fell asleep. The next morning when Mary woke up she told me that she saw in her imagination given to her by God that her thumb nail had all grown back and it looked just like her other one!. She had such a bright and happy look on her face. I had not said anything to her about what the doctor said and my concerns in my prayer the night before. Well here it is 2 months later and several boxes of band aides later, her old nail just fell off and underneath is a shinny white nail. Mary had a big smile on her face and she said, "See Mom, God showed me it would be alright!" Now granted this is not an arm growing back or a gangrene soar on her hand, but it was a wonderful comfort and reminder of the simple faith of a small child. I pray that we all have that kind of trust and faith in our lives!
