Lesson in Loss

This morning Sloan and I began a new Sunday School class. We are learning about Spiritual Disciplines. At the end of the class, we broke into small groups and briefly discussed the ways in which we tended to grow Spiritually. Across the board, my group discerned that the way in which we grow the most Spiritually is through suffering. Yes, the time we spend in prayer, Bible Study and Christian fellowship certainly provides us with the tools necessary to grow in Christ, but ultimately, suffering provides us with the opportunity to put those tools to work. Suffering forced us out of our comfort zones onto the cliffs of faith, enabling us to flesh out all those things we've been studying about and praying for. This leads me to believe God even takes care of our trusting Him, knowing that we won't ever do it unless we've tried everything else. And that even our Spiritual Growth is brought about by God. And tonight, through my little boy's loss, I saw Him at work at Henry's Spiritual Growth.

Tonight, Henry lost his toothbrush. I'd finished up brushing his teeth and left him on his stool as I tried to find a pair of child nail clippers. (I've bought about 20 pairs of clippers. I keep hiding them from Henry because somehow he always seems to show up with them in his pockets or worse yet, snuggled up with him in the bed. So I tend to put them in places where he cannot find them. Apparently, I'm so good at hiding them I can't seem to find any.) Suddenly, from the bathroom, I hear screams. "Oh no. Uh oh. TOOOOOOOO BUSSSS. TOOOOO BUSSSSS." Henry had dropped his toothbrush down the sink drain. Down the sink drain with no stopper that I keep forgetting to replace.

To make matters worse, we could see the little lost toothbrush at the bottom of the drain. Henry kept sticking his fingers down the hole trying to get it. "TOOOOO BUSSS! TOOOO BUSSSS. HELP!! MOMMA HELLLLLLLLP! NO no no no no no no." His face grew red and giant tears began to roll down his cheeks. He turned on the water, I suppose in the hopes the toothbrush would rise to the top. No dice.

"It's okay, Henry. Mommy will try." I fashioned a hook out of a coat hanger and tried to get the toothbrush. I ended up with a nasty mass of hair. "YUCK, Momma. TOOO BUSSS." "Yuck is right, Henry. I'm sorry, but the toothbrush is gone. I can't get it back." At this, Henry collapsed. Totally deflated in a puddle on the bathroom floor. He began to sob. And this wasn't the mad sob that usually accompanies the end of a television show or when we have to leave somewhere fun. I watched, for maybe the first time, my son genuinely be sad. My heart broke. How many more times will I have to watch this? How many more times will I have to tell my son that I'm incapable of helping him? That I'll have to explain that something is gone and will never come back?

Now, yes. It was just a toothbrush. There was a part of me that wanted to just say, "Suck it up, kid. It's a toothbrush. Your grandpa is a dentist. We literally have a bucket of toothbrushes under the sink." But I didn't. I did pull out a new toothbrush. A brand new toothbrush that looks like a dinosaur. I handed it to him. He threw it at me. "TOOO BUSSS! TOOO BUSS!" He didn't want a new toothbrush. He wanted his toothbrush. So we sat on the bathroom floor and cried for a bit. Because it hurts when you lose something you apparently love. (I say apparently because I had no idea how much my son loved his blue and white toothbrush. It didn't even look like anything other than a toothbrush.)

After about five minutes of crying in the bathroom, once my entire left side fell asleep, Henry got up and went to get Hop Hop from his room. It was pitiful. He was still crying, dragging Hop Hop by his ear, whispering between sobs, "Tooo Buss. Too Buss." He cried the entire time I changed him into his PJS. He barely even noticed that I put him in his Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas. Not even one little choo choo.

He quieted down as I read him books. But then got sad when the Train in Green Eggs and Ham went under water. And then sad again during Go! Dog, Go! when the one dog kept telling the other dog that he did not like her hat. This did not shock me. When you are sad, you see loss all around you. Thankfully, Henry did not find anything to sniffle about during Hop on Pop. So I thought we'd finished with the toothbrush grieving. Come to a place where we could accept the dinosaur toothbrush and go on our merry cavity fighting way.

So I turned off the light and went to putting him to bed. Like we do every night, we knelt at the foot of the bed together with folded hands and said our prayers. This basically amounts to me thanking God for Mommy and Daddy (yes, I thank God for myself on behalf of my son), keeping Mrs Erin's babies safe (for my friend who is on bedrest), and for God to make him a big brother. And then I say Amen, which is usually followed by Henry's chirp "Ahm." But tonight, there was no Ahm. Just silence and then a whisper--"Gee-Us, too bus. Ahm."

My son's first audible prayer. And it was for his toothbrush.

Thank you Jesus for teaching my son that, in the end, only you can heal our sadness.