God knew I was going to be the mother of athletes, so he created me to be a pretty laid-back person. I am a person who never expects bad things to happen, and when they do, I am not one to panic.
When my son, Grant, was in middle school, he had football a game that was a couple of hours from home. Kurt, my husband, was traveling for work, so I rode the bus with the team to the game since they had some extra seats.
I don’t recall how far into the game we were, but Grant was hit pretty hard in a play and walked off of the field holding his arm. Even though it was unusual for him to leave the field like that, I wasn’t very concerned. I also knew one of the first rules of being a football mom is not to ‘mother’ on the field, so I stayed in my seat. After a few minutes, one of the coaches called over his wife who was a nurse, but I was still very calm inside.
A few minutes later, they motioned for me to come over. That was a long walk around the whole football field. When I got to the huddle around Grant, his arm was wrapped, and the nurse looked at me and said, “His arm is broken, I could see the bone sticking up. We need to get him to the ER”. So I quickly found someone with a car, and they dropped us off at a nearby ER.
While sitting in the waiting room with Grant to my left, I was so sad watching him hold his bandaged arm. His whole season was wrecked and this year of football was over for him. If you have a student-athlete, you know that is devastating to them. There was no doubt in my mind that it was broken, the nurse was sure of it. I looked down at the arm and pleaded silently, “God, if you would please heal his arm, I promise I will tell everyone.” In that moment, I was a desperate mom.
The doctors took him for an x-ray while I waited, and I continued to pray. He returned, and soon a doctor walked in to look at it. The doctor unwrapped the arm slowly and looked at it carefully, he ran his hand over it and turned it over. He almost seemed confused. He then looked up at me and said firmly, “There is nothing wrong with this boy’s arm”.
I could not believe it. There was not a bump, not a bruise, not even a mark. He had clearly been injured on that field, but now there was no sign of it at all. God heard the pleas of a mother and answered her prayer. So now, when I get the chance to share, I tell this story, just like I promised.
Though broken bones happen all the time, and people recover just fine, this story of God answering my plea is a huge reminder that what matters to us, matters to God. He wants to be involved with every part of our lives and he is working big and small miracles every day.
