You get a lot of training in a wide variety of areas by being a mother. In my 12+ years of training I have completed the following:
* MOH -Midnight Obstacle Hurtle. This involves running through the dark, leaping over toys, steaming humidifiers, full diaper pails and furniture to get to a “I’m fixen to throw up” screaming child.
* PHMDR - Poison\Hazardous Material Detection & Removal. Poking my fingers into gnashing gums and teeth, at great peril of having them bitten right off, to remove unidentified objects from a toddler mouth.
* TCR - Toxic Chemical Removal. The cleaning of various bodily fluids that ooze, drip, squirt and explode out of any and all little people orifices.
* CST - Coercion & Submission Techniques. Convincing a child to take medicine, vitamins and eat broccoli, wear a coat and memorize spelling words.
* IE -Information Extraction. The fine art of getting a three year old to admit where they hid your purse, your keys or their brothers favorite toy.
I have even tried my hand at torture. Small dirty children, a washcloth and shampoo. Imagine said dirty children afraid of getting soap in their eyes after Dad last gave them their bath. Now imagine washing their hair.
As you can see, I am practically a Navy Seal. While as fun and enjoyable as all of these educational opportunities have been, today I encountered a new one. It is a mixture of torture instrument use, mental endurance and physical prowess. I had S.N.O.T. class. Syringe Nasal Offensive Training. The removal of mucus by use of a bulb syringe.
In anatomy they told us that the sinus cavity is contained in pockets behind the nose, over the eyes and under the cheekbones. They were wrong. I am confident, judging from the volume of substances removed this morning, that in some people they go all the way down to the toenails. In fact, an x-ray of Baby G might show that the only two things he has inside are sinus cavities and lungs. From the noises he was making I am quite sure his lungs take up all of the body cavity space he has available. It was a sound like a herd of mad elephants, at an all night dance, on crack, with microphones.
You would think that a 7 month old, 20 lb baby would not present much of a challenge to a grown adult. You would think wrong. Between the flailing arms and legs and whipping head, getting the pointy part into a nostril and removing the offending mucus was about as easy as putting 4 pair of pantyhose on a furious octopus. And wee baby nostrils do not make for large targets either.
Suffice to say when I was done we were both exhausted. I was mad, he was mad. He was mad because the person who should have been protecting him not only LET this terrible experience happen, but was the one who perpetrated it. I was mad because he did not trust me enough to be still so I could HELP him.
And so, once again, I see the parallel with my children, and my Heavenly Father. How many times have I whipped myself into a frenzy over the circumstances in my life, frantic to escape them instead of quieting myself, trusting my Father and yielding to His work in my life? There are things in me that MUST come out. And the only way to get them out is the painful work of having them extracted. Sometimes through difficulty, sometimes through pain, sometimes through trouble. Always through trial. It comes down to two things, trusting Him to do what is best for me, and submitting to the process. So I am trying to put into practice Psalms 131:2, and quieting and stilling myself while I am in the training process. As the old child’s song says, He’s still working on me.
Psalms 131:2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, my soul will behave like a child who is weaned from its mother. I will not throw fits and tantrums. (Taken from the RCV. The Rachel Coltharp Version)