A Father's Fear - Kids & Accidents

 Have you even been in a situation where you're watching an event unfold right in front of you, and the person involved in that event is going to get hurt, potentially badly, and there's nothing you can do to help them?  There isn't enough time for prevention, you're half aghast that the event is actually happening, and all you can do is observe while your stomach drops to your toes.  You hardly even have time to murmur a quick prayer:  'Oh God...'

I had events happen like this with each of our kids when they were younger - one with Kornelia, and one with Erik.  Fortunately, God protected both of them from getting seriously hurt in both circumstances.  Here's what happened...

Flying Like Peter Pan

Did you ever get confused as a kid with the brakes on a bike?  I think like most people, Kornelia's first bike had brakes in the pedals.  Then, when when she got a bigger bike, the brakes moved up to the handle bars.  Trying to stop that bigger bike with the pedals doesn't work very well, AT ALL.  I think this may have happened to Kornelia...

I took the kids for lots of bike rides when they were younger.  Calgary has lots of great paved biking paths.  One summer Saturday when Kornelia was about 11 or 12,  I took her for a pretty good ride - maybe 10 kms or so.  On the way back, the route I chose had a rather steep hill on it.  There were two routes down - one was paved and zig-zagged down the hill so it wasn't so steep.  The other route was a trail that went straight down the hill, intersecting the paved path at a couple of points.  

I went down the hill first and took the straight path.  I thought Kornelia would take the paved path, but she didn't.  I looked up in shock to see her coming straight down the path I'd just ridden.  The steep decline accelerated her quickly and she panicked, forgetting where her brakes were.  I might have yelled, 'Use your brakes!' but if I did, she didn't hear it.  She rocketed down to the bottom of the hill as I watched, transfixed and terrified.   

The bottom of the hill was immediately flat, but there were numerous obstacles:  A garbage can held solid with a cement foundation; a large boulder to prevent vehicles from driving up from the road; and large bushes all around.  I had no idea how she'd manage to navigate around these obstructions or where she would go.  Everything unfolded in slow motion for me.

When Kornelia and her bike hit the bottom of the hill, she launched off her bike and flew like Peter Pan.  I believe God's angels were there giving her an extra guiding push, because she flew quite a distance (several metres) into a large wild rose bush.  The bush was so thick it broke her fall, but scratched her a fair bit.  

I nearly pee-ed my pants.  I shook with adrenaline as I helped extricate her from the bush.  God absolutely protected her from serious injury in that situation.  She walked away from that accident with scratches from the rose bush.

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Back Flip Off a Swing

Erik was about 4 or 5 when we went to a nearby playground after supper.  It was winter and the sky was already dark. It wasn't too cold though, and we'd had some significant snow recently so it seemed like a fine evening to get some outside activity and fresh air.  Erik was bundled up in a snowsuit, mittens, and a toque.   

After horsing around on some of the more interesting apparatus in the playground, Erik asked if I could push him on the swing.  I helped him on and gave him some pushes.  Being a typical boy, he requested 'Higher, Dad!'  So I pushed him higher.  I imagine the combination of his clumsy mittens and the frost on the chains didn't help Erik's grip. When the swing reached its full forward amplitude, Erik lost his grip on the swing chains and plummeted down.   

Again, for the duration of that fall, everything was in slow motion.  I watched frozen - literally and figuratively - as Erik flipped backwards off the swing and landed headfirst on the ground.  Immediately I thought, 'Can he feel his feet?' and 'Is he conscious?'  I ran over to see how he was.

God cushioned his fall!  Erik was stunned, his neck was sore, and I think the fall knocked the wind of him, but he was OK otherwise.  But he was no longer interested in playing outside that evening.

"He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully"  Luke 4:10

Career Change and Work in Calgary

Some Context...

Ewa and I knew that I would not be in the printing business the rest of my life.  The job at Webco in Leduc, Alberta was shift work, dangerous (lots of pinch points and heavy lifting) and many times I came home with my lunch uneaten because we worked straight through the day.  I was quite skinny and both Ewa and my Mom didn't like the way I looked.

But how to do a career change with two dependents and a house mortgage?  I didn't have a good answer to that question until my brother did a career change himself.  He always wanted to be a policeman and got a degree in criminology, but still wasn't hireable (at least at that time) because his eyesight wasn't good enough.  He decided to look for opportunities in a different career and discovered that he could transition to software development with a school in Calgary in 9 months.  When I saw the job offers he received when he finishing that school, you could've knocked me over with a feather.  I spoke to Ewa about it.  We prayed, and decided that I'd apply to the school and we'd see how things went.

God's Help

One of the minimum requirements of the school was a university/college degree, something I didn't have.  I was told I could alternatively write an essay to justify my case for applying without a degree to have that requirement waived.  With God's help, I accomplished that successfully. 

Then there was an exam requirement, which had to be written in person.  Again, with God's help I successfully got over that hurdle with apparently one of the highest scores they'd ever seen.

We sold our house in Edmonton and moved to Calgary so I could start school, using what we made on the house towards school tuition.  

I immensely enjoyed this new education, and worked hard to learn everything I could.  Unfortunately, two thirds of the way through the course, the school itself went bankrupt!  E&Y, the company that handled the bankruptcy, kept 3 of the 9 schools across Canada open and running so all the existing students could finish their schooling so long as they temporarily moved to those cities which still had schools open.  So I ended up wrapping up my schooling in Vancouver that fall and, with God's help, was awarded the 'School Spirit' award for my class.

Finding Work - God's Provision

 My schooling wrapped up in the fall of 2001, which was in the middle of the first major 'dot bomb' of the tech market.  No one wanted to invest money in software and technology after Nortel and other large .coms had gone belly-up that year.  Unlike my brother's easy road to work after school, I was did not find a full-time software job until 10 months later.  

Those were the longest 10 months of my life, with a 3 year old and a pregnant wife depending on me.  I questioned God, sometimes bitterly, during that time.  I struggled in my relationship with Him, my expectations of how He would/should provide, and issues I had with entitlement in that season.  It took me years to get over some of the feelings of abandonment and hurt I experienced.  That said, 10 months later, when it seemed there were no software jobs out there for unexperienced junior software developers, I got a phone call and an interview with a large software consulting firm in Calgary called CGI.  Here's an excerpt from my journal some time later...

Aug. 20, 2002

As of Aug. 12, I have been working with my new employer – CGI.  Again, it was totally a God thing how I got that job.  The human resources manager, Cara, saw my resume on workopolis.com where there are thousands of resumes.  She gave me a call in late June I think, and I had a ‘pre-interview’ with her about a week later.  ‘Pre-interview’ because she didn’t have a job position that she could hire me for at that point and time.  

She called back with the opportunity of a real interview for a real job.  Of all the crazy things, I misunderstood the directions for the location of the interview, and thought the office was downtown.  The interview was at 2:00 and at 1:53, I realized I was 60 blocks too far south.  So I called her and left a message to say that I would be late.  Twenty minutes later, I show up.  She appreciated that I left a message and the interview went well, except that I felt unorganized – I didn’t have my documentation that I thought I had, and I forgot to give her the references that I brought with me. 

Anyway, God gave me favour with her, because she kept my resume on the top of her Java pile, and around the end of July (I had already started working framing houses with Steve Sutherland by this time) she called me up to arrange a technical interview.  I made the arrangements talking on the cell phone in the roofing trusses of a house.  I found out I had the job soon after the technical interview and boy was I elated. 

Ewa thought it was interesting that I got this job pretty much the same way I got the job with Webco – they found me and called me, I didn’t call them.  It was a God thing.  I’m using totally the technologies and methodologies that I was hoping for. 

God's provision for us!   

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus
Philippians 4:19

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Erik's Birth and Health Concerns

Let God have all your worries and cares,

for he is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you. 

1 Peter 5:7

Our son Erik was an answer to prayer the day he was born.  He also had a couple health issues as an infant and a toddler that had us concerned for a while, but God was in control.  Here's my journal entries about these experiences:

Erik is Born!

May 11, 2002
We prayed that Ewa’s labour would be on a day that I was off work, so that we could easily get Kornelia over to our friend, Mandy, who would look after her.  We also asked God to arrange it so that it would be during the morning, quick, and natural (as Ewa had a c-section with Kornelia). God totally answered these prayers.  Ewa’s water broke at 10 am on Saturday April 27, and by 11am we were on the way to the hospital and Kornelia was at Mandy’s.  Erik was born at 2:20 that afternoon.  A natural childbirth with 3 and a half hours of labour, and relatively easy.  Ewa felt really good about it.  We took Erik home on Sunday.  God answers prayer!
Later that week he started having ‘episodes’ which turned out to be from low blood-sugar.  We took him to emergency at the children’s hospital on Thursday morning.  They just about let us go saying they couldn't find anything wrong and then Erik had another episode right in front of the doc.  They immediately rushed him into a special room and discovered his blood sugar was less than 1!  They admitted him and he stayed on an IV until Sunday morning. They released us on Monday evening.  Erik was much better and hasn’t had an ‘episode’ since.  Pretty scary though.

Three Years Later...

April 2005
Erik gave us another health scare at the beginning of April.  He had a low blood sugar level and spent some time in the hospital.  He was actually born with low blood sugar, but he hasn't had any problems

with it up to this point.  He spent the better part of a week in and out of the hospital at the beginning of this month.  Fortunately, Calgary has a great children's hospital, and a great staff.  Erik has fully recovered now, and we'll find out tomorrow what the specialists think is up with his blood sugar.  A number of tests were done while he was in the hospital.  We know he doesn't have diabetes, and the doctors were pretty sure there isn't a hormone imbalance.  God is in control.

The Prognosis

The doctors never did nail down exactly what the problem with Erik was.  They believed it was related to his body having troubles metabolizing ketones - basically we couldn't let him go without food too long, otherwise his blood sugar would drop dangerously low.  So we ensured he had snacks as soon as he got up, before he went to bed, and that he never got too hungry during the day.

The doctors felt he'd probably grow out of it, which is seems he did.  He's now a strapping 6'2'' lad, outweighing me by 20 pounds or so.  God is faithful and He hears our prayers.

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My Struggle With The Sovereignty of God (2006)

Maybe when you were growing up, you played with a game called a Labyrinth.  It had a steel ball

that you had to navigate through a maze by means of two dials on the sides of the game.  Sometimes I feel like I'm the steel ball and I don't know where I'm going in life or what I'm doing here.  When I get really frustrated or 'lost' in a sense at a dead-end, I find I often start to blame God.  'Why do other people seem to have it so easy, God....  Why do I feel like I'm stuck in this set of circumstances and I can't get out.. serving you sure makes my life a lot more difficult'  etc.

God speaks to people with attitudes like this in a couple of books in the bible.  Its interesting too, because both texts begin with the same example from Genesis - 'Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.'  Romans starts like this in chapter 9, and it goes on to say in the living translation..  'And God said this before the children were even born, before they had done anything either good or bad.  This proves that God was doing what he had decided from the beginning; it was not because of what the children did but because of what God wanted and chose.'

Whoa.  Is that fair?  Sounds almost like pre-destination to me.

Listen to the writer continue in Romans... 'Was God being unfair?  Of course not.  For God has said to Moses, "If I want to be kind to someone, I will.  And I will take pity on anyone I want to."  And so God's blessings are not given just because someone decides to have them or works hard to get them.  They are given because God takes pity on those He wants to.'

Wow.  So then it seems like I could say that its not fair for God to blame me for the bad things I've done.  Haven't I just done what He made me do?

'No don't say that!' the writer in Romans says (chapter 9 verse 20).  'What are you to criticize God?  Should the thing made say to the one who made it, "Why have you made me like this?"  When a man mades a jar out of clay, doesn't he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar beautiful, to be used for holding flowers, and another to throw garbage into?'

Ouch.  I pondered this a bit more, taking this train of thought...  'Well its easy for God to write in the bible like that.  With the exception of a prophet or two in the old testament, most of the characters in the Bible had happy endings to their stories.  They turned out to be heroes, or God blessed them in some way or another.  So really, the Bible is about people who God had pity on and decided to turn into beautiful flower vases.'

Then God reminded me of a book I had read some time ago by Gene Edwards called 'The Prisoner in

the Third Cell'.  The main character is John the Baptist.  He was definitely chosen by God, but his life was no walk in the park.  He grew up in the desert, and knowing that he was called by God he stayed in the desert, restricting his diet to nothing I would eat.  Then he began his ministry, preaching and baptizing, knowing that he was preparing the way for 'the bridegroom'.  Once Jesus came on the scene, it wasn't too long before John was thrown in prison.  And there he gets one of his disciples to ask Jesus a telling question.  'Are you really the Messiah?  Or shall we keep looking for him." Jesus doesn't try answer John personally.  He says, in not so many words - look at what I'm doing - and finishes his answer with 'Blessed is the one who does not lose faith in me.'  A few days later, John was beheaded.

The Sovereignty of God.  We certainly don't sing about it much in church.  Its not really a message that gives me the warm fuzzies.

Malachi was the other book in the bible that talks about God's sovereignty, also starting with Jacob and Esau.  Chapter 3 ends with some poignant thoughts that seem to echo the thoughts I hear sometimes in my head.  'It is foolish to worship God and obey him.  What good does it do to obey his laws, and to sorrow and mourn for our sins?  For  now on, as far as we're concerned, "Blessed are the arrogant."  For those who do evil shall proper, and those who dare God to punish them shall get off scot-free.'

Of course, the book doesn't end that way.  But sometimes it seems like some days of our lives do end like that.  And you know what?  Be Encouraged!  Even if you do have days that end with thoughts going through your head similar to the audience that Malachi was writing to, at the end of it all, 'The Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings.'  I also take encouragement from a verse Romans 'It God's kindness that leads us to repentance'.  It gives me a reason as to why people who don't currently acknowledge God seem to have it so good.  And finally, keep the faith.  Don't let your current trials push you away from God.  Remember the seed that fell on the good soil, and then let the worries and cares and trials of this life (the weeds) choke it.  Romans chapter 9 ends with a reminder that the Jews 'stumbled over the great stumbling stone.'  And what was that?  'They were trying to be saved by keeping the law and being good instead of by depending on faith ... Those who believe in Jesus will never be disappointed'.