A Matter of Trust

I went to the park this morning with 5 happy children (#2 was serving a funeral Mass) and left with a three year old screaming as loudly as three year old lungs can scream.  He had sand thrown in his face by a mean big kid and sandy eyeballs hurt.

I washed his face and eyes as best as I could in the park restroom, and then we drove the whole way home to the plaintive cries of “Mine eyes!  Mine eyes!”

When we got home, I scooped him out of his carseat and carried him straight to the master bath and laid him on the floor.  I tried to explain to him, in words he could understand, that we needed to flush his eyes with water to get the last of the grit out.  The more words I used, the harder he clenched his eyelids shut.  There was no way on God’s green earth that he was going to let me pour anything into his ouchy eyes.

I sat on the floor cradling him to me and rocking back and forth.  We were both crying by this point.  At last, I bent down and whispered in his ear, “I love you.  Please, trust me.”

He peeked out through swollen lids and said, “Okay, Mommy,” sighed, and laid back.

I wish I could say that it was an easy thing, this washing of the eyes.  It was as much fun as you imagine it to be, but the important thing is that he let me do it.  It was awful and uncomfortable, but he let me do it.

As he curled up next to me on his father’s big chair when we were done, I stroked his fluffy brown hair and thought about trust.  We all have things wrong with us which cause pain and discomfort, and often the cure seems much worse than where we currently are.  It is then that we need to stop complaining long enough to hear the whisper of  “I love you.  Please, trust me.” in our ears.