Kissing the Hurts

Paramedics have my respect. With a combination of training and instinct they respond to a situation, perform a quick triage to determine who needs what treatment and begin working the problem from the greatest to the least. I watched a team in action following a two-truck wreck I witnessed out of my rear-view mirror yesterday. A lady pulled out in front of a man who had two preschoolers and a teenager in the seat with him. He t-boned her going 55 to 60, and drove them both into a ditch. It was a brutal collision.

When I jumped across the ditch he was struggling to climb out his window. Once out, he reached back in and got the first preschooler, brought her out and set her on the ground. She was crying. When he brought out the second, I took her from him, reached down and pulled the first to me and just held them both as they cried. He was too shaken to tend to them and too much in shock to know what else to do. The teenager was bleeding and offered no help.

Though I lacked medical skills to tend to the bloody knee and the hurting tummy, I gave them what seemed best—comfort, like an old grandpa kissing a booboo and somehow making it better. The paramedics fixed the physical hurts. I went for the emotional ones.

There are times fixing the obvious shouldn’t always be first on the list. The Great Physician, who is also the God of all Comfort, sometimes heals the obvious hurt, sometimes the less obvious. Only He knows which is greater.  Blood scares us. It panics us into thinking it’s the immediate concern. We cry to God and then become distressed when He moves past the blood to deal with something else.

I’m glad the paramedics got there quickly—the blood was getting all over my pants—but I’m also glad I had a few minutes to hold two very scared little girls.