Family Devotions Gone Awry: The Story of Moses in the Basket in the Desert

I have a really great story about our family devotional time, but I need to give some background information first.  Back in July, Selah had an ear infection.  She wasn't running fever, but she actually told me "ear hurt" and her tubes were draining.  We went to the dr right away and got medicine, and went on about our business.  After being on antibiotics for a couple of days, she woke up very early one morning with a really high fever.  I took her to the ER, and the dr decided to do a chest xray.  It came back showing a small spot of pneumonia.  He prescribed another antibiotic to go along with the one we were already on, and told me to follow up with our regular pediatrician.  Her fever went down as the day progressed, and she seemed to feel better.  We gave her the medicine, and went to her pediatrician several days later for a re-check.  She ordered another x-ray and it came back showing the same spot.  We thought that it just hadn't had enough time to clear up, so we waited a week and then did it again.  The same spot was still showing, so we were referred to a pediatric pulmonologist at LeBonheur.  A couple of weeks after that, we went to our appointment with him.  He repeated the x-ray and the same spot was still there.  So he decided to do a bronchoscope.  They would put Selah under anesthesia and run a small scope into her lung to take a look.  He told us that a small portion of the lung could be collapsed, she could have a foreign body in her lung (said herhad recently found a peanut in the lung of a baby her age!), or it could be mucus, fluid, a tumor, basically any number of things.  So we were slightly worried, but Selah was not slowing down and seemed to feel great so that was encouraging.  Her bronchoscope was done today.  She did beautifully.  We had to wait for a long time and she couldn't have anything to eat or drink but she was so good.  Bless LeBonheur for having a playroom!  We played for several hours while awaiting her turn.  She had a good time.  I could tell she was hungry--she had a go at the plastic food in the toy kitchen, but that didn't work out so well for her.  Quite honestly, the longer we sat there, the more delicious that fake food started to look, so I totally understood.  She got so tired, she fell asleep in my arms.  (It was way past her normal naptime.)  So when they came to get her for her procedure, they let us walk her all the way to the OR.  The dr was already in the room and they let us come on in.  Brad laid Selah on the bed, being as how I was too short to reach it.  She stayed asleep and we were able to kiss her and then leave to let them do their work.  Most peaceful separation I have ever had with either of my children for their medical stuff! (One prior surgery for Selah, four surgeries for Korban plus two procedures he had to be sedated for.  Ugh.  Doesn't get easier with practice.) So we went to the waiting room.  Brad went to get us a drink.  We didn't want to eat or drink in front of her of course, so we hadn't had anything all day.  I had a pack of Jelly Bellies in my purse and I had literally shoved about half of those in my mouth when a nurse walked up to me and said "Alright, mom, come with me to the consultation room and the dr will be in shortly."  I thought he was going to have to scope me next because I almost aspirated my jellybeans!  Those waits are always so long, but I had practically just sat down.  So I was frantically texting Brad so he could come back.  He got there right before the doctor.  The dr said that he drew some mucous/fluid out of her lung and flushed it with saline to clear it out.  They will send it off to culture it for everything under the sun.  It will take 8 weeks to hear from that, but he felt sure that it wouldn't show anything alarming.  There were no foreign bodies, praise the Lord.  I was half-convinced she had one of the wheels of her brother's toy car in there or something.  I swear, when Korban was a baby, we didn't have anything that wasn't approved for the three and under crowd.  That's not so easy with your second child!  Her lung was not collapsed, there was no bleeding, and everything looked good.  We are SO thankful.  We got to go back to recovery as soon as she woke up.  She barely cried at all.  They had an ICEE machine (how cool is that?)  Selah perked up right away with the ICEE, ate all of that, and they let us come home.  She is coughing some, which they said was to be expected, but seems to feel well.  Thank You Jesus!  We are so grateful to all of our friends who were messaging us today to tell us they were praying.  Every time my phone beeped it was a reminder that someone cares enough about my family to lift us up to God, and that is an awesome feeling.

Now for the family devotion story.  We have recently started reading a Veggie Tales devotional book with our kids at night.  They both love Veggie Tales, and we thought it would be a good way to kick off family devotions.  Let me tell you, we weren't sure how much the kids were getting out of it, being as how they spent most of the time jumping up and down on the bed and/or trying to climb on Brad's head as he read to them.  But we plugged on.  Last night the devotion was talking about Moses and how his mother hid him in a basket in the river and trusted God with his safety.  Korban kept saying "in the desert."  Not sure how a river could be in the middle of the desert, but okaaaay.  Brad finished reading the story and then said we would pray.  He asked Korban to say a prayer for Selah and her doctors.  He told Korban that Selah had to go to the hospital so the dr could look at her lung and help her get well.  Korban asked if she would get a shot, and we told him yes, but that she would be asleep and wouldn't feel it. (They didn't put the IV in until she was asleep, so she really didn't feel it.)  Brad asked Korban if he remembered when our church prayed for Selah and anointed her with oil.  He told him that the dr might find that there's not even anything wrong, and that we were sure she was going to be just fine.  Then, knowing how I worry and thinking of the Bible story he had just read, he turned to me and said "We're just going to put Selah in a basket and trust God to take care of her."  I had about half a second to think about what a good analogy that was before Korban burst into tears.  Loud sobbing.  Tears squirting out of his eyes.  It took us by surprise so much that we just pretty much gawked at each other and him for a couple of seconds before we even moved to comfort him.  We had no idea what was wrong, if he was hurting, etc.  I was trying to hug him and ask him what was wrong.  "NO MORE PUT SELAH IN THE BASKET!" he bawled.  "NO MORE LEAVE SELAH IN THE DESERT!"  Yeah, that whole thing about autistic kids taking most everything literally, that's pretty much true.  Oops.  We were so relieved to find out what was wrong that we started to laugh.  We loved on him and assured him that we weren't actually putting Selah in a basket and we for sure weren't gonna leave her in the desert.  Selah seemed totally unconcerned about any impending threat from baskets, deserts, rivers, etc.  She just kept on jumping on the bed while we cuddled Korban and tried to make everything okay.  "It's okay," Brad told him.  "I was just using a metaphor.  Can you say metaphor?" he asked him.  " "METAPHOR!" Selah crowed as she bounced past.  Which made us laugh because, hello, she's 20 months and she can say metaphor.  Very cool.  The laughing spurred her on and she chirped "Metaphor, metaphor."  Yes, metaphors can be dangerous, as we found out.  But we convinced Korban that we weren't taking Selah anywhere to leave her and that she would be just fine.  And we said prayers and went to bed.  But hey, at least now we know that he plans on keeping her, right?