Tonight I had to perform minor surgery on our youngest son’s big toe.  I’ll spare you the gory details, but share the drama, which resulted in me throwing up my hands and screaming “Trust me!” That is, hands-down, the most frustrating part of parenthood – my inability to snap my fingers and have my children immediately trust what I’m doing/saying/trying.

I used the old stand-by, “Have I ever hurt you?”

I tried reasoning with him. “I won’t do anything … just let me look at it!”

I even employed motherly guilt. “I guarantee you nothing I do will ever hurt as much as my giving birth to you!”

In the end, slow and steady won the race. He’ll make a full recovery and have many more toe adventures, if that’s what he chooses. While I resisted the urge to say “I told you so,” I did put on my serious face and beg him to remember this the next time I say trust me. We’ll see. He was quite engrossed in his choice of bandage, so who knows what he heard.

As I tick off another year of my guarded relationship with God, the irony in this situation is not lost on me. Day after day, I reapply and rearrange my metaphorical Band-aids, swearing I’d rather wait and see if this gets better on its own, because the trusting is so hard and I just know it’s gonna sting. And I’m self-aware enough to know that nothing is getting better on its own. It never does. But screaming “Trust me!” isn’t the answer either. So here we sit, God and me. Hey, at least now I’m sitting still.

Slow and steady, right?