Recently my sister was sharing the woes of dealing with a stomach bug that had inflicted her children.  Her saga reminded me of the barforama scene from the movie Stand By Me.  As a teen I thought the scene was hysterical and as an adult I still find it an epic movie moment!  Nurses have a warped sense of humor so I understand many others may not find the barforama scene so entertaining.   My sister’s stories also reminded me of a Lucas family barforama during the early years of our little family.  Our youngest was a baby probably around 8 months old so our oldest child would have been 3.  As I recall the first heaves and rounds of vomitus came from the oldest child.  As the mother I started off with the care and cleanup involved in a young child that didn’t get to a proper vomit receptacle quick enough.  The bed change and bath quickly developed into an all night series of bed changes and baths.  My husband noted the fact that I was growing weary and pitched in to help.  I think we both had just finished saying “Hopefully Cora doesn’t get it!”, when the dreadful sound of retching billowed from the baby’s room.  The barforama parent tag team clean up squad was now in full activation mode.  Trying to catch the nasty liquid in ice cream buckets was our goal, but alas the pile of dirty sheets, blankets, and towels continued to grow into a mountainous heap in the hallway.  We ran smack into each other in the hallway in our barf catching scrambles several times which led into uncontrollable slap happy laughter.  The bug left our family as quick as it had hit, but will always go down in our parenting history books as the Lucas family barforama.

Parenting is life’s greatest challenge on so many levels.  What good comes from a tormentous night such as this?  Trust is born out of what seems horrific from most perspectives.  With each little bump, bruise, scrape, stomach illness, sore throat, and growing up heart aches our girls have learned that mom and dad are there.  Trust started to develop from day one with the first feeding and diaper change.  Our girls have learned that we will always be there for them to the best of our human ability.  Of course being a human being has its limitations as we get sick sometimes and sometimes we don’t handle every situation perfectly.  I think every nursing class required learning and relearning Erikson’s stages of psychosocial stages of development.  Trust verses mistrust still ranks as the most important in my own opinion.  Who can we trust in our life?  Do we come into this world fully able to care for our every need?  No, we come into this world completely helpless.

From the very first breath we take we are learning about trust.  God created us to have trust and faith that our needs will be met.  Ultimately His desire is for each one of us to learn to completely trust in Him to meet our needs.  So often we have to learn from the bad, sickness, and pain in life that He is the one and only completely worthy of our trust.  This world will let us down.  The medical field will let us down.  The government will let us down.  Our families may let us down.  Friends will let us down.  We will let our own selves down.  The more a person relies on God to meet them at their time of need the less scary those times seem.  He is always faithful.

Matthew 6;25-34 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”