Way more serious than a watermelon seed

My brother Bob was born when I was almost 13 years old.  I was his built in babysitter, which I didn’t mind a bit.  I doted on him.   One summer when he was a toddler, and I was away at summer camp, I received news that upset me terribly.  Bob had pushed a watermelon seed up his nose.  My mother couldn’t reach it, and the country doctor to whom she took him had only succeeded in pushing the seed up farther, so that it was pretty much out of sight.  I received word that they were going to have to anesthetize Bob and extract the seed surgically.

Being in my mid-teens and medically naive, all sorts of images flashed through my mind.  Would they have to cut into his face?  Was it possible to snake some small instrument in far enough to reach it?  If such a thing happens now, communication by email, cell phone or text would quickly answer the questions, but this was in the late 1950s, so I was left to agonize most of a day before I could get home.  In the meantime, I prayed urgently and was, in spite of my prayers, a nervous wreck.  Fear’s icy hand wrapped itself right around my heart.

Today my brother Bob is having open heart surgery to repair two leaky valves which were somehow damaged by a systemic infection of unknown origin.  This is way more serious than a watermelon seed in the nose.

I have prayed urgently, and asked friends to pray, but I am not a nervous wreck.  Fifty years have passed since the watermelon seed incident.  In those years, I have come to trust in the fact that God is always good.  He is good when all is going well, and He is good when we are in crisis mode.  The most awful experiences of life can be seen in retrospect to be examples of God’s grace to us.  We may never understand why certain things happen, but years later we can see that God was gracious and loving in the midst and since.

So today, may God guide those caring for Bob giving them strength and wisdom.  May God surround Bob with His love and care.  May God bless and sustain Bob’s family….his wife Kathy and his children, Aaron, Allison and Abigail….and his sister, who can’t get the watermelon seed out of her mind today.