Parenting and Puncture Wounds

Parenthood is a very strange thing.  The last thing I want is for my kids to get  hurt.  My first impulse, from the time they were born, has been to protect them and keep them safe.  However, stuff happens.  Yesterday afternoon, stuff happened to Jack.  He was out in the shed working on a project with his pocket knife and the knife slipped and went into his thigh just above the knee.  It was a nice, deep puncture wound.  He said he felt sweaty and cold at the same time, he said things started to go black (the signs of your body going into shock), but he took a deep breath and came inside to Mom and Dad.  There was blood, there was a nasty little wound, and there was a nine-year-old boy trying to be brave, even though he was really on the verge of passing out.  There was also a Mama freaking out about her wounded cub, and there was a Papa, freaking out on the inside, but trying to stay calm and figure out what needed done.  Mama held his hand and tried to keep him calm despite her own panic and Papa got the wet paper towels and cleaned it up to see a little better.  Mama held his head up and Papa put on a dry bandage.  Mama stayed home and worried while Papa took him to the emergency room.
We functioned the way parents often do, each of us taking a role and doing what was necessary.  Papa was the one that said he was old enough to have a knife, Mama was the one that worried about it.  Our son is a builder, he loves to take things apart, he loves tools, he loves to make things.  It's what he does, he's going to have accidents like this one.  He was pretty lucky this time, no stitches no major damage, but he learned some lessons and he dealt with some consequences, and he was pretty brave, and pretty tough.  As much as I really don't want to repeat that drama, I was actually rather proud of him.  He wasn't doing anything really stupid, he just had a knife slip on him.  It happens to grown-ups all the time.
What encouraged me as his Dad was the way he handled the whole thing.  He was scared and hurt, but he didn't panic, he dealt with things a step at a time.  As much as I don't want my kids to run into hard times, I do want them to learn to deal with them.  I was really proud of Jack for not shriveling up into a sobbing mess, or getting into a panic about the possibility of having to get stitches.  I'm not generally a Dad who tries to macho up his boy, I try to tell him that it's okay to express his feelings, but I'm pretty proud of him for being tough enough to get through his first stab wound.
Yesterday, on the way home, he said that I seemed really calm when he came in with blood all over his leg.  I told him that I wasn't really calm on the inside, but that I had to figure out what to do instead of yelling or getting all scared.  I told him that courage is being able to do the right thing when you are afraid, not being without fear in the first place.  As much as I want my kids to be safe, I also want them to face life as an adventure.  You learn things from making mistakes, you grow by facing challenges.  If you don't do anything, you won't get hurt, but you certainly won't have an adventure.
These are the lessons that I hope he really learns from me as he grows up, in addition to being really careful with knives.
As usual, these little parenting dramas help me understand something about God.  People often wonder why they have to go through such hard times.  I'm not one who likes the notion that God brings us to difficult times, I prefer to think of the world as a more or less objective arena, where things just are.  I think God has made good and beautiful things for us to experience, but they're not without dangers.  I think the danger is there so that we can really appreciate the beauty.  I think that God wants us to have adventures, and adventures aren't safe things.  I think that God gives us tools that we can use, but which might also be dangerous.  In that respect God is like the Papa who gives the boy the knife and teaches him how to use it, knowing there's a risk, knowing that things could easily go wrong.
God is also like the Mama that holds his hand and comforts him, and who maybe gives the Papa a sideways glare that says: "see I told you a nine-year-old shouldn't have knife!"  Yeah, the Trinity really is a relationship after all.  But in the end God is like both parents, who want to see their kids launch out into the world with the tools they've learned to use the right way, and have some great adventures.