When our youngest son, Ryan, graduated from the sixth grade, he and his classmates celebrated with a pool party at his best friend’s house. Like many pools in our area, it was an above-ground model with a wooden deck along one side.
Unfortunately, Ryan found out the hard way why public pools have large signs posted about which read, “Absolutely no roughhousing AND no running!”
If you know twelve year old boys, you know their idea of no roughhousing and your idea of no roughhousing are two entirely different things. While attempting to toss one of his buddies into the pool, he inadvertently stepped off the end of the partial wooden deck. He fell face first into the metal framework that supported the pool’s outside structure with such force that his front tooth simply disappeared.
A chorus of cries for help brought every parent present to the poolside, each with their own expressions of dread and fear. Ryan lay writhing in pain, blood pouring from his badly wounded face. Several parents danced in place, palms out, helpless to know what to do. Marilyn, a self-confessed wimp at the sight of blood, kicked into a theretofore unknown mode and began to bark out orders to the other adults, “Someone get me a cold compress, and the rest of you look for his front tooth, it’s missing!”
I was in my upholstery shop when the call came reporting simply that Marilyn had taken Ryan to Dr. Clouse in Somerset because he’d knocked a tooth out—describing it as a “bloody affair!” I fancy myself as cool under pressure, but realizing Ryan might be seriously injured, I dropped everything and sped toward Somerset, uncertain what I might find. As I cleared the statue in the center of town and raced down South Columbus Street, I saw our minivan pull out of Dr. Clouse’s office and rush toward me.
“Uhh!” I wondered aloud, “It’s not as bad as I was told or maybe Dr. Clouse isn’t in, or….?”
I pulled over to the curb and waited for Marilyn to come along side, certain she’d seen my car and would stop to fill me in. Instead, so focused on her task, she failed to notice me and sped past. As the van whizzed past, I saw something I’ll never forget.
There, his young faced pressed against the side glass, Ryan looked back at me as though to say, “Dad, I’m hurt!” He wasn’t distraught, but held the compress against his blood stained face; only his eyes visible to me. I believe in situations like this more is conveyed through our eyes than our fumbling speech.
The connection I sensed and the emotion I felt as our eyes connected struck me profoundly. I remain unsuccessful after many attempts to adequately describe the connection I felt with my broken son in that moment.
When you know someone well—I mean really well, like a wife knows her husband, or a child his parent—there is no more effective form of communication than eye to eye contact.
I’m reminded of our Savior’s final words as he hung, bleeding and broken on the cross as he cried out to his Father. “Why have you turned you back on me…why won’t you look into my eyes?” It’s impossible to completely know or understand the power of that moment.
But Ryan’s injury, as painful and serious as it was in that moment, fades in the face of the incredible wounds Christ experienced. I won’t be at all surprised to learn in eternity that our Heavenly Father moved His gaze from His beloved son in that horrific moment in order to look into our wounded eyes.
“God the Father has his eye on each of you, and has determined by the work of the Spirit to keep you obedient through the sacrifice of Jesus. May everything good from God be yours!”
1 Peter 1:2 The Message
Turned out, the X-rays showed Ryan’s front tooth hadn’t been knocked out but had been driven straight back up into his gum. Years of corrective orthodontics failed to save his front tooth, but that single moment of eye to eye contact has proven to be one of my most memorable moments as his father.