Broken and Crushed, by His own Father, for us

I was an extremely active and fearless child.
Those words might actually be an understatement.
I had 5 broken/sprained arms by first grade and probably innumerable near death experiences throughout my childhood.
My poor mother.

It is becoming evident that Abigail shares just a little bit of my DNA... she loves to climb up as high as possible on anything and everything and certainly does not have any fear of falling.

On Thursday, she was playing on the slide (one of the many places I broke my arm as a child) unsupervised by her parents.... and she hurt herself. By the time I saw her she was crying and being held by one of our wonderful students who had been with her but wasn't really sure how she got hurt. Mom was not worried at first as Abbi is getting into all sorts of scrapes these days. However after about 15 minutes of continuing to cry a cry of pain (Abbi doesn't usually cry more than a minute) and being unable to move her arm, Mom began to think this was probably serious.

The sound of her cries made me cry.
The thought of part of her being broken broke me.
Knowing she was hurting hurt me.

Now, I will acknowledge that I am a woman, I am pregnant, and this is my first baby. Those things could have added to my emotions a little bit. But seeing as how I am typically an overly rational, intellectual, and analytical person, I tend to think that all of those factors combined probably only brought me to what would for many people be a normal amount of emotionalism/irrationalism. I think that for any parent there is just this really deep emotion and pain connected to seeing your child hurting.

Thankfully, we were only about an hour from the end of the school day and the students dad "happened" to come out to the property to take care of some business just before that. So we were able to leave them with him and take Abbi to the hospital. It is pretty impossible to describe the experience of a Haitian hospital. There is pretty much nothing in common with an American hospital other than sick people and people who are trying to help them get better. Suffice to say that after paying our $4.00 entrance fee (which nobody would have checked to see if we paid) and before ever getting checked in or doing any sort of paperwork a doctor (well we think he was a doctor) passed us on the way to help with a major head trauma that had just come in the gate. In about 1 minute of conversation he asked if anyone had seen us, asked why we were there, grabbed Abbi's arm and pressed on it, then said he thought he had fixed it and ran off after the guy with the head trauma. We don't know who he was and didn't actually talk to anyone else. After he ran off, I looked at Jimmy quite bewildered and said, "I think he just said he fixed her arm". Sure enough within 5 minutes or so, Abbi was no longer crying and began to use her arm like normal. Not knowing what else to do we figured it was time to go home. It turns out she had dislocated her elbow when her arm got stuck behind her on the slide. So he just popped it back into place and that fixed things.
Another crazy day in Haiti. Another day of God's wacky and incredible provision for our family.

So as we are driving home, I am no longer crying, I am laughing.
Laughing at our surreal hospital visit, and at my healthy baby dancing in the back seat, and at the goodness of our God.

Until somewhere along the drive, thoughts about our heavenly Father and his Son Jesus, our Savior, brought me back to tears.

Isaiah 53:10
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer... 
But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief...

After what I had jut experienced I could not possibly imagine being the one to purposefully choose to crush Abbi, to cause her to suffer and put her to grief. Could not imagine being pleased to do it. And we're not just talking a broken arm here, we are talking crushing your child in body, soul, and spirit beyond recognition. To the point of death.

How could the perfect Father ever do it to His perfect Son?
How?
How much must he love us? 

Thank you Father. Thank you Jesus, for your saving love that is beyond comprehension.