Knocking down your statues

This has been a weird week. I have been in the hospital with my mother-in-law since Monday. She is doing better, thanks for asking.

I am blessed to have a full time job that gives me freedom to work remotely, including at a hospital, and my MIL needs someone who can sit with her. She is an amazing woman and deserves to have someone here.

Everyone who ends up in the hospital needs someone there.

She has had a rough go over these few days and one particular night tried to top all other nights to be the roughest. She didn’t want to listen to the nurses so I got close and, after failing to calm through normal soft words, shared a story. I wasn’t sure how much she would hear while she was on heavy medication, but I just had a feeling…

The story:

My oldest son when he was about three had a bout of nightmares. In those nightmares he would see people praying to statues and then those statues would come alive. He’d scream and my wife and/or I would come running.

Some of the worst nights had this happen two or three times.

My wife and I felt terrible and helpless. How can you protect your kid in his sleep? During the day we can fight whatever comes against the family, but dreams and nightmares. We were out of our element.

A lot of praying went into my son as we tried to help him. Yet the nightmares persisted, and we continued to struggle waking him up out of those images.

Then came the night of the statues' destruction. I had it with the visions that had terrified my son. I woke him up one night out of the terrors and took him to the living room where I set up building blocks. I told him we are going to tear dont each statue so there is no stone left to worship and nothing to come alive.

He started out meek and sleepy. Then he kicked over one statue and I celebrated. He woke up a little bit more and kicked over two more and many high fives were exchanged. Then statue after statue felt to the might of my three year old son.

By the end there wasn’t a single block left on top of another block. He was energized, ready to destroy any statue that dared come after him - whether awake or asleep.

He never had another nightmare about statues.

He was, and still is a warrior.

He didn’t need me to tear down those statues, he needed to know he could.

My mother-in-law remembered that event in her drug induced stupor. And, paired with a plastic straw spear her grandson made her to grip onto in the middle of the night, she made it heroically through that part of her stay in the hospital.

She had to tear down her statues. She had to do it where I could not be.

She always had the strength to topple them. I just had to take her to the living room to show her she could.