Nuturing Faith

This afternoon I took Carter to get his stitches removed. He was a bit scared that it would be painful and asked if we could say a prayer that it wouldn't hurt. We said our prayer and went in to get them removed. The doctor came in and gave the instruments to the assistant. Carter saw the huge pair of tweezers and got scared. He's been terrified of tweezers every since he was 2 and had to get a very big embedded sliver out of his foot. It was painful and scary and every since he literally shakes when he sees tweezers. Carter was crying a bit and it was painful as part of the stitch broke off in his skin and had to be kinda dug out with the tweezers. The doctor was worried about the crying and told him to calm down which made it worse. I was holding his hand and holding the baby in my other arm. The assistant told him not to "scare baby buddy" and at that he completely stopped crying. Such a sweet big brother to be in pain and still not cry out because of his sister. It made me sad because if he needs to cry then I want him to. I just kept talking to him and holding his hand. The doctor was concerned that the wound might open again and so he gave some steri strip tape to the assistant and left. He had to make several attempts to get it on properly and then we got over to the copy store and it was already fallen off. This after the doctor had scared me by telling me it had to stay on for a few days to make sure it stayed closed. I decided to go back and assert my patient's rights. I went in and told them that I wanted the doctor to do it and that I was worried that with the strip not staying in place that it would get infected again or open up. They took us back in right away and the doctor placed the strip. I told him I didn't care if he had to restitch, glue, tape, or whatever but this is my son's face we are talking about. I don't want a wound reopening and doing more damage. The doctor looked at it again and this time said he doesn't think it'll open up. What am I to believe? I'm stressed about it to say the least.

On the way home Carter asked "Mom, why didn't Heavenly Father answer my prayer?" It took my breath away. These are the difficult parenting moments. How do I explain something I don't completely understand? I had to think fast and hope that what I was saying was right. First I said I know Heavenly Father hears our prayers and loves us but sometimes he says no. I told him I didn't understand it all myself but what I do know is that we lived in heaven before we came to earth and we agreed to come to earth and get a body. We knew we'd feel pain and we still agreed to it because we knew it was important to come to earth. What I don't know is why there is so much suffering on earth. I mean why do we have the major diseases on earth that cause so much pain? I just don't understand and I ended our conversation with sharing with Carter that we can't understand it all but that we still know Heavenly Father loves us. So I hope I nurtured his faith and didn't crush it. I think when you are little you think your parents have all the answers (well until you're a teenager and then you think they know nothing). So I hope by me telling him I don't understand or know everything that it didn't shake his budding faith. I hope that he and I'll always be able to be honest with each other and communicate well. I don't want to lose that. I just hope I said the right things. It's hard for me to know what to say when I'm still trying to figure things out myself.