"God made the soft stuff" by Austin Witcher

This last Christmas while visiting with my husbands family in Texas, we had a little incident that surprised us all. We were all out feeding the cows by burning off the cacti needles with a blow torch (I know you think this is going to be a fire disaster story) and I finally got tired of all that fun and decided to go to Wal-mart with my baby and my 1 year old. It was nice to get back to a little civilization (okay, as much civilization that Lampasas can muster up) and I ended up driving from one end of town to the other (which took about 10 minutes) and back looking for Wal-mart. After about 30 minutes I pulled into the parking lot and was getting out of the car when I got a phone call from my husband.

He said our 6 year old son, Levi, had been bit by grandpa's dog. Now grandpa had continued to tell us not to get into "Whisky's" face, because it scared him, but our son Levi, loving animals so much, just could not keep from getting all over and around him and... in his face. Therefore he now had a number of teeth mark and a tear in his cheek that looked a whole lot worse than it was.

So I drove to the Lampasas Hospital, the same place my husband had been born, about 10 minutes down the road and prepared to go in and wait for him. As I was getting my babies out of the car I smelled something really horrible. I thought, oh no, Caelan is really stinky and I didn't have any wipes or diapers, but when I dug through the car, I found 1 diaper and was so excited of my find... until I realized it wasn't my son who was stinky, but my 1 year old and it was one of those situations where you can't wear the clothes anymore, so I found a shirt of her brother's in the car, and just tied a jacket around her waist as a skirt.

This is not the best part of the story though. While Ken and I and Levi and our two youngest kids were at the hospital, our second son Austin, age 4, stayed back with grandpa who was a little upset about the dog situation. I think there was the possibility of a large fee if the authorities had to quarantine Whisky until they could prove he didn't have rabies. Now Whisky was a sweet dog, he was just not used to children, and when a child got in his face it scared him.

So Austin was walking around the farm and ultimately the house with Grandpa who was contemplating every thing in silence, and in one certain moment while staring out the large glass window in his bedroom, Austin said, "Don't worry Grandpa, God is going to take care of everything... because God made everything. Actually he didn't make everything, just the soft stuff.

Now Grandpa, who is not what you would call a regular church attender, told Ken and I this later on that day and was impressed with Austin's insight into his description of God. I was shocked at how my little man truly understood so much of what we had been attempting to teach our kids in our home.

Being a mom of 4 kids within 4 1/2 years of each other has been very challenging these past few years. It has truly taken me to the end of myself in way I had never imagined, but the reward that I am receiving now is awesome, and it makes all the hard times worth it.