I’d barely surrendered to a Sunday nap when something tipped me off that my kids’ shouts weren’t the typical, “She won’t share the biiiike!” 

I didn’t anticipate the nervous-looking motorcycle driver at the gate. My weeping eleven-year-old, clutching his shoulder, shirt torn. The mangled metal of his bicycle. Congregated, wildly gesturing neighbors at the intersection.  

I waved and shouted jittery gratitude, my stomach clutching further in cultural bewilderment. I thanked the honorable driver, who’d taken a chance by admitting he hit my son.  

I wish I was one of those unflappable global workers, a rock when crisis descends. But I was unhinged.  

A thousand thoughts smacked into one another. My husband was in Kenya… Was it foolish not to take my son for the laborious process of X-rays, since my ATM card was malfunctioning? What kind of mother was I, sleeping while my son slid in rusty mud? What if he’d skidded a second later, one foot further? 

In the cool of the hallway, the kids and I prayed, my voice throaty and breaking. 

God tells Job of boundaries set for the sea. I imagine Him setting that great blade of His palm in a beach’s cradle. Water rolls up, releasing strength.  

Satan had presented His sickening plan to God, who’d already hijacked it for His own purposes. (Satan would ask to sift Peter like wheat years later.) 

From the snow to the gestation months of a deer, God has placed irrefutable boundaries. His hand says, You stop here. 

My problem always seems to be with the length of God’s leash. Why not prevent my son’s tears and pain and my heartache altogether? 

As I held my tween son, we talked. After his accident, he’d helped the motorcycle’s passenger. I felt a twinge of what I’d asked for with my son: continued connection as he developed into a man. 

I thanked God that this time, His leash stopped with an arm treatable with pain medication and a wonky bike wheel. That later, I’d connected further with my neighbors and the driver. That beside me, my son was alive and teary and warm. 

That today, His leash unfurled to a place I could understand—but was deeply good even when I couldn’t.