Three stitches. Four words.

Last Saturday, just as I was ready to settle into the couch for a movie, my baby, and some pizza (a rare Saturday night!), I decided to light a candle. You know. To make the air smell good. My multi-tasking ways got the best of me and I tried to take the lid off the candle at grab the lighter at the same time. The lid, stuck, gave way just as the rest of the candle crushed into the granite -- with only my birdie finger to catch the falling giant shards of glass. Immediately, I knew the cut on my finger was more than just a butterfly bandage fix. Yet, I still dumped out a whole box of Band-Aids looking for the right size, all the while the white dishrag I was holding on the cut started to turn a nice polka-dot red. Maggie, just two-years-old, kept looking at me, "OK Mamma? OK?" After a few minutes I called my back-up helper, my father-in-law. He was at my house faster than Jimmy Johns, ready to watch Maggie, and I was on my way to the ER. While I sat there on the hospital bed waiting to get stitched up I saw -- through the fabric curtain -- a gurney come through the ER doors. All I could see where the feet on the gurney. The shoes were those of a cute, hip teen girl. But, she was in distress -- right deep down into her soul. "Why did you do this?" asked the ER nurse. "I hate my life," said the girl with the cute shoes. And, I believed her. There was no question in her voice that she utterly hated her life, and that she had done something horrible to prove it. I wanted to fling the curtain between us open and shout, "It will get better! Just have hope! It always gets better if you just try. Don't give up!" I have thought about that girl all week, and wished there had been something I could do for her. The pain of what each of us were in the ER for couldn't compare to one another. My three little stitches. Her four haunting words.