I’m sure you can tell many of your own personal stories to your children. They will love hearing about them! Don’t neglect to pass on your journey to the next generation. They will benefit from your experience and the lessons you learned from it. Here’s one of my stories and a simple lesson you can teach your children.

One night a few years ago, there was some sickness going around. I got it. I started feeling a little queasy before bed. In the middle of the night, I woke up and was like, “Oh boy, here it is.” So I went downstairs knowing that I was going to throw up, but trying to think of anyway I could avoid it. You know, crackers and stuff. But nope, nothing was going to work. My body needed to throw up!

So it happened. Not cool, but something didn’t look right. What came out was kind of dark. So I was trying to figure out if I should go to the hospital or not. Cause I felt siiiick! I ended up going to the doctor and he said it’s probably just a virus. I came back home, but didn’t feel any better.

Later that morning, I threw up again. It was dark again. I’m thinking, “Now I know I threw up blood.” Ya gross right? So I went back to the hospital. I knew something wasn’t right, but there was NOTHING…I…COULD…DO! My wife came along with me and she said I looked white. I waited at emerge for somebody, ANYBODY to help me. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew the doctors could help me. I trusted that they knew what to do and would take care of my problem.

I ended up waiting awhile and discovered that something had gone wrong inside my body. When I threw up, the doctor told me that I tore something inside me and they had to go inside and have a look. He said it was called a Mallory Weiss tear and sometimes happens with young, strong, powerful, good looking and amazing young men. Okay, okay that’s not all true, but he did say young and strong.

So they prepared me for an operation. They put me to sleep, for which I was SO thankful! Then they stuck a tube down my throat with a camera. They found a tear, then they used water to wash it away and clean me up inside. They couldn’t use stitches or anything, but I think the medicine they gave me helped to heal my wound.

I had to recover for awhile. The doctor said later that I had lost a lot of blood and was close to needing a blood transfusion, which just means I would need to get blood put into me. I’ll tell you what, I am SOO thankful for doctors and hospitals!!!

After that experience, I hate throwing up even more. I bet you hate throwing up too. Isn’t it so good to know that when we have problems with our bodies, we can go to hospitals and have doctors fix us up?

You could say this to your children: “We have a more serious problem than our bodies getting sick, injured and even dying! There is nothing we can do about this problem on our own. We need something far better than doctors. We need Doctor Jesus!”

[Jesus] told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” -Mark 2:17