2:00 AM. From the peace, darkness, and silence of a wonderful night's sleep, she cries. My eyes slowly open. My brain tries to interpret what my ears are hearing. My wife, much more attune than I, is already out of the bed and walking down the hall. My daughter is clearly distressed. I sit up in the bed. My wife walks back in the room. "She threw up in the bed." I walked into my daughter's dark room, turned on the light, dimmed it, and sat down beside her to assess the situation. Were we going to need to change her clothes? Were we going to need to change the sheets? The comforter? Her pillow? What about her blankie? Her doll Kiki? I saw a little on the sheets, so I picked her up, still crying, and carried her to our bedroom. I laid her in our bed, and wouldn't you know it? She rolled over in our bed. I hoped she didn't have any vomit on her. I quickly walked back to the room and met my wife there. We both saw vomit on the sheets only. My wife changed the sheets while I sat with my daughter. It's amazing how fast she can change sheets on a bed. By the time I got back in our room, sat down with our daughter, and started consoling her, my wife was already joining me to assess our daughter's clothes. Yep. Vomit. But only on the shirt! Off the shirt came, and the new one went on just as quickly. "Let's go get back in bed, sweetie," I said to my daughter. She started crying louder. My wife noticed a clump of vomit in our daughter's hair. I asked, "Would you like us to wash your hair before you go back to bed?" She shook her head and cried out a clear "Yes." Over the next ten minutes, we washed her hair, dried her off, and dressed her in clean pajamas. She was back in the bed - sheets changed, pillow changed, hair washed, pajamas changed, everything cleaned up - in thirty-five minutes. I was amazed at our timely prowess in such moments of regurgitation!
As we crawled back into our own bed, I was moved to prayer, not for our won daughter, but for other children. It suddenly struck me that there are millions of children in the world who, when they wake up in vomit, have no running water to wash their hair, have no pajamas (much less a second or third pair), have no bed sheets (much less a second set). And there are millions of children, orphaned or not, that have no parents to wash their hair, change their pajamas, and change their sheets at 2:00 in the morning when they throw up in the bed. There are millions of children who, when they throw up in the middle of the night, are faced with three choices: stay awake, clean it up, or sleep in it. It struck me that many children that same night were sleeping in their own vomit. It broke my heart. And what breaks my heart more is that to a child sleeping in their own vomit, a clean night's sleep is the least of their worries.
