He lay there ashen and unresponsive. He spoke in an unintelligible mumble with an invisible presence known only to him. They worked on him, sticking IVs in every available place on every appendage including his neck. Tubes and wires, injections, and monitors. He tried dying every time he was jostled. The helicopter could not be used as the ceiling was too low so we took the ambulance 60 miles away. He faded out, his pulse threaded and weak so I yelled at him at the top of my lungs demanding he stay. It was like this for 2 days.
They put us in the PICU at the far end of the floor with a nurse by his bedside 24-7. Only later did we discover after the original nurse came to visit days later that was where they put the children who were not going to make it. Despair, white hot anger, and resentment were emotions that flowed through me like fire. My wife she begged that I tell her it would all work out-I could not. I railed in the chapel at God. My words were don’t you dare, and then sobbing please don’t take my boy.
Only 5 days later would we begin to relax as he began to make an incredible recovery from the unknown infection and we were moved to a step-down unit. Doctors, nurses, and the paramedics all came by to check on us. All said the same thing…it is a miracle. I still try and make sense of it. For so many people with sick children the story doesn’t have a happy ending.
Psalm 46 is a song, “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble.” I hated God and loved God in the same breath…I was angry at God and yet when I prayed, I ended with thy will be done. I did fear. I was not pure nor was I steadfast in my faith, yet I prayed and I bargained like Abraham and Lot. All the emotions we see in the Psalms (Lamentations) and all we see in Scripture my family lived it over 3 weeks of hell.
When the dust settled I was able to begin to reconcile what had happened. We indeed are clay jars. We are weak, but when we wield the Spirit of God, we are mighty.
So many people cared for us. So many came to the hospital to feed us, to pray with us, and to comfort us in whatever way they could. A 97 year old WW2 bomber pilot came to the hospital with his daughter and son in law despite that he was not feeling well. He told me how he almost lost that same daughter to sickness when she was a baby, and how an angel came to him as he wept on a stairwell out of earshot from his wife and the angel promised him that all would be well. He passed away 2 years later on New Years Day. The priest, a family friend, who came, anointed, and laid hands on my boy, praying a simple prayer with tears in his eyes, and who has also since passed away. The middle school principal who was losing her battle with metastatic breast cancer but met me in the parking lot of the hospital with hundreds of handmade get-well cards from my son’s school.
The miracle was not just that my boy lived, no, it was the strength of God I saw in so many special people who came as emissaries of God.
I saw in the fragile a reliance born not of the flesh but of God. As Paul says 2nd Corinthians Chapter 4, “But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”
I knew God but I did not trust enough. It took others who lived in the light of Christ to show me what a true miracle was. That in the end we all die. None of us are getting out of this alive. But in living, we reflect the light of our God to others. “So do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” We WILL be in his presence. I thank God for the lesson.
His will be done.
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