My mom was here for Ira's birth and recently came back. She's been with us this past week. She'll leave to go home to Texas this weekend. Laura's mom will leave early this next week after having been with us for four weeks. Our dads had work to attend to and are back in their respective homes. My Texas sister had to get back to be with her family and take in another foster baby. Laura’s older brother had to get back to family while her younger brother had to contend with finals and now a short course at college. My Long Island sister is frantically getting ready to move to Atlanta. All of these family members keep asking us with nervous confusion, "Does it feel like we are abandoning you?"
And this is what is hard about our surreal situation: All around us life keeps going, moving. It doesn't stop. But for Laura and me life has stopped; life is on hold; life is mired in tar not allowing us to move at any significant or noticeable pace. As Laura and I look around we see the movement of everyone else, everything else and it looks as if it's all moving at a hurried pace while we’re stuck in slow motion.
It's hard making sense of all this. There's the selfish part of me who wants others to put their lives on hold too. I want their attention. I want their help. Really I just want them to feel what we are feeling. There's another part of me who wants to jump back into the hurried pace and get on with life and leave all this behind. I've sat at my desk at work and opened theology and church planting books hoping to get swept up again. And there is another part of me that wants to find that illusive balance I talked about in my May 4 post.
But the more time we spend in the NICU the more I realize that we are going to live for quite some time in this surreal world where for us, time has stopped and life is on hold. We often joke around with other NICU parents that we don't know what day it is as it seems like our time there is one big, long day. Time as we know it is like one breath being taken: a big, long inhale followed by a holding of the breath and then...slowly...the...exhale.
And this is what is hard about our surreal situation: All around us life keeps going, moving. It doesn't stop. But for Laura and me life has stopped; life is on hold; life is mired in tar not allowing us to move at any significant or noticeable pace. As Laura and I look around we see the movement of everyone else, everything else and it looks as if it's all moving at a hurried pace while we’re stuck in slow motion.
It's hard making sense of all this. There's the selfish part of me who wants others to put their lives on hold too. I want their attention. I want their help. Really I just want them to feel what we are feeling. There's another part of me who wants to jump back into the hurried pace and get on with life and leave all this behind. I've sat at my desk at work and opened theology and church planting books hoping to get swept up again. And there is another part of me that wants to find that illusive balance I talked about in my May 4 post.
But the more time we spend in the NICU the more I realize that we are going to live for quite some time in this surreal world where for us, time has stopped and life is on hold. We often joke around with other NICU parents that we don't know what day it is as it seems like our time there is one big, long day. Time as we know it is like one breath being taken: a big, long inhale followed by a holding of the breath and then...slowly...the...exhale.
posted by jch at
10:04 PM
7 Comments:
My heart is so heavy for you and your family, although I don't know you. I read your entries constantly, and I don't have perfect words or life experience to comfort you with, but I am on my knees for precious Ira. He is such a gift, an angel...
Father God, please hold baby Ira when he can't be held by man, please hold the Hays' when they can't hold baby Ira. God, heal this child of yours, Joe. Heal this child of yours, Laura. Heal this child of yours, Sophia.Heal this tiny baby who is from Your hand of grace. In the name of Jesus! Amen.
Joe and Laura,
I am happy to hear that Ira made it through his surgery and is evidently holding his own in recovery. That is wonderful!
I began reading Noah's blog when you referenced it, and join with the others in sadnesss about Julie and Ethan and Alyssa's loss. In seeing their heart for God, I know they have a place of value for the fact that God has used their family to touch people's lives. I also would have to guess that they--as well as you--would have preferred to have taken home a healthy baby boy. The fact that you both have chosen to value the one since God has not granted the other, is what is an incredible challenge to me. Thank you for that.
May God grant you wisdom and surround you with those who can help--not just in practical ways, but also those who have been there and can share helpful insights--and may He continue to hold Ira steady as his body heals and grows stronger. May He cause the time for Ira to move home with his family to be sooner than later.
In Him,
Beverly McCallon
Joe, Laura, I hear you clearly when you say your vigil with Ira seems surreal compared with those of your family who have to "get on with life." I am so sorry that you must live suspended in an eternal moment when life and death are separated by the slightest breath of a newborn. Your posts reveal in excruciating depth the emotional and spiritual toll your suspension in this liminal moment takes on your family. All those reading your posts feel some degree of your struggle. Many of us weep reading your posts.
However difficult it all seems, I'm convinced that the hurried pace outside the NICU is the surreal life, and that where you all persist each day is much closer to the real life that God intends for us all: that pervasive sacrality in which life and death commingle. Where you and Laura live now is more real than where most of us spend our time: working, studying, churching, etc. And that place - where our ultimate dependence on God alone cannot be ignored - is frankly dreadful. Yet the Divine, experienced without the buffers we usually place between us and God - work, school, even church - is invariably dreadful.
Again, I hear you clearly say how severe a toll Ira's struggle takes on you all. And, please know, I in no way believe Ira's condition is God's will. I especially like the way your sister put it: God's will is life and health for all of us, so God, now is the time! In her protest I hear of God's distance, the Almighty so far away, terrible in an omnipotence that seems administered by a norm of justice alien to our human condition, by a love that seems unrecognizable and unknowable. I pray God's distance may truly be brought close to you all through the grace and mercy of Christ, that Christ's love prove sufficient for all your needs, as we confess. Especially I pray that you all will persevere through this interminably long day and seemingly endless night to a new and glorious morning when your tears will all have run their course and your every thought and emotion will be joyous. I do so pray that the peace of Christ will be with you all, forever.
Joe, Laura, I am convinced that the NICU is a time machine of sorts- the days and hours are best recognized and rememebered by the shift change of the nurses. It just all runs together and any hour can be the most critical and you realize any moment is the last for some while any moment can be the best when a child breathes on his own for the first time and the monitors remain quite or the results come back and they are normal. It is just such an amazingly lonely, exhausting and purifying place that for us was unmatched to any other experience in our lives. It showed us a very unfair side of life that was unknown to us until we walked through those doors and scrubbed in. I am so sorry that you find yoursleves in that place and know that all the encouragement in the world can't take the place of your desires to be at home, the park, the grocery anywhere but there with Ira and just be living life. I do believe you will leave the NICU a different person and I pray it is more thankful, more amazed at the little things in life and more aware that children belong to God not us.
I loved your observations on your post over the weekend. It is a strange place of sorts......I hate it and I love it. It is where I spent my darkest hour yet it is where I have my fondest memories. I remember really getting the song "I need thee every hour", while I sat starring at the monitors. Never before in my life did I need Him so desparately and I even though of updating the song to I need thee every minute!!! Anyways, I just wanted to share that I know the feeling of just wanting to fast forward and have the answers and leave that place that is so isolated from the world but I also know that you are in an amazingly beautiful place allit be in a strange way and that you will with very mixed emotions be thankful you were there. You will never look at a child the same again it will always be with wonderment and amazement. And when life does get back to routine you will be reminded that as crazy as life gets and all that has to be done it is possible to stop and just be still, it happens everyday in NICU's. I don't know you but I love you and praise God for your son, Ira.
We are friends of Julie Whaley and have been following Ira's struggles as we have with Noah. Although our lives go on as 'normal' - not many minutes go by before we (the many Christians praying for Ira) stop and say a prayer, just as we did and continue to for Baby Noah and the family. May you and Laura be surrounded by our love and God's arms. Don't feel alone, for the Lord is always with you and we are as well in pray.
Dear Joe and Laura,
I was connected to this blog from baby Noah's blog. I am so sorry that your son is not at home with you and that you are going through all of these struggles. I have nothing wise or helpful to say. Just to say that my heart is breaking for you and that baby Ira will be in my prayers. Thank you for sharing your experiences and emotions with us.
In love,
Jennifer Bradley Crawford
We don't know each other, but your cousin Brenda T. is a dear sister at my church and she sends an update on Ira almost daily over our e-mail prayer chain. I just want you to know that a church of 1500+ souls is praying for your sweet baby, that we are grateful to God for your ministry to the other NICU parents there, and I suspect that when we look back on moments like this from eternity, they'll be the only ones that seem "real" to us.
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