A Year Ago Today
It was a year ago today that Laura and I innocently walked into the exam room for a routine twenty-week sonogram. It was a year ago today that we heard the dreaded words from the sonographer's mouth, "excuse me while I go get the doctor." It was a year ago today that we began a journey that has forever changed us. So where do we stand today, a year later? I'll let Laura speak for the both of us:
I do not believe Ira was healed because of my prayers although I do believe God heard them.
Nor do I believe he has survived because of all the other people praying for him although I believe their prayers gave Joe and I encouragement and strength to carry on. Their prayers also moved them to provide us with food, donate money and support us financially, send care-packages and cards and so many other acts of love and kindness.
I also do not believe his being here today is a result of a miracle per se otherwise he wouldn't have had to suffer all that he did. I do believe God has given humankind a magnificent organ called a brain that allowed the doctors to perform miraculous surgeries. In that sense Ira is a "miracle baby."
The anger I have carried and brewed for nearly a year is beginning to simmer. I am so happy to have Ira home. However, God is not off the hook. I can not stop thinking about all the babies in the NICU: those that will never go home and those that are yet to be born that may be sick and have to endure so much. I am slowly being able to read my Bible again, pray and sing. This is all part of the healing process. I must trust that God loves me, Ira, my family, despite the injustices I see all around me. I will forever have a very tender spot in my heart for parents with sick and deceased children. There is no tying a pretty bow around this part of my life and moving on. It will be a part of every day that I have remaining and it will color the decisions I make and the way I live the rest of my days. I do not thank God for this leg of the journey but I do thank God for God's faithfulness on it.
I do not believe Ira was healed because of my prayers although I do believe God heard them.
Nor do I believe he has survived because of all the other people praying for him although I believe their prayers gave Joe and I encouragement and strength to carry on. Their prayers also moved them to provide us with food, donate money and support us financially, send care-packages and cards and so many other acts of love and kindness.
I also do not believe his being here today is a result of a miracle per se otherwise he wouldn't have had to suffer all that he did. I do believe God has given humankind a magnificent organ called a brain that allowed the doctors to perform miraculous surgeries. In that sense Ira is a "miracle baby."
The anger I have carried and brewed for nearly a year is beginning to simmer. I am so happy to have Ira home. However, God is not off the hook. I can not stop thinking about all the babies in the NICU: those that will never go home and those that are yet to be born that may be sick and have to endure so much. I am slowly being able to read my Bible again, pray and sing. This is all part of the healing process. I must trust that God loves me, Ira, my family, despite the injustices I see all around me. I will forever have a very tender spot in my heart for parents with sick and deceased children. There is no tying a pretty bow around this part of my life and moving on. It will be a part of every day that I have remaining and it will color the decisions I make and the way I live the rest of my days. I do not thank God for this leg of the journey but I do thank God for God's faithfulness on it.
posted by jch at
12:57 PM
5 Comments:
I love you both, Joe and Laura. And I LOVE. YOUR. HONESTY.
I struggled myself with alot of what you have gone through. I had completed a bible study a couple of months before my son Jack was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The bible study was on believing God's promises in the bible, not all but some of the subject matter was on physical healing and how God tells us if our faith is strong enough we can be healed. I prayed for my son along with hundreds of others that God would take away the tumors that were left after surgery. He didn't and the tumors grew substantially in that time. Over the last number of months as we are going through chemo and other therapies I have come to the conclusion for myself that when God talks about healing, more often than not, the healing pertains to spiritual health. There is no doubt in my mind that God can and does still heal people, but the outcome is decided by what shows His glory the most. This quote was given to me by a chaplin at one of the hospitals we were at:
Some people came to Calcutta, and before leaving, they begged me: "Tell us something that will help us to live our lives better." And I said: "Smile at each other; smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other - it doesn't matter who it is- and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.: And then one of them asked me: "Are you married?" and I said; "Yes, and I find it difficult sometimes to smile at Jesus." And it is true, Jesus can be very demanding also, and it is at those times when he is so demanding that to give him a big smile is very beautiful.
From A Gift for God by Mother Teresa.
I believe that there is natural grief that we all must go through when our lives change, we might have children who are alive, but we grieve the normal of what could have been. I also believe that Satan will jump at the chance to persuade you at every corner to question your faith, to lose that trust we have in the Lord to be faithful to us. I realized that while my brain knew that God was, is and always will be faithful, my heart was broken and I was angry. I also felt that Satan was starting to get a foot in the door, that is when I decided to smile at Jesus. No matter what happens, no matter if Jack lives or dies, I will be faithful to God and honor Him with my words and actions. I slammed the door shut to satan in this area. God's glory is shown through the peace He has given me, through the smile on my face, and through just giving in to His will and not asking Him to do mine.
As Christians we are filled with the Spirit and we can overcome our own humanness and use our struggles to help others. God will put someone in your path, probably alot of people, who you can minister to because of Ira. He uses the toughest times of our lives to be light to someone who has only darkness. Your family is already being that, your truthfullness, your testimony, your journey is a hands on guide to others who are struggling, and also trying to figure out where Jesus belongs in the midst of it all. Blessings.
Laura and Joe, we have never met. I heard about you while reading Mike Cope's blog and have followed your journey for a couple of months now. THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH FOR YOUR HONESTY!!!! I believe God invites us out of our boxes of preconceived notions about Him and all things spiritual, but few of us take that invitation - even when life sucks and we feel like we've been hit by a bulldozer several times. Keep on keeping on, and know that you all are in my thoughts and prayers.
Your new friend in Valencia, California (outside L.A.) - Anne Floyd.
"As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'
Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. 'Go,' he told him, 'wash in the Pool of Siloam' (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing." John 9:1-7
I know that you know this verse. I am not at all trying to make light of what this past year has been for you. I've been reading the book of John lately and a few days ago, as soon as I read, "this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life," I immediately thought of Ira and your family. And for the babies who don't get better, and the children who die, I know it also applies. I don't know how, or why, it doesn't make any sense to me. But I have to believe that the work of God is also displayed in those lives, in thousands of ways that we can't imagine or understand.
I appreciate that you've opened up your life and bare, honest, hard thoughts to all of us strangers here. The work of God in your lives has been displayed to us in so many different ways, and you have encouraged and strengthened and emboldened beyond what you can grasp.
After that 20 week sonogram, you could've chosen to end Ira's life and not many would've known and, sadly, not many would've blamed you. You could have prevented any of his suffering, could've removed the questions about the "quality of life" he might have, could've tried for that "healthy child" everyone misguidedly hopes for.
Instead, when you got a glimpse of what was coming, you charged ahead down that road anyway, willing to accept whatever comes and to cling to the Lord no matter what. I cannot imagine the depth of difficulty and anguish you have experienced. I do know that your honesty and transparency - and tenacity - have strengthened me and deepened my hope in the one, true, living God.
Words cannot express how much I apprecated you thoughts Laura. I just about lost my wife (Rachel Stevens-Pleasant) a few months ago because of a freak brain infection. I post similiar comments at klintpleasant.blogspot.com. I agree, God is not off the hook! And I don't apologize for that as God's prayer book (Psalms) is full of people who are not afraid to lash out, but always remaining faithful.
Thanks,
Klint Pleasant
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