A couple of years ago Jay encouraged me to read Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. I remember when the book first came out and my aunt and uncle were reading it in their home group. (Weird, the things I remember - I think I was just a little freaked by the picture of Moses on the cover of my aunt's work book so it stuck in my mind). I began reading the book and could not put it down. In the book Blackaby says God is at work and we are to look for Him and join Him. After a day or two in the hospital the first round I told Jay that I just don't want to miss what God is doing, I don't want my vision to be so clouded by Caroline's sickness that I miss out on what He is doing. On the seventh day that we were in the hospital a nurse asked us if we wanted to move to a bigger room. We wondered why it took seven days, but hey, we were still excited. We moved to our new room and spent the night there. The next day when we were told we were being discharged I began packing up. I looked across the hall and saw that Jay was in another room praying for someone. I immediately began to cry in great joy.
Heaven and her mom Jamie were in the room across the hall from us. They had just arrived to Children's via Care Flight from East Texas. Heaven had gone to the ER in East Texas with pain and fever and was told she had two tumors on her kidneys. Heaven was terrified. Jamie was terrified. Jay had seen Jamie (mom) in the hall and Jamie told him Heaven was crying so without being asked and without a chaplain's badge, Jay entered Heaven's room to encourage and pray for her. I heard Jay's prayer from across the room. "Lord, this is not new news to you, you know what Heaven is going through and you are our healer." Jay's prayer came from a deep place from within the both of us, a place we had been for eight days.
The next day I had to return to the hospital to pick up Caroline's compound prescriptions. While I waited, I visited Heaven and Jamie. I learned that Jamie herself was on a liver transplant list and she had lost her job and her fiancee within a week of their hospital stay. Jamie told me she was scared. I began to cry because I could literally feel her pain...the deep fear of losing a daughter. I told her about our first night when I felt like Caroline was slipping away and that I was afraid I wouldn't see her awake again. Our mom hearts melted together and we were able to minister hope to each other in that moment.
It is so clearly obvious that it was God who moved us to that bigger room on the day that Heaven was admitted. I told Jay that if our entire hospitalization was for us to have the opportunity to meet and pray with this family, it was absolutely worth it. Of course, I don't want my daughter to experience pain or discomfort; however, I understand that even her existence isn't for herself - its for the glory of her Maker. That is kind of hard to say without feeling a tinge of guilt, but we signed up to journey with God regardless of the cost. I want my kids to know that this journey with God won't always be surrounded with fields of daisies. This journey has places with really tall rocky mountains that you can't see around. . But we aren't on this journey alone. In fact, this journey isn't about us at all. This journey is about the One who designed it. I pray our kids recognize this and experience the abundant life Christ offers in our humility and recognition of His glory. I pray this recognition drives them to join God in His great work.
And PS, Heaven was released a few days after us and is expected to fully recover and heal back at home.
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