YOU HAVE ME LORD

I met my husband in 1995. I’d just turned 31. We got married in 1998. I was 34. We tried to start to have a family in 2000. I was 36; a bit old to start but certainly not past child bearing age. That was the start of a long and uphill battle. It lasted three and a half years.

We went from trying naturally, to months of fertility testing. Four artificial inseminations and four IVF’s, acupuncture twice a week for about a year and drinking (horrible tasting) Chinese tea twice daily. I won’t kid you; there were times that it was unbearable. But finally on the fourth IVF attempt in July of 2004 we found out we were pregnant! Praise God! I had not been ‘born again’ per se yet but was very close to God. But the minute we found out, it was like those three and a half years just disappeared. Like they never existed. I didn’t care how old I was, how much time had passed. All that mattered was that I was pregnant. We were overjoyed.

I was carrying twins but my fertility Dr told me that one looked smaller and weaker. He told me he didn’t expect that one to make it. I said OK and moved on with my pregnancy still happy that I had one healthy baby! My pregnancy OB told me the same. And on my second sonogram told me that, in fact, the other baby stopped forming because he heard only one heartbeat. Again the other baby looked fine and healthy. We were sad but figured at least he or she was with God. However at my next sono, the tech heart two heartbeats. Needless to say I was shocked. OK, so back to carrying two but the second was behind the first in development. Then came my amnio. The Dr suggested he only take fluid from the healthy baby’s sac because we already knew the other baby probably would not make it. My husband was very adamant. He said we’re currently having two. Take from the two as long as it didn’t pose any health danger to anyone involved. I thought about it and agreed with him. We told this to the Dr who respected and honored our decision. When the results came in, our son (yes a boy!) was fine but our daughter was not. She had something called anencephaly which is a very severe neural tube disorder along the lines of spina bifida but worse. If she made it to delivery she could not live. Most babies die in a few minutes, some last weeks and in rare cases months. But she’d have to be in the hospital the entire time. The doctor brought up the option of doing something called ‘selective reduction’ which is basically aborting the unhealthy baby. We discussed it with him and between ourselves and decided that that was just not for us. I even spoke with my priest about it who said if the baby was sure to die, it was not ‘wrong’ by the church. But we decided no. Whatever was going to happen with her would be left to God, not us.

Then at my twenty-seventh week I had some spotting and called the Dr. I went in for a precaution to the maternity ward at the hospital. The very next day I ended up having our twins through c-section. Our little girl was first. We named her Veronica Ann. She lived three minutes but we had a priest waiting there who baptized her immediately. Then came our son. Up until this point we had not decided on a boy’s name. My husband had been pulling for the name David all along but I just couldn’t commit to it. Before I had the twins the Dr’s had explained that because I was delivering three months early our son would have to stay in the hospital probably until around his due date. We knew it would be a tough battle. So he had to give him the name of a warrior, a champion, a hero.

David it was.

Finally our child was here! After so long. The next 3 months were not easy. There were many scary moments and many victorious ones. Finally the day came, March 11th, three days after his due date, we brought him home. Halleluiah!

He came home attached to a monitor at all times that would go off if any of his vital signs dropped too low. We also had oxygen tanks in the house just in case he stopped breathing. Not exactly the kind of homecoming you’d expect. But we were still in bliss. The months went by. David grew. Little by little he continued to progress. Eventually we took him off the monitor. Originally he had something called micro-aspiration and had to have thickened-up formula. Finally in November of 2005 that went away and he could go back to the breast milk that I’d been pumping all the while.

When he was discharged from the hospital one of the nurses told me that there was a good chance that David would need some kind of physical therapy. Most preemies like him did but that it was just a temporary thing. In time, he’d be fine. At the time, I thought- that may be the case with other babies. But not my son. No way. No way is he going to need that. Well, sure enough, several months later they told me he would, in fact need it. Right around this time I got saved. But friends, hearing this news was one of the most devastating things I could hear. I didn’t know exactly what it entailed. But I just knew this meant our struggle would go on.

I explained it to my husband like this. David is basically my ‘job’ now. I had worked on Wall Street for 18 years. But this was now my full-time job. At earlier appointments the Doctors and therapists had given me some exercises to do with David. I probably didn’t do them as much as I should have which is why he needed the physical therapy. So hearing this news was like going in for a review at work and finding out that my work wasn’t good enough. It was tantamount to me getting a bad review, but worse because it was my child. I vividly remember driving home in the car, sobbing uncontrollably. All we had been through. Three and have years to get pregnant, having the twins prematurely, one of them dying, David in the hospital for three months and coming home on monitors and medication. Finally, I had thought, we’d come to a place of arrival. And now, we get the news that no, our struggles were not over, and that we had to do more. I just couldn’t understand why God was putting us through this.

Other people got pregnant with the blink of an eye, have healthy pregnancies, healthy babies, multiple times over. But we were going through so much just with our first, let alone the fact that we wanted more. So in the car I wept and wept.

Finally I just looked up and said, “God, I can’t do this. I have literally no strength, no resolve, no ambition, and no will to do this. Lord You are going to have to do this. I am at my end. I simply cannot do this. You will have to do this. And then I exhaled, thinking I had really told Him!

But instead, an unexpected thing happened. From out of nowhere I immediately felt a huge weight being taken from my shoulders. I felt lighter, somehow at peace. At a time that I had no reason to be at peace, I was. And somehow I knew why. I knew God had said: “OK, I’ll come in. I’ll come to your aid.” I didn’t know how, when or why but I knew He would help. By this time I had studied and prayed enough that I realized that I had been trying to go this alone. And that was wrong. I hadn’t given it to God yet. But at the moment that I did, He stepped in and took over. I knew that it would be OK. I guess God was waiting patiently for me to bring this problem to Him. To lay it at His feet and ask for help. He must have thought “Finally she gets it.”

Well, David did, in fact start physical therapy and occupational therapy. His progress was slow but steady. I liked his therapists and they were a good sounding board for me. Around the time he turned one, one of his therapists suggested speech therapy. I decided against it at first but a few months later I agreed. He was evaluated and found eligible for it. We also upped his PT to three times a week because he wasn’t walking yet or even cruising. Eventually he even received special instruction which is like Special Ed because he was behind cognitively too. We were now at a point where he was getting eight therapies a week. It was tough at times trying to keep up with when I had to be home with him and make sure he was up & fed for a therapist to come! He progressed slowly. One of his therapists nicknamed him “slow and steady”. That was fine by me as long as he was steady!

When he turned two, he still wasn’t talking at all. That didn’t bother me so much but other things started to creep up in my mind. Other than talking, there were still some things he wasn’t doing that he should have been and other things that he did do that we didn’t understand. I made a ‘laundry list’ of these things and showed it to his special instruction therapist since most of them, we felt, were cognitive. She looked at the list and just kind of sighed. I’m not sure what she was thinking. Yes, he had made a lot of progress but I was starting to wonder if there was something more seriously ‘wrong’. I remember telling her “I want to know if I’m still going to be changing his diapers when he’s five or even ten.” I wanted her to say “Of course not! Are you crazy? He’ll be fine!” She didn’t know for sure. No one did. That was the problem. We spoke about doing some neurological testing as a future possibility and then she left. That was a Monday. That was a horrible day for me. I tried to stay positive but I was attacked from all sides by the enemy with fear and doubt. I was angry, frightened, confused, and depressed. I broke down in tears several times that day. I remember thinking those same thoughts as in the car, again. But this time, they were worse because now, we were not talking about something temporary like PT but something possibly permanently wrong. This time, this day, I was crushed. Same thoughts: Why us? Why can’t we be normal? Why is God doing this to us? Fear literally gripped me.

Towards the end of the day I walked downstairs to my basement to get something in our storage closet. It’s a big walk-in closet with sliding doors with have mirrors on them. I remember getting what I needed, then taking a step backwards out of the closet, and sliding one of the doors closed. I saw my face in the mirror. I stared a second and then looked away and thought: “God, what is it what you want from me regarding this?”
The answer came right to my head. Immediately I saw Jesus in my mind coming right in my face very directly, saying “I want to know if you will go all the way, the distance. Will you walk through the fire with me?” He said it very ‘loud’, very direct, very pointed, almost in my face. I understood exactly what He meant. He was saying to me, you say I’m your personal Lord and Savior. But I want to know, right now, if your son is mentally challenged and that is what I give you, will you still walk with me? Will you still sing My praises and worship and love Me and praise Me?

Right around this time I had read an amazing story by Darlene Bishop who at one point in her life had a terrible sickness of some kind in her breasts. It sounded awful because her breasts bled and were terribly painful. But at one point she declared “God if this breast falls off…as long as there’s a breath in m body, I’ll still preach you’re Jehovah Raphe”. That article really blew me away. That she could so emphatically be that way during a terrible illness. I remember thinking I don’t know if I could have done that.”

But at that moment, friend, I knew that that was exactly what God was asking me. “Will you be with me even if your worst fear comes true?” I was still standing in from of that closet. I knew enough to not just blurt out a yes, but that God was asking me to make a true decision and not take it lightly and answer out of reaction. I stood there and thought about it. Truly, deeply, honestly, if that is what it came to, how would I handle it? Finally the answer came and swept over my entire body. I turned, looked in the mirror as if I was looking right at Jesus and said “Yes Lord, if that is what Your will is, for me, Steve and I, for David, then yes. You have my promise. I won’t leave you. I’ll trust You. I’ll go the distance, whatever that is. I will walk through the fire with you. No matter what happens. I’ll submit to Your will. A took a big breath in and out. And I walked away, with a sense of peace that the war was over. I would stop fighting God. He’ll give me strength to deal with this or whatever I need when I need it.

I walked upstairs knowing full well what I had committed to and being at peace with it. I didn’t worry anymore. I had no more doubt or anxiety but a quiet strength and knowledge that I would be alright. That day finally came to an end. But before I’d gone to bed I started to get a feeling. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I began to become aware of something in my conscience. It was something small, very small, but it was there. Friend it was something called hope.

I’d traveled from fear and confusion to acceptance and peace that day. But strangely enough, I now had this little bit of hope. Earlier that day I had told my husband about the day and my fears. He had always remained positive but as I read him my infamous laundry list, he, too, started to think maybe there was something more seriously wrong. Now as we got ready to go to bed I told him. “Steve I don’t know where this came from, but, all of a sudden, I have a hope. I have a hope.” I couldn’t word it any differently than that. I remember thinking that he must have thought ‘she’s all over the place!” But I could tell that he seemed to get hopeful too.

But now I had to back up my hope with action. I poured the internet for any help. I made kind of a ‘lesson plan’ for myself to do with David every day. I focused on all the things he wasn’t doing and on how his therapists worked with him. It was tough the first few days. I had to get even more patience than I already had. I would, every so often, get a feeling of fear or doubt, but I fought them all and I was beginning to win the fight. What’s more, friend, is that my son was beginning to change. Not long before I started, he responded. He started being more communicative. At first, just with me, but then, with others too. He started to become more aware of his surroundings. He started to do more age appropriate things. He was improving! We were excited! I started to keep a journal of his progress that I would write in whenever he did something new or better. At first it was every few days that I’d put one or maybe two things in. Within a couple of weeks it was probably every day I’d write one or two things. Then I found myself forgetting things to write because a few days would go by and I was losing count because he was doing so much more and better. Praise the Lord!

He wasn’t talking yet but all the other things started to click into place. And even though he wasn’t talking, he was getting a little bit closer everyday. I remember only about a week after I’d given David’s special instruction teacher my infamous laundry list to look at we’d noticed and were discussing the changes and improvements. She said “It’s like that whole list that you gave me last week, he’s doing now.” I thought about it and she was right!

So what exactly changed in that week? Well, yes, I could say something like: “Well, I started doing more proactive teaching with him or this thing or that thing”. But all that stuff is academic. If I were to truly believe that, I’d be a fool. And I’m not a fool. I am a child of God. He is my Savior, my Redeemer, my Hope, my Heart and my Strength. He changed our David, pure and simple. It’s not complicated. It happened when I submitted, when I truly obeyed. When I trusted and said I’ll follow You Jesus, with no conditions, no strings, no guarantees. You have me Lord. I am Yours.

Amen.
To Him be the Glory!
God Bless You!