Gift of Grace

       Weary.  I stand at the kitchen sink.  Hot water scalds my fingers, the sponge blithely moves across each piece of grime on the pots and pans.  Numb.  I feel numb.  Can I even feel?  How can I feel numbness?  I don't think I've felt much of anything yet.  There hasn't been time.

       But I felt it that night.  When they looked at my tiniest one in the ER and so casually talked to her in their baby voices, "You're too little and too cute to have CHF, aren't you?"  CHF.  CHF, what?  Congestive Heart Failure?!  No one had said those words to us.  But they kept on saying it in passing as if it were a hangnail.  Oh, the throat constricting panic as I clung to her less than 9 pound body.  The agony as we waited in the room to find out the diagnosis behind her swollen heart that we had only just discovered hours earlier.  I crumbled, outwardly and inwardly, but she showed her two and a half month old strength as I stood her on my knees and her face shone with happy pride.  My broken heart broke more and tears streamed down my face as our eyes locked and I tried to hold a smile.  Could it be so?  Could this child, who looked so like the other three and who beamed with joy, could she really have a failing heart?  Would it fail completely?  And when?  And how-how could we bear it.  How could I?  How could she?    

       It was a new place for me.  A place I'd never been nor imagined I'd be.  A place no one hopes to find themselves in.  But it was real.  Happening.  It wasn't going away.  Soon, we would hear the diagnosis and nothing could change it and it might be horrible.  For the first time, one of my babies might not be okay.  Suddenly, all my past mother worries seemed so silly.  The ultrasound technician arrived.  I retreated to the bathroom, not ready yet to hear or see or know.  Head against the wall, arms held high I begged God for the life of this little one.  

                  "She is Yours!  You created her.  You know the number of her days.  Oh God!  Let them be many with me!  I want her!  Dear God, let me keep her longer!!!  She-this precious gift-please let me keep her!  You gave her, please don't take her away.  I promise I will raise her to know you and your Word, Lord.  God?!  Please say yes."

       And in his grace, he quickly answered my prayer.  When I returned to the room, the ultrasound technician had just shared with my husband that her condition, a VSD, was one of the most common heart conditions to be had and that many times these holes will close on their own without intervention.  Hallelujah!  She was admitted that night.  And thus began our unexpected journey into the world of medications and syringes and stethoscopes and doctors and therapists and hospitals and procedures and decisions and tubes and bottles and machines and poles and noises and scheduling and nausea and vomit and more laundry than ever!

      So I look at the photos on the wall as I wash.  Past times, more simple.  And I think of my bed and the sleep that will one day come.  And I feel sad along with my weariness.  It's not as I had hoped.  My poor, poor baby.  So tiny, so sweet, so innocently sick.  And I want to quit!  Can I even go on?
  
       I glance over at the exersaucer where she plays and am surprised to see her fully attentive to me.  Her little head is bent down so she can see my face through the slats of the dining room chair between us.  She is at full attention, full delight, just waiting for me to meet her gaze.  And as soon as I do, she smiles and jumps and I smile back and my heart is filled.  How can I not go on when this little one needs me so?  What a gift of grace!  What a child of delight!  She is here!  She is alive!  
       Thank you, Lord!
      

       
           

Pole Dancing

Have a little dignity.  Now do it while pushing an IV pole everywhere.  I thought people would show a little discretion.  Nope.  Open stares, turning heads following my movements.  People realizing that it connects to the baby and compassion comes.  Something is WRONG!  Yes.  This is true.  It’s always been true.  But you can’t hide it when you have to dance around with the pole everywhere.  They ask questions, or they stare and look away when you glance up…and then stare and look away again when you glance up again.  And then I guess they stare more.  I stopped looking.  I started cleaning up Pole with a baby wipe as we all waited in the cardiology waiting room.  If Pole is going to come everywhere, he’s going to shine!   Everyone’s quiet.  The effect of Pole I assume.

“How old is the baby?” someone ventures. 

“Seven months.” 

They glance at the pole.

“Yeah.” I say, “She’s had a tough little life.” 

“You’re lucky to have her.” 

I choke up.  Can’t talk anymore after all the rawness of the day.  My first venture out with Pole.

 Baby’s newest feeding regiment, pronounced two days earlier and falling on my ears like a gavel:  24 hour a day slow drip.  No break from Pole.  Just over an ounce an hour, every hour.  “It’ll only be for 24 or 48 hours probably” the Dr. followed up with.  Nothing happens quickly in the medical world.  It’s now stretched to a week with “discussion” to come on that day.

Not that I can argue.  It’s for the best and I can see that.  The vomit I’d been catching in the small pink tray 10-15 times a day has diminished to 4-5 times in the mornings.  The weight she had lost has been regained.  But she wants to learn to crawl and to roll and to bounce across the room like a normal baby, which is difficult when you’re on a 3 foot leash attached to Pole. 

Even though he’s shiny.

Small

I remember her well.

A small girl engulfed in brothers who tackled her unbidden and unwanted.  Scraggly hair, ever unkempt, flew through the wind when she spun in the falling leaves or raced back up the hill to ride her sled once more.  Skinny legs ran wild through the sticker bushes, buttercups, and dandy lions and pushed her ever upward until the pine tree would bend.  Blue eyes delighted in bike rides around the lake, towering mountains surrounding, drank in the flooding of her own creek, and looked towards the big rock to seek out her friend.  Her heart loved the maple tree.  It's golden leaves falling to the wet ground, the whirring sound of their helicopters as they spun, and the tappity-scrape of the branches against her frigid single pane window all soaked in, familiar and known.  Dreams come true of horses and mud soup and picnics in trees filled her mind and the simplicity of a bell called her home for dinner.  When time allowed, as it often did, she slept long or lined up her dolls, naming them again and again through random jabs in the worn baby name book, just to see what each new name meant.  There's something in a name.  Blackberries, salmon berries, and huckleberries grew at her disposal each year and she made pies, real pies, as soon as she could.

She stood beside the little creek bed, the one that was her own.  Before many of these memories shaped and molded her, she stood.  Perhaps five years old.  She knew of God with the whole world in his hands and that he listened to little boys and little girls and everyone alike at the same time.  And she knew that she needed a frog.  Her older brother and the sisters two from down the street searched and they also knew that they needed a frog.  They had the red wagon and the waterskeeters, two or three per bread-tied sandwich bag.  But to make any money at all, there had to be a frog.  There had to be!

Never in all of history, or at least her own, had there been a frog in their creek.  In the boggy field next door, yes.  But not at home.  It ran too fast.  They looked anyway where there had been none.  She knew that God knew where all of the frogs lived and that he could bring one at any moment.  She believed it.  "We should pray!"  And so she turned her back and prayed a simple frog prayer.  "Ribbit!" came almost simultaneously with "Amen."  "A FROG!!!" they all yelled.  The brother caught it quickly as he shouted out, "This is the biggest frog we've ever found!!!"

A small child, a small bit of faith, a listening God who answers.  She thought of God and knew, without a doubt, that he is in control, that he is real, and that he cared even for her concerns - a small, dirty girl standing on a creek bank. 

She never forgot.