Thoughts From a Dark, Quiet Room on the 6th Floor...

 It sure has been a long day.  I'm the only one awake in this dark, quite room on the sixth floor.  Deep long breaths from two of the best men alive, one with a giant beard and the other a tiny heart.  I am not sure how much I have processed today.  I keep saying it has just been a roller coaster.  One minute it is good, good news.  The next we are in tears and afraid.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.
I do not know what was hardest about today.  It was hard to leave him in the nurse's arms for surgery. It was hard to wait on phone calls from the doctors and nurses.  It was really hard to hear that they didn't find a pathway to fix.  It is hard to think that our next step is just waiting to see if Huck will have another episode.  It was hard when his fever got so high and he was so miserable.  It was hard when we went back to recovery and saw our scared little boy with a big bump on his chest full of a monitor that he will wear for four years.  It was hard to watch Daniel cry through my tears as we literally felt the fear we had in our hands as we rubbed them over the bump.
I do not know what was best about today.  Maybe the morning, singing to my boy songs of hope and glory.  Maybe it was my family that is always there no matter what.  It was so good to walk out of the  surgical area and see what looked like Kyla's head and cry the happiest tears when I was surprised that it really was Kyla's head.  It was good to find out that my boy does not have a pathway that needs to be fixed.  It was good to trust Dr. Fish.  It was good to remember who God is when I am afraid.  It was good to rub my fingers over the bump in Huck's tiny chest and be reminded of where we have been and hope for where we will go.
Today has been so full of information...medical and emotional and spiritual.  The good and the hard have been so swirled together that it is hard to begin to understand what I am feeling.  Or thinking.  Or fearing.
But God...rich in mercy has drawn us to him more deeply and more fully than yesterday.
I have been reading Mark 5 a lot lately, where Jesus heals the daughter of a man named Jairus.  But before he brings Talitha back to life, there is a moment for Jairus when he finds out his little girl is dead.  When the hopes and the dreams that fill a father come spilling and crashing to the ground.  In that moment Jairus looks to Jesus and Jesus says only one thing:  "Don't be afraid.  Just believe."
For the next four years, my son will have a bump in his chest.  It will get harder to see as he changes and grows.  But one layer down, under his pale skin will sit a reminder of the God who knit his heart together, who drew us in, and who rescues even us.  A reminder that I will see every morning as I dress my boy to offer the invitation into a life of adventure, just as he did to Jairus:  Don't be afraid.  Just believe.

“I want to write something

so simply

about love

or about pain

that even

as you are reading

you feel it

and as you read

you keep feeling it

and though it be my story

it will be common,

though it be singular

it will be known to you

so that by the end

you will think—

no, you will realize—

that it was all the while

yourself arranging the words,

that it was all the time

words that you yourself,

out of your heart

had been saying.”

-Mary Oliver-