Giving Thanks for the Dark Days
The moon reflecting on snow, moonlight dances white over wonder of winter.
I sit inside with candles flickering against the night air, heavy with the expectation of snow.
Holding this pajama clad blond boy, coughing croupy, sick eyed and still.
The others are visiting grandma and grandpa and the house is quiet and dim.
The doctor said she couldn't believe it was croup. When I called and said it was croup, they didn't believe it because they usually see it only in the fall or spring but yes, it sure is croup, she said. "But this croup isn't that bad, it sounds worse than it is," she encouraged.
I'd said that I knew, because I'd seen bad croup. So bad that it sent my firstborn to the hospital. At that doctor appointment the pediatrician took one look at us and told me to hold tight because he was calling for an ambulance. Me, pregnant with daughter and holding my lethargic feverish son, climbed into the ambulance and rode away into the damp October air. And after a long night and another day they sent us home. And that boy, he's a strapping boy of twelve now, taller than his mama who held him that night. And I remember prayers prayed and God who answered. And I give thanks.
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1)
And I think about my Christmas son. The one born just after Christmas, the one we named Christian, because he came as our Christmas present, long awaited. I think of this Christmas boy, this present boy, who's birth was so uneventful but then... the day after we got home from the hospital I open his diaper to change it and find him covered with gaping green infected staph sores. Back to the doctor and medicine and better but a week later it's his neck that is swollen. I could feel the lumps in his tiny newborn neck under soft peachy skin. The doctor said she didn't know this time, we needed to see a specialist. So back to the hospital and MRI's and tests and blood work and no one knew what or why. And so we did what we could do. We prayed. People at church, they surrounded us with prayer and Sherry Wolpert, she prayed for him long after a Saturday night service and once again, God answered. The lumps, they just disappeared. When we went back for the tests and the next MRI, the technician said, they were just gone. He didn't know how but it's good news isn't it?
Yes, I said, it is good news.
Give thanks to Him alone who does mighty miracles,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:4)
And two weeks after that, this same Christmas baby boy, he started burning up with fever. After a hockey game, we came home and he wouldn't wake up to nurse. I felt him and he was hot, but breathing hard and strange like nothing I'd ever seen in all the three kids that came before him. I sat him next to my bed in his little carrier to watch him because it was late and I was mama-tired but I couldn't leave him. Watching, I saw his little chest heaving and straining and then he just stopped breathing.
Stopped. Breathing.
He was blue around his mouth and every mama thing in me just wanted to scream. But my screaming became a blowing of air into tiny lungs until he started breathing again. Running into the room where my husband was asleep I yelled that Christian wasn't breathing and I flung him into his arms. I grabbed the carrier and baby and ran for the car because I was sure I could drive this baby to the hospital quicker than the ambulance could get there. Baby boy was breathing ragged again but breathing. In that car, I prayed, "Lord, I trust you. Even if you take him, I will yet praise you. I will praise you."
Give thanks to Him who led his people through the wilderness.
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:16)
And at the hospital they strapped him full of tubes and oxygen and there he lay, naked, wearing only a tiny knitted hat and plastic tubing as a vest. The respiratory therapist came in every hour or two, and forced a tube down his nose and into his lung and just looking at him, she started to cry. And I sat there, watching her crying over my child, and I said, Lord, I trust you, even if...I will yet praise you. And Peace was in the room that day. Because Peace is a person, they call Him the Prince of it. Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
The respiratory therapist said she thought it was RSV and maybe I should get him transferred to a hospital for children where he could get better care. So we did. Seven days of sleeping on a hospital cot next to this Christmas baby-bundle, I prayed, I ate the Word and spoke it out again in words of truth as a blanket for his naked skin, truth to heal tiny lungs.
And seven days later, we got to take our Christmas baby home, with breathing treatments and medicines and instructions not to take him out of our home for three whole months, but home. And God, He answered.
He remembered us in our weakness,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:23)
That Christmas baby turned six yesterday.
A day spent riding slides at an indoor water park to celebrate his big six, and so much grace.
And now this littlest son, fourth of the sons, sixth of them all, is himself croupy and feverish and sick, but this isn't a day for complaining, it's a day for rejoicing.
It's a day for reflecting.
It's a day for remembering how very, graciously, good God is.
How good He has been to us, when we never ever deserved it.
How good He is always, even in the dark days, the dim days, the days when it seems the prayers aren't answered the way we want, He is still good.
Because it's in the dark days, that we can remember how He has held us.
How He's holding us still.
When we remember His faithfulness.
And snow-reflected moonlight dazzles, only amidst the darkness of night.
It's in the dark days that we see the Light of His presence shining brightest.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:26)
I sit inside with candles flickering against the night air, heavy with the expectation of snow.
Holding this pajama clad blond boy, coughing croupy, sick eyed and still.
The others are visiting grandma and grandpa and the house is quiet and dim.
The doctor said she couldn't believe it was croup. When I called and said it was croup, they didn't believe it because they usually see it only in the fall or spring but yes, it sure is croup, she said. "But this croup isn't that bad, it sounds worse than it is," she encouraged.
I'd said that I knew, because I'd seen bad croup. So bad that it sent my firstborn to the hospital. At that doctor appointment the pediatrician took one look at us and told me to hold tight because he was calling for an ambulance. Me, pregnant with daughter and holding my lethargic feverish son, climbed into the ambulance and rode away into the damp October air. And after a long night and another day they sent us home. And that boy, he's a strapping boy of twelve now, taller than his mama who held him that night. And I remember prayers prayed and God who answered. And I give thanks.
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1)
And I think about my Christmas son. The one born just after Christmas, the one we named Christian, because he came as our Christmas present, long awaited. I think of this Christmas boy, this present boy, who's birth was so uneventful but then... the day after we got home from the hospital I open his diaper to change it and find him covered with gaping green infected staph sores. Back to the doctor and medicine and better but a week later it's his neck that is swollen. I could feel the lumps in his tiny newborn neck under soft peachy skin. The doctor said she didn't know this time, we needed to see a specialist. So back to the hospital and MRI's and tests and blood work and no one knew what or why. And so we did what we could do. We prayed. People at church, they surrounded us with prayer and Sherry Wolpert, she prayed for him long after a Saturday night service and once again, God answered. The lumps, they just disappeared. When we went back for the tests and the next MRI, the technician said, they were just gone. He didn't know how but it's good news isn't it?
Yes, I said, it is good news.
Give thanks to Him alone who does mighty miracles,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:4)
And two weeks after that, this same Christmas baby boy, he started burning up with fever. After a hockey game, we came home and he wouldn't wake up to nurse. I felt him and he was hot, but breathing hard and strange like nothing I'd ever seen in all the three kids that came before him. I sat him next to my bed in his little carrier to watch him because it was late and I was mama-tired but I couldn't leave him. Watching, I saw his little chest heaving and straining and then he just stopped breathing.
Stopped. Breathing.
He was blue around his mouth and every mama thing in me just wanted to scream. But my screaming became a blowing of air into tiny lungs until he started breathing again. Running into the room where my husband was asleep I yelled that Christian wasn't breathing and I flung him into his arms. I grabbed the carrier and baby and ran for the car because I was sure I could drive this baby to the hospital quicker than the ambulance could get there. Baby boy was breathing ragged again but breathing. In that car, I prayed, "Lord, I trust you. Even if you take him, I will yet praise you. I will praise you."
Give thanks to Him who led his people through the wilderness.
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:16)
And at the hospital they strapped him full of tubes and oxygen and there he lay, naked, wearing only a tiny knitted hat and plastic tubing as a vest. The respiratory therapist came in every hour or two, and forced a tube down his nose and into his lung and just looking at him, she started to cry. And I sat there, watching her crying over my child, and I said, Lord, I trust you, even if...I will yet praise you. And Peace was in the room that day. Because Peace is a person, they call Him the Prince of it. Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
The respiratory therapist said she thought it was RSV and maybe I should get him transferred to a hospital for children where he could get better care. So we did. Seven days of sleeping on a hospital cot next to this Christmas baby-bundle, I prayed, I ate the Word and spoke it out again in words of truth as a blanket for his naked skin, truth to heal tiny lungs.
And seven days later, we got to take our Christmas baby home, with breathing treatments and medicines and instructions not to take him out of our home for three whole months, but home. And God, He answered.
He remembered us in our weakness,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:23)
That Christmas baby turned six yesterday.
A day spent riding slides at an indoor water park to celebrate his big six, and so much grace.
And now this littlest son, fourth of the sons, sixth of them all, is himself croupy and feverish and sick, but this isn't a day for complaining, it's a day for rejoicing.
It's a day for reflecting.
It's a day for remembering how very, graciously, good God is.
How good He has been to us, when we never ever deserved it.
How good He is always, even in the dark days, the dim days, the days when it seems the prayers aren't answered the way we want, He is still good.
Because it's in the dark days, that we can remember how He has held us.
How He's holding us still.
When we remember His faithfulness.
And snow-reflected moonlight dazzles, only amidst the darkness of night.
It's in the dark days that we see the Light of His presence shining brightest.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
His faithful love endures forever. (Psalm 136:26)
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