I saw it.
If you read our last blog post, you know that we had to take our son to the ER for RSV. The experience was all too familiar...call the on-call nurse, describe symptoms, ask what we should do, be advised to bring our baby in…
Bennett was acting normal and goofy as he sat on the bed in the ER room we were brought to. This didn’t stop us from experiencing feelings we hadn’t experienced in a year and a half - fear, anxiety, doubt. It didn’t stop us from asking questions that, because of what we experienced with Blakely, came so easily - will our baby die? For hours as we waited in the ER monitoring Bennett’s O2 levels, I paced and prayed. I had decided that until Bennett and Morgan were resting in some way, I wasn’t going to sit or stop praying. At that time, I prayed a lot of prayers and asked God to do many miracles but the main question I asked was, “Will we leave here with our baby?”
God’s response would confuse me in the days to come as He said, “You will have him.”
After a few hours, they decided to admit Bennett to his own room in the pediatrics floor so they could give him more oxygen and continue to monitor him. We packed up, grabbed all our belongings, and followed the nurse out of the room.
Then I saw it.
As we turned a corner in the ER, I looked down the hallway behind me.
There was the room our daughter had died in.
This was the hall that we sat in as we waited for what the doctors and staff were doing to work.This is where we stood and cried out to the Lord for our daughter’s life. And this is where we saw her go to be with Him.
For the 5 seconds I had before we left the ER at the end of that hallway, I was brought back to October 12, 2019. Those 5 seconds lead to days of praying a question to God, “Why do we have to do this again?”
Fear is a crippling force. It is not simply a force that stops us from doing something we’ve never done, but also one that places seeds of doubt into our hearts and minds about what we’ve been through before. Our minds have a way of taking previous failures and telling us that we’ll fail again. Previous downfall means we’ll have downfall again. Previous death means death again.
Fear does that. God does something else.
I prayed some pretty specific prayers in that hospital. Prayers like, “Lord, I pray we don’t have to see Bennett in an oxygen cannula.” and, “Lord, breathe life into his lungs so we don’t have to hear the sensor beep a warning again.” and, “Lord, just remove all ailments right now and let him be totally healed.” Well, we saw him in an oxygen cannula, the sensor continued to go off, and he wasn’t immediately healed. This caused me to struggle with my prayers and doubt crept in. Why wasn’t God answering these prayers that would make my baby ok? Why do I feel like He’s not doing anything?
What He said still lingered in my mind and still confused me, “You’ll have him.”
Once we knew he’d be ok and we just had to sit in the hospital room, Morgan and I began to talk about what we were feeling from the Lord and what we were praying. My wife in her incredible, Godly wisdom said this to me -
“Sometimes I think God allows us to endure situations just so we know we can go through them.”
Here I was expecting a miracle. I was so focused on what was happening here and now, Monday morning, while God was focused on Wednesday afternoon. God knew we would leave with our baby Wednesday. He knew Bennett would be healthy. I didn’t know any of that. I had let fear seep into my heart that it caused me to doubt the Lord and be so short-minded, but even when we don’t see it, He’s working.
Now, I’m not claiming to have all the answers. I don’t believe our daughter dying in the hospital was something God “allowed us to go through so we knew we could.”
But after that, I was afraid of that emergency room. I was afraid of something happening to our baby boy. I’m incredibly grateful that he ended up being ok and now he’s healthy as ever and back to being our happy, goofy little baby.
I’m also grateful that I know we can go to the ER with our baby and still take him home.
Just because God doesn’t perform the big miracle doesn’t mean He isn’t working in the background.
