Pleading for Peace

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I went to visit my nephew yesterday, the one who was emotionally destroyed by his mother's loss a few months ago.  You have to understand that this nephew tends to only believe what he sees.  He's never considered himself religious.  But the burden of his loss grew so heavy that he turned upward.  He plead for peace like his life depended on it.  In some ways, it does because he has been simply existing, an empty shell.  It has been months since he's actually lived his life.

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But then he plead for peace.  He sought hope, a sign, something that would help him move beyond the void of his existence.  And that night, his mother's voice came to him.  He heard her reassuring him, encouraging him, sharing the love he had craved as badly as a starving man craves food.  His late dog was there, sharing his love, supporting him.  His brother even felt the thump of the tail. As my nephew spoke of this experience, tears sprang to his eyes, and he did something that awed and inspired me: he bore testimony of God.  It was beautiful and intense.

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I am a religious person, but I haven't had this kind of experience.  I have read scriptures and prayed.   I have sought both joy and peace.  But I can't say that I've put this kind of passion and intensity into my prayers.  And it may be this is a gift God knows he needed but I do not.  Angels speak by the power of the Spirit.  And the words she spoke to her son sounded like her voice.  The Spirit was strong in the room when he shared his story.  I have no doubt this was his mother speaking to him because he needed it.  He needed her hope, her strength, her love.  In a way, I envy that experience.  I'd love to hear my angel's voice.  But I haven't sought that gift with my whole heart.  And I probably haven't needed it like he did.  God knows what we need.  And if we plead with Him, it may take a while or it may be fast, but He will answer.  Sometimes, that answer is no.  And sometimes, as it was for my nephew, that answer is yes.  And if, by some chance, we do have the sacred experience of such a gift, we get it for a reason.  Now, it's up to my nephew to embrace that gift, the gift of hope and the reminder of his mother's love, a love that can sustain and motivate him to live again.

Close Calls and Miracles

[My big boy preemie]

Do close calls haunt you as much as they do me, moments when you were either aware of how close you came to loss at the time or considered it later?  I've had close shaves in traffic that haunt me for quite a while after.  I should have lost my boy because of his fragile umbilical, which broke on its own when he was born a month early (early enough to be called a preemie but big enough that he didn't look it).  He could have died had he twisted the wrong way while in the womb.  Thoughts of this kind of close call haunt me. 

[My perfect (but shouldn't have been) second baby]

My girls were both miracle children as well.  My older girl should not have had a picture-perfect pregnancy and delivery due to the Kell antibody, a rare antibody that acts like RH- but with no possible treatment.  It treats the baby like a disease in the womb, one which needs to be attacked and killed.  Many babies have died of anemia or have had to be induced way early due to anemia.  My first daughter was in no way affected but should have been. When I was pregnant with my angel, we found out that we were 100% guaranteed to deal with Kell every pregnancy.  Yet it wasn't an issue with my first daughter.  Although we drove a 2 hour round trip every 1-2 weeks to the hospital to have my angel observed, she showed no signs of stress.  Both little girls were miracle babies because Kell didn't affect them, didn't seem to even touch them.  Meanwhile, I'd read a study of 6 women pregnant with Kell babies during the 80s.  All six babies died.  Mine were untouched. 

[My tiny angel who came and went]

Then, four months after birth, my second daughter, one of my miracle children, died in an accident, rolled into a pillow.  That was not a close call.  That was loss and pain that colored every other close call from before and after. Loss and pain that changed everything.

[Ambulance ride to remember.]

 
Now, I'm hypersensitive to close calls.  At the end of the summer season when my baby died, my older daughter collapsed in the beach with a grand mal seizure.  We were rushed an hour away to the closest hospital.  I knew I could have lost her there, but she was preserved.                                                                                                                                                                         

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Close calls haunt me elsewhere, too.  If I have that close-call in traffic, it bothers me.  When I tripped and fell on a sidewalk, and my head somehow skimmed past a bumper to land between bumper and ground, I knew I could have died.  I found out fairly recently a serial killer was working at the same school where I was working in college.  He was picking up and murdering women who roamed those streets mere blocks from my campus.  That feels like a close call to me.  Close calls are scarier than they ever were before because I understand mortality more than I ever did before.  I know I'm not in the "safe" land of it-couldn't-happen-to-me.  I understand bad things can happen to anybody at any time.  Close calls become scarier when you understand the angel if death is not far off for any of us at any time. 

[Helping hand]

Which is what makes our guardian angels all the more precious, what makes the protective hand of providence all the more prized.  When my daughter walked away after treatment for the febrile seizure with no permanent harm, I was reassured in a blessing that my children had a mission, that they would be preserved until that mission was fulfilled.  I know I have a mission, a purpose, here.  And I will be here and safe until that mission is fulfilled.  There is fear in focusing on close calls but comfort in focusing on faith.  At any one time, we can choose to embrace faith, to trust God and know He knows the grand plan.  He knows when it is our time to be preserved and when it is our time to be called home.  If I trust in Him, He will protect me until my mission is done.  It's easy to let fear creep into my mind, to remind me that close calls and loss are around every corner.  It's up to me where I allow my mind to dwell.  And my life is a lot happier when I trust in the hand of the Lord.