27 September 2006

What to say?

Whether actually perceived or only imagined, I’ve had this feeling that several people are waiting to see what I will post about Odin’s ordeal. Not that they expect it to be groundbreaking, or wise, or even interesting – just the sense that I obviously need to say something.

But really – what can I say?

The truth is I’ve never been so physically, spiritually and emotionally exhausted as I am today. Despite a powerful sense of God’s hand in the immediate crisis, I find myself today cowering in a hole, simply trying to survive what feels like a long, dark night. Oddly enough, it’s from that pit that even in the last couple of days I’ve seen God speak powerfully through me to at least three people – in weakness His strength is made manifest I suppose – but I feel sort of like a meat puppet. Used by God, sure – but only marginally in the space myself.

Last week Odin had a cold and he was coughing like he had TB or something. He would be so hungry and tired, and we would try to feed him, but in his rushed feeding he would always gag and start to cough violently again. Then he’d throw up what ever he had managed to eat because he’d worked himself into such a lather. He was so very, very miserable and this went on for most of a week. Rebekah and I barely slept and when we weren’t sleeping we wept. When we weren’t weeping, we stared blankly at a wall or some flickering, mindless sitcom.

I found myself in deep despair one evening, so frustrated that the baby wouldn’t stop coughing, and wouldn’t stop crying, and wouldn’t JUST STOP! And at that moment, it’s not just the baby, it’s everything. It’s so incredibly unfair. He’s supposed to be a happy little baby, doing cute little baby things as his proud and doting parents look on at this little blessing from Heaven. But instead he’s born broken – critically ill from his first moment on Earth and nobody knows. Ten days in an ICU violated by more tubes than he has fingers, another three days poked and measured and calibrated like a lab rat only to be followed a few short weeks later by a solid week of constant drifting between a racking cough (in his barely healed throat), constant hunger, and dropping to sleep from sheer exhaustion – I swear I want to fucking scream!

I wanted so very, very much for God to heal Odin in that hospital. I gave everything I could to faith that surgery wouldn’t be needed. I wanted so very, very much to rely on God’s hand, not the hands of a surgeon. And I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t powerfully disappointed. I’d be lying to you if I said this season isn’t trying my faith in a very ugly and vivid way. I’d by lying to you if I said I knew for certain how this will all turn out – where I’ll be or what I’ll look like from the other end.

But for the moment – I have nowhere else to go.
I have no one else to look to.
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him – blessed be the name of the Lord.