Monday, November 2, 2009

Despair Shrinks Your Brain

Much has happened since my last post. Last Monday we attended a "care conference" with a few of her doctors to discuss her hip injury. The problem is no one has attempted to repair a torn hip tendon on a child with HEDS. Next, the attempts that have been made to surgically repair torn hip tendons on adults all have failed. Again, we are faced with uncharted choices. This left us with the problem of what to do since letting the tendon heal on its own is also not possible. We left the meeting with the task of not only telling our child that we cannot fix her hip, but also we cannot control her pain and she would be out of school indefinitely.

When we left the four hour meeting to pick her up, we find that she began vomiting while we were in the meeting. My husband went out of town on Tuesday morning and she went to the ER Tuesday night and stayed over until Wednesday. My mom, who was also ill had to take care of my other two kids who were also sick. While she was staying with my children in my house, she accidentally left the stove on in her house. The result was only some burnt plastic, thank God!

By Wednesday, I was a basket case. I had not slept in weeks and I was very down. I did not know how to console my daughter or anyone else in our family including me. Again, in desperation I prayed to God to lift us up knowing that I did not have the strength to do it myself.

It is wondrous how God answers desperate prayers. It is never in the way I expect. Usually it is in the small things that people say or do that confirms my faith in the Lord. The next day 3 people called out of the blue to tell me that they were praying of our family. Most of the prayers were centered around one theme: accept My help.

I am not quite sure why this is so difficult to me. God has had to yank out every last bit of pride and self reliance in order for me to see what my mind knows to be true. I know that I need the help of others, but it is so much easier for me to do it myself. What I keep missing are the arms that are out ready to catch and help. In my stubbornness, we have suffered much. God needed to completely crush my pride in every aspect of my life.

The last one was the faith of my child. I realized that one of my children believed that God was scary. She thinks that if God allowed all of this pain then He is scary. She had lost trust in Him and she did not know which way to turn. She knew that admitting this to me would hurt me and it did. I mistakenly thought that the one thing that I have done right is pointing my children to the Lord and His goodness. But it seemed that I failed at that too and I needed to rely on others to help my daughter to realize that God is Love not pain.

We decided to give this also to God and we wrote in her blessings book that we would expect someone to call, write or visit her the next day and tell her about God's great love for her. All through the day she was more and more anxious. By bed time she was very upset. She had only minutes before she needed to go to bed when the doorbell rang. It was one of our dear friends. She said that the Holy Spirit had sent her to our house to pray with us.

My daughter and I just cried as she prayed. Not only did her visit restore some of the trust in God for my daughter, but for me as well. This life her on earth is temporary. Our heaven is not here but waiting for us. To believe that this life is all we have is to despair and as my daughter says, despair shrinks your brain.

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