God never puts more on us than we can physically handle. We wonder at times how we can do it, but we manage. In January I lost my mother to small cell lung cancer. For 9 long months I watched her slowly and painfully slip away from me and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. Every chemo cycle became harder to overcome yet she chose to continue. I never left her side and at times I wondered if I could continue yet I did.

In September my mother-in-law had a stroke and 7 days later broke her hip in 3 places. She never came out of the anesthesia where she could carry on a conversation. Within 5 days she was on a feeding tube. Three weeks later she was in a permanent vegetative state. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, either Bob or myself had to be by her side. First my mother and now my mother-in-law? WHY? Our faith was shattered yet we continued. God will not put more on you than you can physically handle.

You and Loi are special parents who have been given a special child. Justin is a gift from God. When you look into his eyes you will see those brighter days. When he squeezes your hand or smiles at you, THAT is your hope.

Again, thank you for sharing. Now, I don’t feel so alone and hopeless. And, thank you for bringing into light that reason does not prevail over faith. Even that doctor could not explain your dad’s miraculous recovery.

Faith–sometimes, that’s all we need.

Thank You,

Jen

I remember the day I gave up on my Dad. The doctors told us he wouldn’t live until morning. His kidneys were not functioning, he could not breathe on his own, his pancreas had turned on him and was literally digesting itself. I was utterly and completely helpless, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had been the one there, reading everything I could, learning everything I could, arranging for a room with a window so that he wouldn’t be disoriented by the constant light, talking to every doctor and specialist, pleading his case before the medical staff and God. At this moment, though, I wasn’t by his bedside. I was in the waiting room watching all of the relatives I hadn’t seen in years file wearily file into the room. It was like he was already gone… it was too painful to think that that moment had come.

Thing is, the truth about my dad was bigger than me, and it was greater than what I felt I could handle and what I could control. It was bigger than the doctors. The truth was that God was not done with him yet. He didn’t die that night. He didn’t die in either of the subsequent hospitalizations — not even in emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding from an exposed artery that once again threatened his life a few weeks later.

That morning after dad pulled through, we talked to the ICU doctor. He was an amazing physician, and what he had done to save my father’s life was nothing short of perfect, but even he looked puzzled. He acknowledged that medicine wasn’t entirely responsible for my Dad’s recovery. Ultimately, Dad was in the hands of the Great Physician.

I had other really dark moments over the next several weeks. It was depressing to hand “fireworks” I made from metallic pipe cleaners from the hardware over his bed in the ICU on the 4th of July. Another time I got lost in the parking lot looking for my car and wandered in tears for 30 minutes before a man with a cart found me and drove me slowly around until I could find it. I was empty. I had nothing to give.

On one of those dark days, a woman came to me in the corridor of the ICU. She was with her partner, who assured me that she had an uncanny knack for something like prophecy. She looked at me and told me, “Your dad is going to walk out of here.” I wanted so much to believe her. I didn’t know how. But that didn’t matter. It wasn’t up to me and my faith. In the end, she was right.

When I needed them most, God brought people into my life to tell me what I needed to hear. He brought the hugs, the hope, and the strength I needed to stay there another day, doing what I needed to do.

I’ve never had the gift of prophecy, so I can’t pretend to know the future, but I do know that the God of the present is holding your precious family in His gentle hands, and he won’t let go.