For John.
The ultrasound technician did the run through, showed us
your face, your shoulders, your fingers and feet. You wiggled and squirmed and your father and I were filled with
awe and pride as we stared at the monitor.
Without any prompting, the ultrasound technician got up and left and in
her place came a doctor. He repeated the
process again, politely showing us your various features, and then he paused,
looked at us, and said calmly and deliberately:
“The ventricles of the brain are enlarged.”
Of course, he said much more, but for me, all the other
words seemed to just float around in the air, and only some of them came to land
in my consciousness. Words like “normal life”, “shunts to drain”, “surgery after birth”, "one in a thousand". And then I stopped listening, and I just
stared at your image, still on the monitor, still squirming and growing and
full of so much life.
When we got home, your father tried to explain to me what
the doctor had said. Borderline
bilateral ventriculomegaly. It is a
term that, to this day, I still cannot recall, and I must ask your father each
time to tell me again. From the moment
I first heard it, I have blocked it from my mind. Your father researched it, and when we discovered just how
enormous the odds of you being diagnosed with this condition were, our hearts
broke into pieces. We were convinced
that this didn’t just happen by chance; instead, we believed it was yet another way that
God had decided to test us. Never
before had I felt such betrayal by the God whom I had only recently begun to
trust again. I felt like we’d just been
subjected to one of the dirtiest tricks that providence could play on us.
But where do you turn in times like that if not back to
God? We knew that we must carry on, and
that we would love you no matter what your future held, and we asked God to not
forsake us in that moment of desolation.
We cried at night and each morning, we washed away our tears and faced
our days. We told no one of your
diagnosis, for we knew that the weight that would be added from well-meaning yet
careless comments would be more than we could handle. Time would reveal all, we believed, and so we prayed for a
miracle, and began our journey toward acceptance of God’s will for you and for
us.
In was during the midst of this journey, only a few days
after that devastating ultrasound, when your father found himself in the
cathedral. It was the same church in which he’d frequently prayed for a child, and where he’d often gone to find
peace during those many years that we waited for you. As he fervently prayed that day, he looked up and noticed a
bishop walking towards the sanctuary.
Your father felt moved to approach him and rushed toward the front of
the church and caught the bishop’s attention.
And he poured out the whole story to this holy man, the story of our
years of struggle to conceive, the loss of a previous child, and now the story
of you and your miraculous conception, and our most recent tragedy of facing an
uncertain future with you. The bishop
listened carefully and then he simply asked, “When can you come back here with
your wife? I want to pray with you
both.”
Two days later, we sat in a quiet room with the bishop, and
we talked of our lives and our various journeys in faith. He told us that he was going to pray for you
specifically and also, that your father and I would be blessed with even more
children. He then stood, walked over to
my side, and asked your father to do the same.
The bishop placed his hands upon my head while your father placed his on
my shoulders, and as your father and I listened, the bishop prayed aloud using
words that I did not understand. Peace
filled the room and your father, in particular, said that he had felt something come
over him that he could not explain.
Unlike me, he was certain that something had changed.
We went home and for the first night since we’d learned of
the ventriculomegaly, we slept soundly.
But little did we know that God would be granting us one more very
powerful intercessor as we made our way on this journey. It was three days after our prayerful
meeting with the bishop that your great-grandmother died. She had been our last living grandparent and
she had been so excited to meet you.
When we had last seen her, only a few months before, she had appeared
well, and she spoke excitedly about your pending arrival. She loved all her
grandchildren and great-grandchildren so much, and we couldn’t wait to introduce you
to her. To learn of her unexpected
death was yet another blow to us. Why
now? And yet, somehow, I felt like I
knew the answer to that. “She wants to
help us,” I told your father, “and now she can help us more than ever.” So, as
we stood beside her casket and looked upon her one last time, I made one final
request of her, “Please, ask Jesus to heal our son.”
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