It all started with a runny nose on a Monday. Two weeks ago today, in fact. My husband had an overnight trip planned for work, and just as his bags were packed, it happened.
Our oldest son is not a stranger to colds, or what other parents of infants and young toddlers may know as bronchiolitis. Little ones have little airways, and I remember googling that b word from the emergency room the first time he was diagnosed at four months old. A new mom, trying to hug, hold on, hold it together; concentrate hard to form the words to pray as he wheezed breath. I still know the sound of his doctor’s voice as she advised me to ride in the backseat of the car with him from her office to the ER, in case he turned blue. Our baby. His child. A day that quickened my own breath and forced me to just breathe. I thank God for being with us and being bigger than that b word.
Not long after he turned a year old, we followed the ambulance that woke up the neighbors with sirens and flashing lights. After a choking spell in his crib that had my husband holding him over the bathroom sink, pounding his back and forcing us both to be our bravest yet, we hear another doctor tell us just how ugly a cold can be.
We surrendered. We remembered. Our God was with us.
I can say our God is merciful because I know it to be true. I thank Him that His mercy has spared us from the heartbreak of others I know, who have and still suffer a loss words cannot describe. Their strength in the midst of such brokenness is beyond this world, and I am brought to my knees as greif cuts down to bone and marrow. Tears over the too young and even younger still drip down my face as I remember. Mercy.
Now as we are approaching day 15 of what I hope is just another cold, I ask for help. Help from a Healer who is not me, who I cannot be. Sensitive ears listen as his coughs echo in his nursery monitor each night, and my eyes watch his chest close after each nap. He has already seen his doctor once in the past two weeks and inhaled medicine she prescribed. He will breathe it again before bedtime tonight. This cold wants to be shared, and it has muffled my own voice as I sip vitamin C, warm in a mug and drink down medicine that shouldn’t harm our youngest I still nurse. He has sniffles, too. I keep listening. I keep watching. I keep praying.
My husband forced me to step away this evening, and so I shut our bedroom door for these fifteen minutes. I hear coughs, but they’re mixed with the roll of train wheels our little guy is pushing around the kitchen floor, and his laughter that IS the best medicine for Mommy. My husband is rocking our youngest, and I hear the washing machine whirling to a stop.
In a moment, I will put down my keyboard, and I will wipe my nose and close my eyes. I will thank my God for these boys He let me spend time with today. For this man I call my husband who holds my hand in good times and in bad. Sickness and in health. I will open my Father’s letters to me and listen to His prescription to heal this heart of mine.
I will listen.
I will not fear, because He is bigger. He is the Word, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is everything we need.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
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