It happened again. This time worse than any before.
With each exhale, blood sprinkled from her nose. On the sheets and the pillow. On her hand and my hand. On her jammies and her teddy bear. In her hair.
I begged the Healer to stop it. To stop the blood. To spare her life. How many nights have I asked this? How many times has the morning sun found me crouched beside her bed begging the Giver of Life to grant breathe just a little longer?
We've surrounded her with all the pillows as she lay in the middle of our bed in our apartment in Asia. Her dad knelt on one side and me on the other, each with hands outstretched, one towards heaven and one on our daughter.
How many nights? Far more than I want to count or remember.
There were no more flights to Thailand that day. And had it not been for the predicament we now found ourselves in, I might have been relieved. Remember the hospital in the red light district on the brink of the coup? I was torn between that and the doctors in our city in Asia which had left stethoscope shaped bruises all over her torso. There were no good answers and we were out of options.
ITP is rarely fatal. Since rarely does not mean never we did all we could to manage the possibilities, namely the risk of stroke and bleeding. Hence the middle of the bed and all the pillows. It's a very big bed, long and wide designed for an entire family to sleep in during winters in the Himalayan foothills without indoor heat. It's quite Asian in appearance and lack of softness, and although our coworkers tease us about just how Asian it is, I've grown rather fond of it, as well as the rest of our furniture and our apartment there. Although none of it would ever have been my first choice in style or texture or quality, against great odds we've built a life there and we've loved that life.
Crouched on the floor of our Denver apartment that life seemed a million miles away, like a distant memory or perhaps even an entirely different lifetime. But the feelings were the same, the questions, the heartache. The doctors and the hospitals here are infinitely better, but her sickness is the same and this time worse. They'd done all they meant to do. My breathe caught in my throat as I waited for shoulders to rise with another inhale. "Giver of life, sustain my child." The irony stops me, once again. It's the night before Easter after all. How many times did I beg, "Spare my son, you who did not spare your own son but gave him up for us all, please spare my son." And that handsome man I married, he'd add boldly from across the hospital bed or the echocardiogram table or the darkness of our bedroom, "If it be your will. Spare our son, if it be your will." And I'd glare at him from my side of the hospital room or the lab table or the darkness of the bedroom. How I would glare! Didn't he know that when you entrust people to the One who made them, they almost always die?
It's not that he hasn't lost as much as I have or that he loves Benaiah any less than I do, it's simply that he trusts the Maker more. And I learned that from him that year.
Benaiah didn't die. But our lives were never the same and after three solid years of heartache, we have yet to leave the valley of shadows. At least we are not alone within it.
With deep peace that can be explained only by the inexplicably, I added "in accordance to Your will" to the end of my plea for her life. And I meant it. Again. Just like I meant in the middle of nowhere Asia when her platelets were 3. And I meant it in Bangkok when she had meningitis symptoms. And I meant it days before Christmas when she relapsed the third time.
She is His. We've known that from the moment we learned of her existence. That's why her name means gift.
Nothing we can say or do changes that. She belongs to Him.
I read and reread the songs that have soothed our souls. I read and reread promises of His presence, His power, His healing. I reread this. (Her dad died with mine and her daughter lives with them now.) And I remembered that the author of the songs we love so well lost 2 children and survived.
I sent this friend these texts:
"But each day he pours his unfailing love upon my daughter. And through each night I sing His songs, talking to the one who gives my daughter life. 42.8"
"How many nights have you and I done this? (her infant daughter had just recovered from very scary bronchiolitis just weeks before and we'd texted through my days/her nights.) What a blessing to lay our treasures humbly at his feet. So hard though. Tonight I am spent."
And indeed I was. But He met me there as He's met us before and will meet us again.
Morning came. The steroids kicked in. The bleeding stopped. Our little gift woke up with a smile and we rejoiced in the blessing of another day.
Friends around the country and the world continue to rally around us and our precious girl, bringing us faithfully before the throne. She's still on steroids and our whole future is in the air. We're ok with that. We'll build a live wherever He sends us.
In the meantime, we called Elders to bring oil and lay their hands on her head. She fell asleep and then slept peacefully while they asked for her healing.
We continue to walk each day in the knowledge of His presence. He alone gives life. He alone is the healer. In the nights that followed, Hadiah struggled to sleep. We read the stories of His days here. How the blind saw. The lame leapt. The dead lived again. We read every account of the woman with the issue of blood. I wish you could see in her little steroid swollen face the love that she has for the one who Heals. It is contagious and convicting.