Now you may be asking, "Why so gloomy, Alicia? It is after all the most wonderful time of the year!" While that is normally my opinion as well, this year has been different...and has consequently had me reaching to change the channel to anything other than Christmas music to help preserve the tiny bit of Christmas Spirit that I have left.
This year we (or rather some combination of us) have spent the better part of the month of December so far in the hospital (13 days and counting as it stands currently). What started on a Thursday night as Caleb not feeling well and going to bed early quickly turned into a diagnosis of strep throat on Friday and then to an ambulance ride to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston on Monday night. I did not know this until recently, but there is a condition called poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis where the strep bacterial infection causes the tiny blood vessels in the filtering units of the kidneys to become inflamed, making the kidneys less able to filter urine. This is what Caleb has, and his case is so bad that he has required dialysis over the past two weeks to do the job that his kidneys would normally be doing. In the meantime, all we can do is wait...wait for the inflammation to go down in his kidneys and for his kidneys to start functioning properly again. He has been poked and prodded for IVs, catheters, blood draws, and biopsies more than any of us would like to remember, but he has been so brave. He has been asked to drink disgusting medicine multiple times a day and not eat (or even move much) for hours on end during dialysis, but he has been so patient. I can't say that I have necessarily been brave and patient like him. I have mostly bounced back and forth between sad and totally and completely impatient and mad...really mad (as in, I think I need to use some of Caleb's blood pressure medicine). I was (am) mad at the doctors and at the nurses and at the ridiculous traffic that we have to endure to get to this hospital! I know how illogical it is to be mad at any of these alleged offenders. I've tried to get to the root of this anger, and I think it all goes back to being angry that this has even happened to him and to us and not being sure where to lay the blame. No five-year-old should have to spend December cooped up inside attached to machines when he should be going crazy out of excitement for Christmas. And, of course, there's only one place the blame for that can go. To my knowledge, God is the only being in charge of which circumstances may or may not befall any of us. There were quite a few moments over the past two weeks where I finally admitted to myself that I was mad at God for letting this happen to Caleb (and to the rest of the family who have also suffered with him). Nevertheless, we did all we could do, which was pretty much limited to praying. We prayed unceasingly, many of you with us, but with each passing day, all we heard was silence mixed with the whizzing and whirring of the dialysis machine. My biggest fear was that the damage was irreversible and that his kidneys would not start back up on their own.
Looking back on it now, I can see that there were little signs of God's love for us mixed all through out this trial. Here are just a few of them:
1) One of the Bible verses that we have always sang to Caleb in times of fear or trouble (including several times in the ER during this trial) is Isaiah 41:10: "So do not fear for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." I think it was no coincidence that the room that we went to in the ICU was room 4110.
2) For whatever reason, God has always used birds to remind me of his care for me (as you can see from my other Crazy Bird Lady stories on this blog). This was no exception. After a sleepless night and day at the hospital, I returned home for some sleep. When I awoke the next morning at about 6:30, when it was twenty-seven degrees outside and pitch dark, right outside the kitchen window, there was a sole bird singing a song. It lasted for about five minutes, and I haven't heard it since. It's like it was just a quick note from God telling me that he was going to get us through this.
3) All throughout this experience, I kept running into this memory verse in various things I read: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16) "This means that our struggles and prayers are not greeted with harshness, condemnation or impatience, but with understanding and sympathy. All this means that we can rest assured that we will receive from his hand mercy that is formfitted for the particular needs in which we find ourselves. We can be confident that he hears us with the sympathy of shared experience, and, because he does, he will provide for us exactly what we need." (Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies.) These were the exact words I needed to hear.
4) Lastly, but most importantly, I have felt God's love in the tangible ways that so many of you have cared for us. From help with childcare to bringing meals to visiting with Caleb to sending gifts and encouraging messages our way to praying without ceasing, our family and friends have been so good to us through this. You all have loved us well, and for that, we are so thankful.
When I started writing this post, we were thinking that Caleb wouldn't come home until Christmas Eve at the earliest, and that was only in the absolute best case scenario. Those sad Christmas songs were touching a little too close to home. You can imagine the joy and surprise when we learned this morning that he was on the list to go home TODAY. His blood looked great, and he had started producing urine again. There was simply no reason to keep him any longer.
So it was with overflowing joy and gratitude (and with Christmas music blaring all the way) that I drove my brave and patient boy back home late this afternoon (not without first making a pit stop for a Happy Meal, which he has been wanting since we first were admitted). When we came home, he gave Wren and Judson a great big hug each and just looked around the house in awe. At about 7:15 tonight, he sleepily crawled into his bed, talking the whole time about how happy he was to be home and in his own bed. My thoughts exactly.
These were not the plans that I had for our Christmas season. We were going to bake cookies, see Christmas lights, listen to Handel's Messiah, act out the Nativity, and a long laundry list of other festive activities. God had different plans for us. Instead, he showed us what it is to be loved - by Jesus, by family, by friends, by doctors, by nurses, by people close to us and by random strangers. Truly, what better gift could there be?
"What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."From our finally-together-family to yours, we hope you have yourself a merry little Christmas. I know we certainly will.
(We don't have many pictures from our "stay" at the hospital, but here are the few that we had.)
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| Caleb enjoying the garden on an unseasonably warm December day. |
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| Some Falcons players came caroling on our floor one day! |
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| Finally going home! |
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