Uncomfortable Silence

Recently, my husband and I found ourselves in a situation where we really needed to hear God speak.

It’s important to know a little back story to understand our recent situation.

On December 5th our oldest, Ace, came into the world a little earlier than expected. On top of being premature, he had a slew of surprise medical issues going on. His lungs were made up of cysts, his liver had anatomical and functional issues, and he did not have an immune system. He was quickly transported to University Hospital’s Rainbow Babies and Children’s NICU in Cleveland, about 2 hours away from where we delivered him. Within a few days, he was living off of a ventilator breathing for him.

Doctors frantically tried to find the cause of what was going on with our little boy, even reaching out to specialists around the world to gather opinions and options to help him. But, days and weeks went by and no answers were found.

Nothing was working. He just kept getting worse. Finally, the doctors came in and empathetically told us he was not expected to live for more than a few days.

Desperate for God to save our son, we asked Him for a miracle. Heal our son.

Months went by, and Ace was still alive. He was living off of machines, but alive. It didn’t make sense. But my husband and I knew our God was working in our little guy’s body. Then, at the end of February, Ace was declining quickly and the doctors had hit every wall on treatments. The only shot left to try would be a lung transplant, which was incredibly risky and had a poor prognosis of saving his life.

We needed to make one of the most difficult decisions of our newly parents’ lives: Try a lung transplant or put Ace on comfort care.

As parents, we are willing to do whatever it takes to keep our son alive. But, as we prayed for God’s direction, He made it very clear to us that His plan for Ace did not include the lung transplant.

He was going to heal him His way.

So, we trusted and followed Him, and on February 28th, we declined the lung transplant making it clear to his medical team that we believed God was going to heal him.

Ace was officially on comfort care.

On March 1st, Ace began breathing over his ventilator every couple of breaths! We could see it before our very eyes! It was so illogical that a child with cysts instead of lungs who had been on life support ventilation for over a month could suddenly breathe on his own that his medical team’s first reaction was to check the ventilator monitor because it must be malfunctioning.

But, our God works illogically. He is powerful, and miraculously strengthened our little boy to breathe!

A few weeks later, he was breathing well enough that he was taken off of the ventilator and was breathing with oxygen all on his own! Over the next couple of months, Ace gradually improved with lots of bumps and backslides along the way.

And in June we finally got to bring him home!

Shortly after his first birthday, his bloodwork came back that his immune system was NORMAL and he no longer needed any medications or infusions! God had miraculously healed his little body to have a completely functioning immune system.

Today, three years later, while he can do all the things any little boy loves to do (run around the yard, climb the playground rock wall, eat loose snacks off of the floor and not get sick), his lungs still have cysts, and his liver still has the same issues. His medical team following his liver has strongly suggested that we do surgery to correct what’s going on since we left the NICU. And repeats this recommendation to us a couple times a year.

But, after all we had been through and seen God move in our little boy, we stopped and prayed for God’s direction about this surgery before jumping to a decision. Yet again, God made it very clear to us that we were to decline the surgery and He had another plan for Ace’s little body.

And so we have respectfully explained our decision to follow what we believe God is leading and declined the surgery for years.

Fast forward to today, my family and I are moving out West at the end of this month. We are working on wrapping all of Ace’s medical history in a nice, big bow to bring to his new doctors in Nebraska.

Two weeks ago, Ace went in for an MRI of his liver, CT of his lungs, and bloodwork to check his immune system. It was a long, tough day, but he was a brave little guy and got through it!

The next day, results started to trickle in.

Being able to see the results before you hear from the doctors is not always a great thing.

As I read through the results of Ace’s liver MRI, it was clear his liver had not gotten any better. But this time, there seemed to be some new issues that we weren’t expecting. Devastated and heartbroken, my husband and I started asking God, “Are we supposed to do the surgery now?”

This burning question consumed my prayer life.

You would think that after all we’ve been through with Ace and seeing God’s direction lead to Ace’s healing right before our eyes, I’d naturally be laser focused in my prayer time in seeking Him for His answer.

But, I kept losing focus.

And getting frustrated with myself.

The desire and the intensity of the need to hear from God were there. I wanted to hear Him. I needed to hear Him. Yet, I still found myself so easily distracted while I was supposed to be listening for His direction.

So I asked God to reveal my own heart to me and help me see what is the true struggle within me.

And He is always faithful to gently, yet firmly bring light to my distorted ways of thinking that come between Us that He wants to correct.

He’s shown me at the core of my short attention span isn’t that I’m incapable of focusing. Nor is it that I don’t want to hear His answer. It’s that the longer I wait and hear nothing, the more nervous I get that He’s not going to speak.

So, it’s easier for me to cut Our time off early and put my attention some place else than wait uncomfortably in silence.

But this is a stark difference from the way God directs us to seek Him in Jeremiah 29:

“You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)

God promises we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart.

But when I cut our time off because waiting is uncomfortable and the thought of not hearing from Him in my time of need is too nerve-racking to sit in, what does that show of my own heart?

It shows that I don’t fully believe Him when He tells me that I will find Him. Not I might if I say the right words, or if the timing is perfect.

I will find Him.

Waiting in silence is uncomfortable. But the reality is, if a period of silence is part of what God has for me in our time together, then it must serve a purpose. God knows how to prepare our hearts. He is not a loving Father who is unaware or uncaring of how we will react to what He intentionally speaks to us about.

There is beauty in the silence. As I waited to hear from Him, He began exposing the fears in my heart of what I perceived was going on. Even though I knew and trusted that God had said He will heal my son completely- my mama’s heart ached looking at his current reality.

His healing is still incomplete.

He knew I needed to come to terms with that before I could hear His answer to my burning question of surgery or no surgery. He knew I needed to remind my heart that deep within my core I know He is good and He does what He says He’ll do- regardless of what I can see right in front of me right now.

God made it clear that He still has a plan to heal Ace, and it is without this surgery.

So when we received the call from his doctor to discuss his MRI, they shared with us that his liver looks the same. Not any better, but also not worse. They still strongly encourage surgery, but they said they already knew our answer would probably be no because we believe God is going to heal him.

And my husband and I smiled at each other, and said that’s still where we stand.

This new awareness that I haven’t been trusting God at His word, and now intentionally clinging to His promise in Jeremiah 29, has radically changed my prayer time.

I still find myself tempted to turn my attention elsewhere when I feel the uncomfortable silence in waiting for Him to speak. But I repeat to myself and God His promise in Jeremiah.

I pray that you would take time to learn and store this beautiful promise in your own heart during your prayer time this week.

From one of His children to another,

Christi