Tough seasons happen. It’s the reality of life. This current season of illness with my kids has been one of the most difficult in the past year. Last week our son Luke suddenly spiked a fever at the highest 107- I thought the thermometer was broken. Seeing him beet red, immobile and just barley present scared me to death. I am not the mom who runs to the doctor every time my kid coughs but we took him to the emergency room that night.
I sstayed home with Isaac and Hope while Nathan took Luke in and I spent most of that time in tears. Losing one child is difficult but the thought of anything happening to Luke terrorized me. I kept thinking back to when the last time I went to the emergency room giving birth to a baby I didn’t come home with. Would that happen again?
BUT GOD- by the time Luke was in a triage bed his fever dropped (we had to force feed him medicine before he left)- doctor said it was the flu (second time in 6 weeks) but the entire week he had to be on a strict three hour fever reducer meds and there was no wiggle room. One minute he’s be at 99- then a few minutes later it would jump to 105.
I learned something this week- medicine is powerful, but prayer is made of stronger stuff. Tuesday night when was just screaming in pain and I had NOTHING to give, I prayed. A friend texted me the next morning and said “I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about Luke and prayed for him.” We are never alone as a family of believers.
I’d been super on edge all week in emergency mode checking his temp making sure he was ok. Friday night we went to our first small group and asked our community to pray for our son and that night after we got home he screamed at midnight again and we run in with thermometers and medicine-all to realize his fever had broken- he was at 97 degrees and sweating out the rest of the flu. The next day he was his joyful (although very skinny) self. Luke has been smiling for the past three days and giving everyone hugs
The Bible says this in Ephesians 3:20-
Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
God is able to do WAY MORE than fear or trauma want to limit Him to.
The power of prayer is a real thing. The power of reaching out to community is a real thing. Trusting your intuition/ gut/ mommy radar whatever you want to call it is valid
God is STILL ABLE to answer prayers in the darkest times in life. He is STILL ABLE to answer prayers in the best time. I had this terrible fear of losing my son due to the trauma and grief of losing our daughter Phoebe. If she survived Luke and Phoebe’s birthdays were one day apart. In the stress and exhaustion of this season of sickness that fear kept coming back to me and I felt the Lord day this to me “Not every storm ends the same way. Just because Phoebe didn’t make it doesn’t mean that’s how all storms go.”
We cannot define our current difficulty by our worst day in our story. More than that, we cannot limit God by the worst day in our story. God IS ABLE to do so much more. I’m so thankful I have a smiling 3 year old to prove it.
Babies and Gentleman 