Miriam's Story: Deliverance Into Life Installment #3

This is installment #3 of Miriam's birth story. If you missed the first and second installments, you can read them here: #1 and here: #2.

I knew it was a message for me. And I took a curious and honest—but still hesitant and a little uncertain—comfort in it. But I was worn out. I hurt. The layer of abdominal muscles under the incision burned with a searing pain. It was worse when I walked. I remember that I napped, and then I wanted to go back to NICU. I buzzed the nurse’s desk to ask for a wheelchair lift to the floor above. But no one could come for me. I wasn’t in the mother-baby ward, because I didn’t have a baby with me. They had put me on the maternal-fetal medicine ward.

All the other women on my hall were experiencing high-risk or problematic pregnancy situations. I was the only one who was no longer pregnant. But I was not the only one experiencing fear, trauma, concern, bewilderment—or worse. The woman in the room next to mine was actively losing her child. I remember her screams when she got the news that her baby was gone. My heart still breaks. I never saw her face. She was gone the next morning. I just remember her screaming and screaming. Rachel, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. I’ll carry her with me always. I am so sorry.

I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to be with Miriam, every minute possible. So I walked. Less than 24 hours after that traumatic surgery, I walked from my room, to the elevator, up a floor, out into the elevator lobby where a vintage wedding gown was on display behind glass (a wedding gown, in the hospital—I’m not sure why) and through the “family only” door into NICU. And there she was. But she was no longer intubated.

Her cheeks were swollen and chapped from the tape that
had held the vent tubing in place. She kept her eyes squeezed
tightly shut in an expression that I thought suggested that
she hurt and was trying to endure through the pain.

Her little cheeks were red and swollen from being irritated by the tape that had held the breathing tube in place. Her little fists were still clasped tightly, but the gauze was gone. She wasn’t strapped down now. I could see her whole face. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, so she didn’t look like she was resting comfortably—to me it just looked like she hurt and she was trying to shut that out—but she was breathing on her own. She was breathing without a machine! Just a little more than four hours earlier I had been told she wasn’t likely to ever go home. And here she was, free of the machinery that had been doing the breathing for her.

Nurse Sandy couldn’t have been prouder. “You should have seen her!” she said. “We were changing the pad under her and had let her loose for a little while, and do you know what she did? She just grabbed that old tube and pulled it out! Pulled it out all by herself. You know, if she don’t need it, we won’t force it back in. A baby this strong—she’s not so sick after all. You just watch. Yep, I know my baby. I know my baby girl. She’s a fighter.” A fighter. With POWER.

Nurse Sandy probably called all the babies “her baby.” But I took it to heart that Miriam was special. Every shift that Sandy had for the next week, she came in to see how “her baby” was doing. It comforted me to know that she felt such a bond with the little one in her care.

From that point, Nurse Sandy stopped saying, “A baby this sick…” The next day, she confided to me, “She’s not sick enough to be in this section. She won’t stay here long.” It took another day for the amazement to wear off on the powers that controlled her place in the unit, but she did get moved, and not just down one section, but from the most critical care section to the least critical care section, bypassing all the intermediates. I don’t remember the letter designations, but it seems to me she moved instantly from A to something like E or F. And every day, she got stronger and more alert. Every day, her vital signs got closer and closer to stable. Every day, she seemed more and more like a normal newborn. But she was still under close watch. Wires remained stuck to her chest and back, and a wad of tubes and hoses was plugged in through a tiny vein.

On the morning of day 5, I came in to see her. I had a routine now. I had been given a “sleep closet” on the NICU floor after I was discharged as a patient. It was a tiny room with a twin bed in it where I could stay. There was a public shower down the hall, and a breast pump room adjoining NICU. So that’s where I lived while Miriam was in the hospital. I went from my sleep closet to the pumping room, took my milk to a plastic shoebox labeled with our name and stored in a freezer at the center of the NICU facility, then went to sit by Miriam for as long as I could, to talk to her, to tickle her with the t-shirt I had been sleeping with at times to transfer my scent, the shirt I could leave with her at other times when I would be gone, so she wouldn’t forget me. Then back to the pump room, back to my closet for naps, and the cycle repeated. But day 5 caught me by surprise.

When I walked in that morning, the cluster of tubes and wires was no longer in her little arm. It had been moved. It now projected from a vein on the very top of her head—a giant mass seemingly plugged into my baby’s skull. Into the brain, even? What did this mean? It looked horrifying. I grabbed the nearest nurse—it wasn’t Nurse Sandy—and asked what was going on. “Oh, it’s nothing unusual,” she said. “There’s a really good vein in the head. It’s really better than the arm.” Business as usual? I had a hard time believing her, because just then she pulled from a drawer an 8-inch pair of shears and a knitted newborn hat. She whacked the pointed top off the hat, creating a round hole at the top. Then she unplugged the mass of wires, fed them through the hole in the hat and back into Miriam’s head, and tugged the hat over her little skull. If this was business as usual, why didn’t NICU have hats ready-made to accommodate such a situation?

The shock of the unexpected image and the shock of the butchered hat reinforced one another, and I feared there was something she wasn’t telling me. But it seems it really was just that way. A year or more later, I was able to recount this experience to a woman who ran the Helen’s Chapter of Threads of Love, a sewing ministry that provides clothing to NICU as well as beautiful, hand-made gowns for the infants who don’t survive. She developed a new knitted baby hat which already featured a finished, “meant to be there, to show we are prepared” hole in the top, so that mothers like me in the future wouldn’t be so caught by surprise when the giant shears came out to make adaptation for something they could have been prepared for already. I hope they still use those hats with the ready-made holes in them.

Day 5 was the day that nearly got to me, however. It had been such a constant process, such a cycle of routine, such a waiting and watching and being amazed but also being held at a distance—I still could not hold her, I couldn’t yet nurse her. All her feeding was coming through a lipid tube into her vein (in her head now). Sometimes she cried, and I could talk to her, rub her, tickle her with that t-shirt. But I wanted to hold her close. I wanted to get attached. I wanted to mother my baby.

Having recovered my composure after seeing the things stuck into her head, and the improvisation with the hat, I stood by her bed, just talking, singing, touching her as much as I could. It was his day off, but Dr. Jackson came by again anyway to check on us. I was so weary. I was so tired of being strong. I know I was being held by the everlasting arms. I do know it. But I am still only dust, and I was so tired. Miriam started to cry, and I wanted to pick her up and let her feel my warmth. I wanted her to hear my heartbeat again, like she had for most of the previous nine months. It was hard to hear her cry and for her to be there, lying alone, all wired up still. Dr. Jackson prepared to leave, and as he did, he just reached out one hand and gave me a gentle, compassionate squeeze on the shoulder.

There is something so powerful about kindness simply expressed. Bill had been around as much as he could, but he was taking care of the other little girls, taking them to and from his parents’ house, and still trying to get some work done all this time. This had really been a very lonely and isolating ordeal for me, and it had required a lot of me, constantly. That human touch transferred something to me that let me become human again. I felt it welling up inside me, and as soon as the good doctor was out of earshot, it just erupted. I burst into tears with such volatility that the nurse actually jumped. “What’s wrong?!” she gasped, as if something terrible had just happened before me.

“I can’t help her!” I cried. “I can’t DO anything for her! She’s crying! I can’t hold her, I can’t nurse her, I can’t DO ANYTHING!” And sobbing overtook me. Before she could even respond, Dr. Yoder was again on the scene. He had just been a few cubicles over, but he heard the ruckus I was making, and he so reasonably came to my rescue. This time, it was as if I, and not Miriam, was the patient. “Well, let’s just change that,” he said, and he took Miriam’s chart and wrote orders on it for Miriam to begin that day, that moment actually, to try to nurse.

She weighed hardly a thing. I remember how light she felt in my arms. At last! At birth she was just under seven pounds. I’m not sure what her weight was at this point, but I’ll bet it wasn’t more than six and a half. She was small and warm and frail, and as I drew her close to me, I realized that she was HUNGRY! Neither of the other girls (Emma, born a little early, had no idea how to suck; and little Jane had been a “failure to thrive” baby; eating never much interested her as a newborn) had ever attacked a breast like this. She flung her mouth open wide and dove in powerfully toward the smell of milk. The word “voracious” comes to mind. I do believe she made little “nom, nom, nom” sounds as she latched on. But maybe I’ve added that in my foggy memory. The nurse laughed and announced, “Well you sure know what to do with that, don’t you?”

Shortly, she relaxed against me. Asleep. My little Miriam, asleep in my arms at last.

All together, the baby whom I was not to get attached to spent a total of only six days in NICU. The last day was in a transition room, where I could practice all I needed to do beforehand to take her home and care for her on our own. But by that time, she was just like every other healthy newborn. I needed only a little special instruction on how to care for the stitches that the plastic surgeon had placed to reattach the top of her ear, which had been partially severed in the emergency surgery. Today, a fine white line just under her hairline leading to the top of that ear is the only remaining scar to give physical evidence of the events of her birth.

In just a few days, we had seen this beloved child seemingly held by the grip of death. And we had seen resurrection power at work, to restore her beyond all expectation of healing and life. Miriam finished first grade in May. She kept pace with her classmates and seems to be a solidly average student as far as scholarship is concerned. But she excels in creativity and athletic ability—and joy. The baby predicted to have developmental problems all her life walked earlier than any of her sisters. She talked by 10 months and had sentences shortly after the age of a year. At 15 months, she understood the concept of something being “new,” and she had named her favorite blanket (still her favorite, still a constant companion when at home or on the road) “Mike.” Who would have thought of that?

I’ll have to do another entry about the choosing of her name, and all we’ve found out about that name since bestowing it upon her. But for now, I will just tell you, it fits. Miriam she is and Miriam she always was meant to be.

We were told she would need very regular medical oversight for at least her first two years of life. You can read how God provided for that in this blog entry from December 2012. We call it yet another “Holy Ghost Story.” You could call it Installment #4 for Miriam's story.

But I know you won’t be surprised. We know whom we have believed. He is the Spirit of power, and not of fear.

I will leave you with some more pictures of Miracle Miriam, the one we call "Miss Firecracker" because of the power and spunk and fire in her.

Keeping up with big sisters. Emma at 7, Jane at 5, Miriam at 1. 2006

Truly a "big girl." Spring pictures from the end of her first-grade year. 2013. Seven years old.

Now a big sister as well as a little sister: with "her baby," Jill. 2011

To read more about how God has provided for Miriam even after her birth, during those scary months of waiting to see if disabilities and brain damage would surface, please follow this link.

Miriam's Story: Delivery Into Life Installment #2

This is installment #2 of Miriam's birth story. If you missed the first installment, you can read it  here.

While I was unconscious, I am told that Dr. Jackson sliced me open and violently ripped that tiny, dying baby girl from my womb in 17 seconds. Her ear was cut so that she would need plastic surgery to repair it a few days later, but that was the least of the concern.

She did not breathe.

She was blue and cold and she did not breathe. There was a bag they put over her little face, which when squeezed forced air into those frozen lungs. Her dying heart responded by almost exploding in her chest. She was immediately swept away to the Neonatal Intensive Care unit where a ventilator machine could do the breathing for her.

When I came to, Dr. Jackson was by my bedside. “Where is she?” I asked. “She’s upstairs,” was all he said. But I knew she was alive. I faded out again. When I came back, he was still there. “What does she look like?” I asked. “She has fair hair. Fair skin. She’s very petite,” he replied. “Fair hair? Huh…didn’t expect that,” I said, and then I was gone again.

They didn’t tell me at first how serious it was. I needed to get that information a little at a time and so I consider that a mercy. But on the way up to see her the first time—I don’t even know what time of day that was, the days and nights were just too confused then—one of the NICU staff met me to walk alongside my wheelchair. “She’s on a ventilator,” he said. “It’s doing the breathing for her. Don’t be shocked by the machines and the wires. It’s what she needs. But it doesn’t look good. She was a long time without oxygen. We don’t know how her various systems will respond.”

I sat beside her in the wheelchair, her in her little heated bed. The machine’s tubing was inserted through her mouth and held there by tape. I could barely see her little face—just her eyes. Her hands were clenched around rolls of gauze, and her arms had tiny white tethers connecting them to the bed. “To protect her when she seizes,” they said. The gauze was to cushion her little hands, which had reacted to the trauma by clamping shut in tight fists. Her eyes were closed, squeezed tightly. She looked like she was in pain. She was still covered in dried blood and even feces. I asked why.

“A baby this sick doesn’t need a bath yet,” sweet Nurse Sandy said. A baby this sick. A baby this sick. What do I do with that kind of a statement? I chose to push it away and not think about it. I couldn’t. I just needed to think about her. Little Miriam. Here. So I talked to her. I stroked her arm. I touched her head. 

At some point, a doctor came by. I don’t remember his name. He had dark hair. He was solemn. He said something about all her systems being compromised, and they had to focus on them in a certain order—what was most critical first: heart and lungs. I don’t remember all the systems he listed, but the last and least important one was digestive. He told me I would not be able to nurse her anytime soon. Then he said something that felt like ice. I don’t want to use quotes because it may not have come out exactly this way, but the essence of it was that it was probably a good thing I couldn’t nurse her, because I really shouldn’t get attached. It wasn’t likely she would ever go home. If she did survive, she would have brain damage. There would always be seizures. It was hard to say how bad it would be, but her life would be a difficult one.

I remember feeling for just a second like I might choke. I sat there with the baby, rather numb. Not sure what to think. The doctors were all doing their rounds. Another, a distant acquaintance, Chuck Yoder came by. Our oldest daughter and his oldest son had been in preschool together two years earlier. He wasn’t assigned primarily to Miriam, but all the doctors confer and work together with the babies. I don’t remember why he stopped or how our conversation started. I just know he was there to say the right thing at the right time. A lot of it is just a blur, but I remember that he wasn’t as grim as his colleague had been. “Let’s just give her some time,” he said. “We’ll let her tell us how it’s going to be.” 

I could accept those words. That strange calm came back. “God has not given us a Spirit of fear but of power.” I remembered hearing those words. Why did I remember those words? Why did I hear them spoken so plainly? What was the reference, anyway? I knew it was from the Bible. I thought it was from the New Testament, but I couldn’t cite the reference.

Bill’s parents came by then with the two other girls. Emma and Jane were both excited and nervous to see their new sister. They came straightaway to her, both standing on her left side. And just as they had been talking to her through my belly for the last several months, they took turns talking to her again now. The wires and machines didn’t seem to faze this 6- and 4-year-old. They just wanted their baby. At the sound of those little voices, Miriam opened her eyes for the first time. She could not move her body, and she could not even move her head from side to side. But when Emma talked, she rolled her eyes upward to her left, toward the sound of Emma’s voice. And when Jane talked, she rolled her eyes downward, toward the sound of Jane’s voice. She was clearly differentiating the sounds and the sources. Nurse Sandy smiled. “Well aren't you a smart girl,” she said. It was something. It was a gift. We’ll let her tell us how it’s going to be.

I could manage less than an hour at a time away from my own bed at that point, because my own body was so traumatized from a full course of labor, almost entire delivery, and then a forceful c-section. Back at my room, reclining in bed, I got out my Bible. A few minutes later, Dr. Jackson came to check on me.

I didn’t want to talk about how I felt physically. While he did various examinations, timid palpitations, and asked a few questions, I chattered at him. “What verse is that? Where in the Bible does it come from? I heard it. I heard it spoken in the chaos. I need to find it.”

He said he wasn’t sure, but he would also try to find out. But when he left, I found it. I found it in 2 Timothy 1, verse 7. And I realized a connection.

Several years earlier, I had heard a sermon on a passage from 2 Timothy 1. That text was just a paragraph’s hop past this verse, and it lodged with me in a very personal way. That passage was 2 Timothy 1: 12. “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him against that day.” (NIV)

I know who God is. I know him in whom I have placed my trust. And I know that in the time of trial and suffering, he will guard that belief, so that I will not fall away. When it gets too hard, he holds me against all that the day of pain can bring. I know him. After that sermon, we had sung the hymn based on the same passage: I Know Whom I Have Believed. (Trinity Hymnal #705) When I got home, I had typed up one stanza of the song, and footnoted it with the scripture. I printed it out and put it in a silver 8X10 frame. It stood on my kitchen counter for years as a reminder. It had moved from house, to temporary apartment, to house with me, always on the kitchen counter. It was there, back at home, then.

It was a message to me. “You know me. You know whom you have believed. And I have not given you a Spirit of fear, but of power. Watch what I will do. Watch, and trust, and believe me.”

Yes, I know him. Who is this God? He is Creator. He is the one who made me and gave me a womb to produce life. He is the one who made little Miriam. And he is not only creation powerful, he is resurrection powerful. And he is personal. He is my God, my Father, my Abba, my Daddy. He is Miriam’s God, Father, Abba, Daddy. That is the real Spirit of power—that which can raise the dead, and does, because he is Love. I know whom I have believed.

I was about to see that power. I, and our family, and the staff at the hospital.



Click here to read Miriam's Story, Installment #3. 

Miriam's Story: Delivery Into Life Installment #1

I was trying this year to make a blog entry for each girl on the eve of her birthday, and I had a pretty good track record for 75% of them. But due to some pretty overwhelming days of sickness for two of the kids (including an ER visit), and the subsequent falling behind at work for me, I didn’t get a blog entry about Miriam out until now, a few days past her actual birthdate.

And yet, of all the girls’ stories so far, Miriam’s is probably the most impactful, the most harrowing, the most triumphant. So far. It has become tradition between her and me that I will tell her birth story every year on her birthday. “If you don’t remember, then you forget,” says Sam Krichinsky in my favorite movie of all time. Remembering takes effort. Forgetting comes easily. So we remember, she and I, each year. And we celebrate. We celebrate so much.

So I am going to tell her birth story to you, and put it on record for anyone, how it happened, what God did. But it is complex and long, and so I think I will have to do this in installments. This will be installment #1. I will try to continue with an additional installment every day or every other day until the story is all told, with the fullness it deserves.

To look at her, to watch her, to listen to her, you would never guess that this full-of-life, highly animated, highly creative, fearless child was ever fading out of our presence, predicted to die. It seems inconceivable. She is feisty, firey, agile, active, bursting with interest about almost any subject, bursting with joy at new things, bursting with love and an infectious smile that exposes every molar, bursting with temper at injustice. And I think all that life is evidence. Evidence that in a way most of us have not experienced in a very real, physical, elemental sense, Miriam has been given the Spirit of Power.

This is her story. The story of her deliverance into life. It may contain details some consider gory or too explicit, but there is blood, and to be true, those details have to stay. It contains some details some may consider super-spiritualized, but again, it’s the truth. And as a witness, I have to tell you what I saw, what I experienced. Make of it what you will.

It was July 1, eight years ago. She was a week late. I had had the non-stress test to be sure she was still OK, but since my first baby was born just a little early, yet had some difficulty breathing and sucking at first, I had become more and more comfortable with waiting beyond the due date rather than rushing things. I’m thankful for that God-given patience, though I must add, for the sake of truth, that I am not a very delightful, long-suffering person to be around once the fullness of a pregnancy is reached. I had begun to think she was going to stay there forever. But I found the magic ticket: a $1 dvd of old episodes of the hokey western Bonanza in the bargain section at Target. I brought it home, just for kicks.

And that evening, July 1, I sat in an upright rocking chair while Bill lounged on the more cushy furniture, and put in the dvd. I had forgotten how bad acting and set designs were in my childhood. How could we not have noticed? When the jealous villain with the fake Spanish accent threatened the life of Little Joe after having seen Joe with a girl he liked—“I cooood haf keeled you on your moonleet rrrrrrock uv LUV!” he spat—I lost it in gales of laughter. And had my first real contraction.

The next came about eight minutes later, and they continued at a fairly regular rate like that for several hours. But I didn’t think it was the real thing. You see, it didn’t hurt, and labor is supposed to hurt. So I just ignored the contractions, and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I’d doze off and wake again with the next one. Tight, tense, bothersome, but not painful. I got up, checked the clock, walked around. Still no pain. Not even achiness. I suppose I would never have called my doctor except that I started to leak just a little fluid. I called. “Better come on in,” the answering service said. So I woke Bill. I packed a few things while he made some midnight phone calls. We have six nearby friends on our “L&D call list.” Six. All within about three miles of our home. We called them all. None were available to come stay with the other children, the older of which was only six. It was General Assembly week for our church’s denomination. Some were traveling for that. It was now only two days before the 4^th of July. Some were traveling for that. At least one was just a very deep sleeper who didn’t hear the phone ring.

I wasn’t super anxious, but after another 20 minutes of phone calls, I was ready to be gone. Bill finally called another friend, who had done us so many favors in the past, and always stood ready to serve anyone in need, that we had not put her on our list. We wanted to give her a break. But we ended up dragging her out of bed anyway, and she was at our house in minutes.

At the ER entry, Bill dropped me off. I walked in with no unusual effort and told them I was there because I was in labor. The staff laughed at me. One does not simply walk into Labor and Delivery, they said. “We’ll just see if you’re staying.” The absence of screaming and moaning produced great skepticism regarding the likelihood of the impending birth, but a (personally undignified but necessary) few moments later, it was declared, “You’re staying. We don’t send women home who are seven centimeters dilated!”

They joked that the baby might come before Bill and my doctor made it to the delivery room.

It seemed to me like the dream birth. For different, unavoidable reasons, I had been induced with the other two. The induction was so intense with the first that I eventually, after 19 hours, asked for an epidural. With the second, a partially dislocated hip preceded the induction, and the pain of that situation coupled with the pain of the intensified pitocin contractions also prompted me to go the epidural route as well. This time, it was so easy. It honestly did not hurt. I told the staff I didn’t need it. So all they did was put in an IV port, not even an IV itself but just the port, “just in case we need to help you hydrate.”

Dr. Jackson arrived to check me and hang out with Bill. The two talked fishing and there was much laughter and joking, but someone noticed that even though I was progressing nicely, those easy contractions were not yet pushing the baby’s head into the low position needed for delivery. To speed things up and intensify the natural contractions, it was decided (and I don’t remember who made this decision) to break my water completely. What no one realized, however, was that the rush of amniotic fluid being released while the baby (who was small even though she was late—the smallest of all my babies) was not engaged in the pelvis, could have contributed to sweeping the umbilical cord into a dangerous position.

Whether breaking my water did that or not, we just don’t know. But as contractions grew, little Miriam’s heart rate began to drop. With each new contraction, her pulse would drop a little, and that is normal. But normally, that rate should rise as each contraction subsided. Hers did not. The atmosphere in our delivery room seemed to change from jovial to somber in just a few moments’ time. The doctor got serious. The baby was about halfway to delivery, but he told me he didn’t like what the monitor was showing. “If we don’t get her on this next push,” he said, “I think we’ll need to intervene.”

I knew what that meant: surgery. A Caesarean section. With a nurse on each side of me and the doctor below, I gave everything I had into that next contraction to try to move her forward. But the baby didn’t budge. What did appear, however, sliding past her somehow, was a large section of the umbilical cord, pinned off and compressed between her and me, cutting off from her absolutely everything she needed for life.

“We have a cord!” the doctor yelled. And then he did what seemed unthinkable. He pushed the baby back in. Everyone sprang into action and chaos as they moved to take us to the nearest operating room. I remember the head of my bed being lowered while we were in motion, the doctor in that very compromising position of trying to walk with me and the bed and the equipment that came with us—all the while with his own arm buried (professionally) within me to relieve any pressure he could from the baby’s cord.

The operating room was lights and chaos and traffic. Scrubbing up the doctor. Draping things. Rushing. Yelling. Someone kept shouting numbers. Numbers? What? And then I realized. Heart rate. A baby girl has a normal heart rate of about 150 beats per minute. I was hearing numbers a third of that. I felt the sickening grip of panic. It was hot and moved like a wave from the center of me outward. She was dying and I was flat on my back with a stranger’s arm inside me. They were strapping my arms down to the gurney. There was a bright white light flooding my vision. It was all a blur, and I was going into a panic.

I have never felt so helpless in my life. I have never even imagined feeling so helpless. She was dying inside me and I could do absolutely nothing to help her. I couldn’t deliver her. I couldn’t even move my own body. My arms. And then something happened. I am a witness. Like I said, make of this what you will.

I heard a voice. It was a real, spoken voice and yet it wasn’t spoken out loud to everyone in the room. It was spoken inside of me. A voice inside my body said, “God has not given us a Spirit of fear but of power.” I heard it as clearly as I’ve ever heard a friend or a child or a sibling or a teacher or an employer or employee speak to me. And instantly, I felt a calm.

The next thing I remember was a return to the view of the chaos. For a second it had seemed to be frozen and silent. But then it was back, all the hubbub, the noise, the frantic action. Yet I wasn’t frantic any longer. I was there, watching it swirl around me like a scene in a movie. Someone’s hands were trying to force anesthesia into the IV port on my hand, but because it had been unused, my vein had collapsed. The medicine blew out backward onto the anesthesiologist. He screamed for a nurse to start another port on the other hand, while he went across the room for more anesthesia. As he was returning, someone else’s arm went up, flinging the second dose across the room. The space exploded with obscenities as the firm but readily placed Dr. Jackson stood over me, a scalpel gleaming and reflecting the light of the surgical flood fixture still nearly blinding me. A female voice was still chanting those numbers. “We have 30,” she said.
“We have to GO,” said the doctor, almost yelling, but not quite. “We have to GO NOW.”

And then it went black.



You can read Installment #2 of this story here.

What's in a Name? : Methuselah Does Not Just Mean "Old Guy"

I don’t usually have blog entries two days back-to-back, but in this case, I found out something really cool and I’m having a hard time just keeping it to myself. And to the family. And Carolyn and Miles who stopped by last night. When you learn something cool, you just want to share it, you know?

It came about because Emma has to read Genesis, Exodus, the Samuels, Ecclesiastes, and The Odyssey this summer before she goes back to school in August. She was lamenting having to read Genesis again, because we did it as a homeschool family, quite thoroughly, and she’s done it in Sunday school two or three times due to a repeating curriculum, and she’s read it on her own. “It’s just all those long names. They bore me,” she said. “I mean, who would name their child METHUSELAH anyway? What kind of dad was that?”

Well, that’s what I pounced on. “Let’s find out! Let’s find out what kind of dad would name his child Methuselah, and why!” I always love that kind of challenge when it comes to biblical things. She meant it as a dismissive question, but it’s actually a really good one, and it turns out, it was EVEN BETTER than I had imagined.

I didn’t know what we were going to find out about Methuselah, but I did know a couple of things already going in: 1) Names in the Old Testament meant something. So to ask, “Why that name?” was guaranteed something of interest; 2) Methuselah lived to be the oldest man ever. I knew it was more than 900 years. I didn’t remember the exact number. But again, we were going to go find out what made him significant, name and all.

Here’s what we found. I knew some of it but definitely not all, and had never put this together before.

Methuselah was the son of Enoch. Enoch was the guy who was said to “walk with God.” He also didn’t die, because God took him. There’s something special and unique going on here, that’s for sure. Walking with God implies a deep closeness. God walked with Adam in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. Enoch walked with God after the Fall, when everything was spiraling farther and farther into disobedience and havoc. People were running amok but Enoch was walking with God. We had to stop and think about that for a little while. What was that like?

It was only when we looked up the meaning of the name of Enoch's son Methuselah that our imaginations about Enoch walking with God went kind of wild.

According to Jones’ Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names, Methuselah means, “When He Is Dead It Shall Be Sent.”

I am fascinated by the meanings of names. I wanted to know each name’s meaning before I bestowed it upon my daughter. I’ve wondered about my own name, and how it came about that somewhere back in history, a man looked at his baby girl and said, “I shall call her ‘bound with a noose,’” and so it was. (A modern translation of Rebecca tries to take the trauma out of that noose-binding imagery by putting a romantic spin on it and revising it to “captivating.”)

But now Emma’s question was even more valid. What kind of dad names his kid “When He Is Dead It Shall Be Sent”?

The answer: The dad who was walking closely in fellowship, and maybe even in the special, revelatory confidence, of God during the time when evil was springing up more and more in each generation.

So Methuselah lived 969 years on the earth, bearing that name, that prophetic warning, all that time. In God’s mercy, Methuselah, bearer of the name of warning, lived longer than anyone else ever had before or since. He was from his birth a prophet with a message, even when his mouth was shut. Something’s coming. It will be sent. At the end of my days, it will come. Everywhere he went, for as long as he went, he was the embodiment of warning. And every day, every one of those long and many days, was a day of mercy, of God withholding his heavy hand of judgment, allowing time for people to listen and turn and repent.

But God keeps his word. And eventually, Methuselah did die. Do you know when? I did not.

Laying the lengths of lives down in chart form shows that Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah, died in the very year that the Great Flood was sent. The very year. When he had died, it was sent.

Some say it took Noah more than 100 years to build the ark. I can’t say I’ve found that exactly spelled out. It may be an interpretation of God’s spoken statement that “The days of man will be 120 years,” and that started the point at which Noah began to build. Perhaps that is true. If it is, then in addition to Methuselah presumably still walking around all that time, he was also overlapping with his youthful, 500-year-old grandson who was preparing for rain. For a century or more.

A man walked with God and then disappeared from the earth. If that didn’t make one sit up and take notice, he named his son with a prophetic and ominous name, and that guy outlived every one of his peers and many of their own offspring, bearing that name as warning all the while, the name given him by the dad who “translated” but didn’t die. Then the old, ominously named guy’s grandson, called Noah (which means “rest,” by the way—and maybe means that he was the one through whom rest from all the terror of evil of man against man was going to come), heeds some sort of divine revelation and builds a massive ship like nothing anyone has seen before.

I mean, really. Something unusual is up with this family, don’t you think? Unnatural. Supernatural. Tradition says that people thought Noah was crazy. But look at what actually happened before him. And no one, not one, outside his own immediate family, listened, considered, wondered if maybe paying a little attention was a worthwhile investment? Not one?

Jesus told the Pharisees and Sadducees that though they could interpret the signs in the sky, whether it would be fair or stormy the next day, they could not interpret the signs of the times. It seems it has always been that way. A common saying is that “If heaven opened and God appeared there, we wouldn’t believe it. We’d find a way to explain it away.”

Funny thing is, that’s just the terminology that keeps showing up. God took Enoch. Heaven opened to receive him. When the flood came, Genesis 7:11 says “the windows of heaven opened,” and the rain came. Ezekiel the prophet looked into the open door of heaven. Heaven opened for the Spirit to come down upon Christ at his baptism, and others saw it. Stephen, at his martyrdom, saw heaven opened and told those around him, even the ones casting the stones that took his life. The witnesses said Stephen’s own face was like that of an angel. I wonder what that was like.

We’ve been hearing lately at church to pay attention to the signs of the work of the Holy Spirit with us individually. Comfort that seems to come unexpectedly. Provision. Communication at just the right point. The Spirit is here, present, in an experiential way that is closer and new for these last days. But history certainly shows that all along, God has been invested in communicating to his creatures.  

Why don’t we hear?

A Sweet--and Very Literal--Lightbulb Moment

It takes all kinds.

I discovered that today in such an eye-opening and humorous way while talking to my irreplaceable and long-time friend Heather. I've known Heather just shy of 20 years. Most of that time, we've lived in different states, and maybe the geographical distance has served us well, because while we get along swimmingly, with never an actual conflict arising between us in all those years, we are so very different in some ways.

Heather is a practical thinker. I am a metaphorical thinker. I've even been called an "eschatological thinker." She's all about "what it is." I'm all about "what it means."

And in a phone conversation today, those two approaches collided in a humorous and helpful way.

My daughter Jane has been sick with strep. The first round of antibiotics knocked it back but didn't cure it, so we're in for the second. Not being a practical thinker, I did not think to tell the doctor that, at 12, Jane prefers pills to liquid medicine. When I arrived at the pharmacy yesterday, they had prepared for her a nasty, bitter, milky-white concoction she has to take twice a day for 10 days. Twenty doses of that vile elixir. I dreaded telling her almost as much as I dreaded the difficult altercation we're likely to have each time I have to dose her. TWENTY dreadful altercations. That's more bitter than the tonic.

So I told Heather about the situation, and her immediate response was to quote Mary Poppins: "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!" She said, almost cheerfully.

OK, I thought, yeah, that's a nice sentiment. And then I realized she was still talking. "It's a treat anyway, for a kid, if you don't have sweets all the time. It's soothing and it takes the taste of the medicine right out of the mouth."

What?! She was sounding downright scientific about this. She was LITERALLY talking about giving the kid a spoonful of actual sugar to ingest following the administration of the medicine. And I had to laugh at myself. Out loud. For several very long seconds. (You can ask Heather. She can confirm my authentic amazement.) Because it had never even occurred to me that that song was anything but metaphorical. I thought it was completely talking about interacting with other people, and the "spoonful of sugar" was a way of approaching another person gently, or with some sort of praise or affirmation before delivering criticism or bad news.

For one as deeply metaphorical as I am, it is easy to forget--or never even consider in the first place--that the metaphor is drawn directly from some practical, literal, real-life event or condition. As this one is.

Pause. Wait for it. This was my next response:

"DUH!"

Yeah, it takes all kinds and we need each other. Heather helps keep my feet planted on this rock, this literal dirt-and-gravel-and-stone-with-all-kinds-of-boily-melty-stuff-underneath-it planet that we live out our physical (yes, physical!) lives on. And I help her learn to reach a bit for the stars, and to see the other layer in all the physical--what our artistic Creator was up to when he made the physical to reveal the glories of his character.

But he made us both--physical and spiritual, practical and meaningful, literal and symbolic. The existence is richer for the fullness of that experience.

And I'd even say it's sweet. Like a spoonful of sugar.