In my Facebook feed, there is a mother who is constantly requesting prayer for her little one that sustained brain damage from an accident. She is in extreme pain as the son that she had is gone and the one that she has now is very, very broken. She is in the stage of trying to “get her son back”. I wish I could help her. I can only pray that someone will give her the same advice that I was given under similar circumstances.
December 18, 1991. Wednesday. Dinner on the table, getting my 5-month-old fed, waiting for my 16-year-old to come home so we could go to Wednesday night service. Our family pictures that were going to go into the church directory were ready and we were excited about picking them up that night.
The phone rang.
This was obviously before the time of smart phones and most of us had landlines and a phone on the wall in the kitchen. I heard my husband talking to someone and I knew it wasn’t good for he had gone pale. It was the Gwinnett Medical Center trauma center, and they were calling asking for permission to treat our daughter.
Simultaneous shattered thoughts like slivers of a broken mirror cut through my mind and into my heart. I immediately knew a couple of things, one - she was not able to call herself and two - we have to get there as fast as we can. The person on the other end of the phone did not tell us much except that we needed to get to the hospital as fast as we safely could.
I don’t remember getting in the car. I don’t remember putting my baby in the car seat. I don’t remember what I was wearing or how fast we went. I do remember praying the entire time, the same prayer over and over, “God, please let me be there. God, please don’t take her without letting me say goodbye. God please don’t let her die alone. God, please!” How I knew she was in peril of dying, I don’t know. I just knew that I didn’t want her to die without me being there for her.
I don’t remember parking. I don’t remember walking into the hospital. I do remember seeing the little girl that she had gone to The Olive Garden with sitting with her parents and crying in the ER. I do remember someone taking us into a “little room” and some family member got my baby girl and then a trauma nurse came and told us that Candy had been in a single car accident. She told us that the car had turned over and that the roof had caved in on her head and that the Neurosurgeon would be in to tell us more details as soon as he could.
All I wanted was to go and be with her, but they were still “working” on her. Finally, Dr. Wood, the neurosurgeon came in and hit us with the lightning bolt shock of your worst nightmare. “Your daughter is on full life-support; she has no brainwaves; is technically dead; she has little to no chance of survival and if she were to live, she would be in a permanent vegetative state.
How do you process that?
I simultaneously wanted to hold onto my baby as tight as I could and go and see my other baby (they are your babies no matter how old they are) but that made no sense. But then again, my mind was making no sense and my heart wanted to go and be with her. Disjointed, irrational thoughts jarred my mouth into speaking, “I want to see my daughter!” I was told that I could as soon as they had finished cleaning her up and I told them that I would clean her up.
Why they let me go and do just that, is something I still don’t understand. The determined heart of a mother to see her child is a force to be reckoned with even if the mother is VERY soft-spoken. I’m not particularly good with directions ever, anywhere, anytime but they opened the door and said go down this hallway and you will see her in one of the trauma rooms.
I walked all the way down and looked in every room and I did not see her. I thought I must have taken a wrong turn except there was no place to turn except around and go back the way I came. This time I walked more slowly and looked more carefully. It was her hair that I recognized. She had sleek, straight dark brown hair and she had braided one little portion of it that day before she went to school.
We had sung Garth Brooks songs all the way on ride to school and there was a portion of the road where I had run off and I told her how you get back on. “Ease back on slowly and don’t jerk the car.” She must not have been listening because it was that exact spot where she had run off the road and jerked it back on causing the car to turn on its side. That is why the other little girl was fine, but the driver’s side landed on a tree. Her head was trapped between the caved in roof and the seat of the car. Jaws of life were required.
I didn’t recognize her because her head was so swollen that her face was misshapen, all that was recognizable was her hair. And her hands. She had the prettiest hands. Someone handed me a basin of warm water and a washcloth. I washed the blood off of her ears and her face so, so gently. The ventilator was breathing for her, the heart monitor showed a very rapid heart rate. She was completely and utterly lifeless. I held her beautiful hands just wanting so badly for her to know that I was there; wanting her to feel that she was not alone.
Someone let our pastor know and someone was trying to tell me we needed to make arrangements and I knew on some level that they were right, but my heart was not ready for that. I knew they were right for after several years of working towards a degree in neuroscience, I understood every word they said and knew that people with brains as swollen as hers was did not survive.
But God had other plans. Plans that I did not know about. Plans outside the realm of science and physical understanding. There is a whole book of stories, but the point of this particular little blog is that I was given some excellent advice from my Pastor that I wish someone would tell this young mother who is struggling so much with trying to get her son back to “normal”.
Over the next few weeks of horrifying days of touch and go and no sleep, I kept wanting her to wake up and be just like she was. My Pastor told me that I needed to change my baseline. He told me that my measuring stick should be the time of the accident and how “bad” she was; that it should not be how she was before the accident. That was the beginning of healing for me, not my daughter, but me.
I needed to learn to love the child that was broken. I needed to love the daughter that couldn’t walk or talk or even process thoughts as far as we knew. But that girl that was laying there needed to feel loved JUST LIKE SHE WAS. The heart knows when it is loved, no matter the condition of the mind.
Oh, that someone would help this woman to know that her son that is so broken needs to be loved. He is never going to be way he was, but he will be able to know whether or not he is loved just like he is. I pray that for her, for her heart. It will help her.
As believers, we have that in us. We have the indwelling Spirit of Christ in us. Therefore, He can give us the ability to love the broken, whatever that is, right in front of us. How? “But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) While we were broken; while we were unrecognizable as His original creation; while we were DEAD in our trespasses, because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ!
As believers, we have it in us to stand there and love. It’s beyond a feeling, it is an act of will.
Pray for those who are struggling with the loss of the child they had and need to learn to love the child they have.
Comments