The Heart of the Thing

 A month ago Gray woke up and said he didn't want to go to school. His sister concurred. As a teacher I abhor parents who let their kids rule the roost and their absence percentile. But for this day, for some reason, I agreed to letting them stay at home. My parting words as I left for work were, 'If there is an emergency run next door to Cindy and then run to my classroom.' (We live on campus). 

Two hours later my children walked into the kitchen to find our beloved nanny, Memory, unconscious on the kitchen floor. And they did what I instructed them to do and literally saved her life. She had had a seizure due to high blood pressure and would have asphyxiated on the floor had Cindy not been there to get her breathing. I was then alerted, raced home, got Memory to hospital and she is recovering.

It was a traumatic experience for all of us. We've had play therapy and with all the stresses of normal life on top of managing my kids and their trauma I decided to revisit an old friend - anxiety meds. And what a joy they are.

A week later Gray got pneumonia and was almost hospitalized but with constant supervision, physio and nebulizing we managed to pull him through without the necessity of hospitalization. 

This week Eva developed a cough that was ongoing for 24 hours - day and night. She coughed so much that she burst a hernia in her left groin. When I couldn't push it back in successfully we went to casualty where she then burst a hernia in her right groin as well. 

Hernias are a genetic thing for Stockils (I had one at six weeks old) and my siblings have all had them. So we were ready to be told after the ultrasound that surgery was required. The doctor then came in with the results and confirmed what we already knew. She then hit us with some more news, "Eva's liver is abnormally large and there is something on it and we need to run some tests to see what is going on."

You hear people tell stories of the moment when the world goes silent, when everything takes on a different hue and you suddenly ask yourself 'is this thing that happens to other people happening to us?'

And then you can't breathe and you look at your perfect child and suddenly everything shifts.

And the most painful part of all is when you realise how much you love them. How deeply physically, emotionally and spiritually you love them. You love them here, in Heaven, in Hell, in the spaces inbetween. You love them everywhere all at once. And it hurts. It physically hurts. A lot.

We spent two days anxiously waiting for an MRI slot to open up for us and by total miracle a slot opened for us on Thursday and we got confirmation that Eva's liver is perfect. 

She will have her surgery in two weeks on her hernias and we pray that we won't have a month like this one again. 

But here is the thing. It is not always good news. It is not always a misdiagnosis. Sometimes the question becomes a statement, 'this thing that happens to other people is actually happening to us.'

I lost a cousin to leukemia and with the recent loss of beautiful Harry we are all reeling in a grief we cannot quite comprehend. 

I cannot speak any words of comfort into the space of grief that I have never had to endure but, as I said to Sarah and John, in the three days of anxious waiting I loved my daughter with every fibre of my being. There were no distractions, no work emails that hindered a special conversation, no worries about cooking supper, no wishing I could be somewhere else doing something else. I wrapped her tiny sleeping body into mine at night and was the first thing she saw every time she woke up. I made sure her brother was lying in bed with her when she woke up from the anesthetic and her joy was overwhelming as she cradled and cuddled her best best friend.

I demonstrated the deeply painful love I feel for my daughter far more in the past three days than I ever have before. And I know I am not alone in this admission, we all fall short of being present with our children. I loved her and listened to her and drew alongside her. I prepared her for the various procedures she was going to have in a way that she could understand them and not once was she frightened. 

I could list the incredible ways in which God's human army have stood beside us this week - there are just too many to mention. But I know without any doubt that it was His grace that led us calmly through this week. And part of His grace was the fact that I was already on anxiety medication that allowed me to gently navigate this week for Eva without my own fight or flight taking over. 

But this is the crux of what I want to say - some children will go their entire lives feeling like they have not been loved. Feeling like they come second to phones, and jobs, and golf, and drinks with the ladies, and laundry and financial problems and and and... It sometimes takes a crisis to go to that deep place in your heart where you know you will sacrifice everything, even your own life, for your child. For a child to have felt this kind of love, like Harry did, like my cousin Samantha did, is to know the full love of God. To know that neither life nor death can separate us from a parents love, can separate us from God's love is all we can give each other. 

It doesn't make the pain any easier. I would imagine it makes it so deeply agonizing that one begins to wonder if one will ever breathe again without a deep throbbing in one's soul. I cannot know what a parent's grief in losing a child must feel like but this I do know - for us who have children we mustn't wait for the crisis to fully experience the true supernatural love that God gives us in the love for the children He has blessed us with. This world is a broken place, it is not part of His design, but when we love our children wholeheartedly we start to get a glimpse into the heart of God and His love for us, His children.