When our son was 15 days old, he had to have major open-heart surgery. This would be his second time under the knife, but this time was a lot more complicated—and so carried a lot more risks—than the surgery he had undergone eight days before.
We had spent several hours the previous day with the doctors, going over everything that could go wrong. The only thing we had not covered was what would happen if he did not make it.
“Don’t worry about that,” the doctor said. “We can talk about it if something happens, but don’t worry. Your son will be fine.”
Fine? What was happening seemed anything but fine. A mere 10 days earlier, I had been blissfully packing to leave the birthing center and take our new baby home to Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. That was, until the doctor came in to tell me that our child needed an ambulance ride to the nearest hospital with a NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). From there followed a helicopter ride to Fukuoka, emergency heart surgery at seven days old, and a tense week of watching our child struggle to recover enough to handle the next major procedure. The word “whiplash” did not even begin to cover what we were feeling.
I had spent the last week both frantically researching and trying not to think about the next procedure. It was only one in a series of surgeries our child would need, but everyone called it The Big One. This surgery, and the long period of recovery between it and the next, were where most patients with our son’s condition died. It did not matter to me that survival rates were good. To me, the 80 percent success rate felt less important than the 20 percent loss rate—as if I would be standing my child in a line of 10 children and hoping against hope that he was not one of the two chosen to be taken away.
The only thing that had held us up over the previous 10 days was prayer. Our own prayers, and those of many people around the world, buoyed us up with a connection to heaven that kept us from experiencing the worst of the terror and grief of those days. The old poem about the single set of footprints came true for us, and we could feel the Savior’s arms carrying us through this tempest. Yet, as we crept closer to The Surgery, I wondered if, despite being held so close, it was still possible to shatter into pieces. I prayed for peace. I prayed for my son. And I waited.
The morning of the procedure inevitably came. We were to be at the hospital first thing, and would likely be there all day, waiting. As I got ready, I found myself humming a tune. I recognized it as a hymn, one I had sung a few times, that was not often played during church services. Words followed the music, words I recognized as belonging to the song, though not the first verse. I quickly checked if the words in my head were the real ones in the hymn. They were:
Oh joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
(“Oh Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, #76, 3rd stanza)
My anxiety left. I felt the promise in those words, the Lord speaking directly into my life at the moment I needed it most. The future was still unknown, but the fear was gone. When I had worried that the Savior might drop me, He lifted me even higher.
Since that day, the road has been longer, slower and harder than we envisioned. Every now and then the Savior sets us down to walk alongside Him, to keep our faith legs in working order. It is hard—hard to see our son struggle, hard to keep going ourselves. But I am continually reminded that we are not walking alone. Joy is with us in the pain, promising a better tomorrow. And for now, that is enough.
