Max's Journey

A young man with brown dreads and a flannel shirt approached us as we waited to hear if Max had been taken off the heart bypass machine.  He kneeled down beside Bard, held out his hand and said, "My Father told me to come pray for Max."

And I don't want the world to see me

Cause I don't think that they'd understand

When everything's made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am

This song still stirs haunting memories in my heart every time I hear it on the radio. I absolutely adored it at an absolutely despairing time in my life.  I breathed in the lyrics. Nobody understood.  I was broken.  To this day I struggle with feeling left out, unseen, regularly in a crowd but all alone. Now those feelings are mostly lies, but somehow that does not always diminish their power.

And you can't find the tears that ain't coming

Or the moment of truth in your lies

When everything feels like the movies

Yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive

Hospitals, by nature, can be very lonely places.  Staff rushing around with purpose, patients wandering around in a daze. Meandering buildings with corridors that lead off into nowhere like some twisted medical version of the Winchester Mansion.  By my fourth day I knew how to go three places and was the picture of confidence as I walked past the cafeteria, my nose in my phone. However, I have still decided that in my next lifetime I am going to design hospital interiors (surely that is a thing) and make each hall a different color so they don't all look alike-which has obviously been done to make you go insane. 

Liberian students pray for Max.

The young man with dreads had been at the cafeteria with us, grabbing breakfast with his wife (or girl friend) who was also suitably PNW with her cropped hair and tatted arms. He had sprawled, apparently sleeping, on the couch next to us as we chatted with my dad about Max being on bypass, and then had left with the girl to talk to their Dr. It was then that he came back, held our hands, prayed for Max, and walked away. We never saw him again, it was 10:00am and a half hour later Max was off bypass and being closed up, the hole patched, the valve stitched.  Perfectly.

At 4:30am, after sleeping two hours, I checked my email. Babushka Olga had emailed us that they were praying for Max. A colleague in Liberia-a country that has an innumerable amount of tragedies to focus on-had sent photos of his entire school lined up in their courtyard.  Praying for Max. Four Facebook messages popped up, Indiana, Iowa, Florida, and New Jersey-places we all know I am incapable of finding on a map-were all praying for Max.  It was not yet 5am and he was still sound asleep in his crib. 

Throughout the day, thoughts and prayers poured in from close friends to people I rarely talk to-everyone was there for us. I lost count of how many visitors we've had, my book people cast aside as I connected with real people. (My books bear the sad tragedy of this love as I've only been able to read two of them instead of the hoped for five.) We've had lattes, espresso beans, fruit, games, teddy bears (probably meant for Max), fuzzy socks for cold hospital floors, chocolate bars, chocolate covered berries, chocolate cookies, and you guessed it-Cadbury Eggs-delivered right to our room. And did I mention the six meals delivered to our home? Keep in mind we've only been gone for four days!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!

This is the church. Never think that the petty ignorance you see thrown around on Facebook or the evil hatred depicted by the media is an honest portrayal of Christ's church. His church is a living breathing act of beauty. A symbiotic community, intertwined in each other's lives and strengthening each other so that we can reach out and lift up the world.  Lost.  Hurt. Broken. The church is a card. The church is a phone call.  The church is a meal, a hand up, grace when judgement is called for. The church is love, incarnate,

If you do away with the yoke of oppression,

with the pointing finger and malicious talk, 

and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry, 
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

Then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the noon day.

~Isaiah

This is Bard's favorite quote and we have lived our lives just that way, this is the church. A bit earlier Isaiah commands the church to defend the fatherless and that's what we did, adopted an orphan.

But we didn't do it alone. And I know you just want to hear about Max (unless you're on Facebook and then you've already read all about chest tubes and cheesecake) but Max is really about me and I just have to share this part of my journey with you. Hopefully Max comes home tomorrow, from open heart surgery to sleeping in his own crib in just five nightmarishly long and impossibly short days. But as I sit in my home right now and think back to how I started the week-angry that Bard and I were fighting colds, frustrated that I had only slept two hours, scared that Cici and Evelyn would get sick-I realize that none of those issues were lessons I needed to learn.  I already know that God can take care of a cold. Or Vitamin C. Whatever. But what I get to learn, again and again, as it washes over me and I drown in it, is love.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every, love the best!

Tis an ocean full of blessing, tis a haven, giving rest.

Sunrise over Mt Rainier

I saw the sun rise over my mountain Monday morning as we waited to hear about the surgery (you know it's my mountain, right, we've been over that?) The image of that mountain stayed with me throughout the week, as I fed Max his first bottle and held him while he slept. I stood by his bed as he cried his whole first night in the hospital. And I watched as they pulled first one, and then another chest tube from his little body (Next blog I promise to share what will be Max's grosser than gross story with which he will be able to win any contest with any little boy. Ever.)

As much as the Goo Goo Dolls spoke to me, so many years ago, another song claimed me and it sings truth over lies.

Your love O Lord

Reaches to the heavens

Your faithfulness

Stretches to the skies

Your righteousness, 

Is like the mighty mountains

Your justice flows

like the ocean's tides

And I will lift my voice,

To worship you my King

And I will find my strength

In the shadow of your wings

Your love O Lord

Reaches to the heavens

Your faithfulness

Stretches to the skies