First Flight
We were guided so graciously through these days on intensity. PALs granted us a free flight to and from NYC which took an enormous load off of the quick trip we needed to make for surgical consult.
We flew up Wednesday, got our COVID swabs, and then hung out at the hotel. Once again Liam was struggling with the food. He was still somewhat nauseous from the Cisplatin, but being in the city always complicates it. He loves to roam the woods with Mia, to live wild and free. As soon as he hits the city he starts to shut down. He doesn’t like the noise and all the buildings and penned in feelings. I was beginning to wonder how we were going to make it with surgery. He hardly eats and his affect goes mostly flat.
Thursday morning our tests came back negative. David was working as much as he could. Liam said being an only child is overrated. You get too much attention. I suspect that what he wanted to say is that it’s boring without his siblings.
I was spending time with God, feeling a need to settle my heart and hear from him. I flipped through my Bible, my eyes landing on these verses.
“I am the LORD your God who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar — the Lord of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand.” Isaiah 51:15-16
You know, most of us gravitate toward the God who calms the seas. We really like the story of Jesus in the boat, quietly raising his hand above the tumultuous waves, and effortlessly telling them to settle down. We want to live in the places where God creates calm and harmony. God is there.
God is in the storm, too. Sometimes He actually stirs it up to a frenzy. It’s not fun to be in those places. But always, He will cover us. This time the phrase, “and I have put the words in your mouth,” kept jumping out at me. I have struggled with the way God has called me to believe in a miracle for Liam. The way He speaks messages to me over and over. This isn’t the way I’ve experience life or God or Christianity. Even last summer when we prayed so much for Harrison and didn’t get the answer we wanted, I felt God telling me that I was stronger than I thought and that He believed in me, not that I should believe in complete immediate healing. I was disappointed at the way the story was unfolding, but it didn’t rock my boat. That was the God I was acquainted with. The God of sustaining grace.
This radical walk into faith that He wants me to believe in this instance has felt counter-cultural. It is very specific to Liam’s journey, but it is shaping my heart in ways I know I will not fully comprehend until we’re far on the other side of it. All I can do is continue to listen and walk in obedience.
After I read those verses, I was praying in worship to God when I saw a vision of a hand coming down out of a cloud toward Liam’s leg. I was sitting on one bed. He was sitting on the bed to my left and the covers were bunched up around him so that I couldn’t actually see his leg. The hand was encased in gold, like the gold on the domes of capitol buildings and it had it’s index finger extended like a pointer. All I could see was the hand and wrist. The rest was in a cloud.
As it got closer I turned to look and the hand stopped and started to rise. I sensed that my job was to focus on God. It’s not my job to “have enough faith” to make this happen (that makes me God). I began to worship God again with my face turned straight ahead and out of the corner of my eye I saw the hand move down again. If I asked God to heal him the hand stopped or rose. I used every ounce of discipline to focus my mind on God and simply praise Him for who He is as our God and the hand moved down so that the fingertip was lower than the top edge of the blankets. I never saw if it touched his leg. I knew that if it did, he would be healed. It wasn’t mine to see.
I headed for the shower, worshiping and crying and as I did, I saw my mangled, black heart — misshapen by years of anxiety and fear. I repented and asked God to forgive me and make it clean. I expected it to turn white, but instead I saw it flesh out and turn rich red, pulsating with life giving warm, red blood. I remembered the verse David has reminded me of often. There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. The opposite of fear is not being fearless, it is living in love.
That night I woke multiple times with nightmares. The most vivid one I was standing on the deck of a boat and the wind battered my body until I flipped over the rail, my hands still clinging desperately to the handrail above and behind me. It was the first I realized that satan was after me in this story, too.
That afternoon we went to the Empire State Building to watch the sunset and the city lights to come on. It was so freezing cold, and so incredibly beautiful.