It was the same week that we brought home our baby girl, GG, child #2 for us, after a care-free pregnancy, easy-breezy delivery, and thanksgiving for a beautiful 9 lb. 2 oz.(!) healthy baby girl, that we began to notice her eye fluttering. First, it was only a couple times a week. I was dismissed by the pediatrician as an over-protective mother at her 1 mo. check up. At 2 mos. of age, she began having the eye flutters up to 5 times a day.
My beautiful baby girl was having seizures.
The next 2 months is a blur of frantic calls to anyone and everyone we thought may have advice or be able to help us, hospital stays for weeks at a time, CT scans, spinal taps (yes, on a 2 mo. old), never-ending blood tests, and gripping fear and sorrow and pain and loneliness that I never even knew existed.
However(!), God had mercy on GG's health and lead us, as her parents whom He had entrusted for her care, to the doctors that could help us. They turned out NOT to be the doctors here in our hometown, not the closest children's hospital, not even in this state.
On the week of her 5 mo. birthday (October 2008), GG had 2 brain surgeries. The first was on a Monday when the neurosurgeon attached electrodes to her brain (for real, y'all) to more accurately follow the brain activity, specifically during a seizure. She remained with a turban-like bandage around her head while attached to a portable transmitter that we were allowed to wear over our shoulder while we held her. Nurses had to rebandage her head several times and check for infection.
These days were spent in a room that couldn't have been any bigger than 10x10 consisting of a flat screen tv mounted on the wall where we watched her brain activity 24/7, a small fridge, a pull-out sleeper for Dad, a closet for our daily necessities, and the teeny-tiniest hospital-grade crib you never want to see. The lights were programmed to come on immediately flooding the entire room with florescent lighting and automatically call the nurse's station when GG had a seizure—which now was up to as many as 12 a day but had recently tapered off. (FYI...seizures must be controlled or stopped or else they deteriorate the brain.)
On Thursday of that week, October 2008, our baby girl went to the OR yet again to have her right temporal lobe removed. This is the area of the brain that the docs were able (through the grace of God) to pinpoint as the "epicenter" of the seizures. During that surgery, her doctors tell us, the seizure activity stopped immediately when the right temporal lobe was removed. She also had a stroke during the surgery but has shown NO effects from it—praise God.
Our daughter has not had a seizure since. She is developing fully and meeting (perhaps surpassing, if I may be so bold) all of her milestones. She is a joy every minute, even in the difficulties...testing us as toddlers will, how we are called to discipline her as the Word tells us to so that she may be "blameless and pure and boast on the day of Christ" (Philippians 2:14-16).
Do we rejoice only in her healing? I pray to God, not. Even if He had not healed her—God was revealing Himself to me (me! a sinner above all sinners!) during this entire time. In Romans 9:15, God says that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy on and goes on to say that it is not based on anything that we do.
Did I pray for Him to heal her? Of course. Daily, hourly, several times an hour on some occasions! Desperately, begging Him, even bargaining with Him (I knew not what I was doing at the time. As if I can bargain with the King of kings!) to heal her.
That was irrelevant in her healing, and yet, was extremely relevant in the fact that I was earnestly seeking Him. Someone(s) many years ago and throughout my life had planted the seed in me about the Truth of our Creator. And when I called out to Him, He answered. Not by healing GG, He answered me in my heart. I was not alone. I began to open His Word and seek Him.
And, THAT, is the message of our story. The blessing—and, oh what a blessing it is!—of Him healing our child is just gravy on top of the beautiful, unexplainable fact that He summoned me, my family, to Him. To accept His free, blood-stained gift of forgiveness (Thank you, Jesus!). To stop living for ourselves and to live for Him (Thank you, Lord!). To be assured of our eternal home with Him who created us (Thank you, God). How lovely.
Because He has inclined His ear to me, Therefore I will call [upon Him] as long as I live. (Psa 116:2)
This is a guest post by Amy Neeley, who blogs at The Ragamuffin Stuff. She says that she has been "rescued by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ to do His will and, simultaneously, I get to enjoy the refining process He is doing with my sinful nature. I have a loving and hard-working husband, David, and 2 (so far!) beautiful 'rewards of the womb' (Jonah, age 8, and Georgia Greer, age 2 & 1/2). I am busy working at home (Titus 2:5), training our children (Prov. 22:6), and helping my husband (Gen 2:8), but you can find me at my blog.
P.S. If you're interested in submitting a guest post testimony to be featured on Life Blessons, please visit the original post for details!
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