Friday, May 30, 2008

Dearest God,

My daughter called me just as I lay down to sleep at 8:00 p.m. I had gotten up at 4:00 a.m. to complete my final work on Pleasant Street. She told me she had seen a miracle.

So much has happened to my baby girl of 33 years. She has a deep, abiding faith. But so many times she has been dropped to rock bottom, scraping the rocks, being cut by the hazardous edges. And she has questioned the fruitfulness of faith. "Where is God?" I have heard her ask so many times. "Where is God?" A fair question when you feel you're standing alone.

But tonight I didn't hear a weak voice crying out for help. I heard a strength from on high. "God brought me just the right doctor. God helped us get answers. God showed us the way. God..." My child found God in the hospital room as a caring doctor took care of her infant son. I could hear the sound of relief in her voice.

One doctor had scared the wits out of her. Her 8 month old son could have cancer or leukemia, the doctor had told her. He had been admitted into the hospital in need at some point of a bone marrow biopsy. A very painful procedure, my daughter told me she just couldn't deal with it. Who could?

But then another doctor came in the room, one from the same practice, more seasoned, a veteran of many years. He examined our grandson. Yes, he is sick and we still don't have all the answers. Right now he's suffering with a virus and yes, he has a serious condition with white blood cells. He is severely low on something or other, a kind of white blood cell. His little body is not making what he should be making. But in order to find all the answers, he still needs to have regular blood tests and carefully monitored. We're not at the point where he needs the biopsy, the doctor told them.

And here's where the miracle came to be. Even at his sickest in the hospital, he doubled his cell count. The doctor came in and told them he couldn't figure out how that could happen and my daughter said she knew where it came from.

"Mom, when the doctor called me two days ago, I called five people that I knew would pray, five people that I knew would ask other people to pray and they did and I saw a miracle. My son doubled his cells in 24 hours baffling the doctors based on what my son has been doing for six weeks." I could hear the joy in her voice, a renewal in her faith, trusting that prayer would bring her little boy to a closer answer. She trusted and she deemed all she had experienced at the hospital as acts of God.

We still don't know everything. It is indeed a waiting game. Being patient is hard, really hard. Scientists and doctors are still doing research on a lot of things, including this white blood cell thing. It's what we do in the gap of things where faith is accomplished, pursued, challenged.

It is you,
to whom
we turn
in time
of trouble.
We don't always
get the answer
we want.
We don't always
find the treasure
we are looking for.
We don't always
meet up
with the Sacred
in the ways
we pray for,
but something
always happens,
in one way
or another.
Maybe we see it
and maybe we don't.
But the fact
that we trust
is a miracle
in itself.
You are God;
there is no other!
And we are
singing out
your praise.

Love, Andrea