A year ago, Jack was rushed in an ambulance to the ER after hours at home with a cough. He began to struggle for breath. The doctors said we made it there within minutes of losing him. I remember cringing when the doctor told me she wanted to put my little Jack on an IV. I prayed, asking God if this was okay to allow and He spoke a clear and peaceful ‘yes’ to my heart. “Yes, Father. He belongs to you. I trust You.” I am so bewildered as to how people can go through such trauma without faith in God. I know I would have cussed out every doctor and nurse in that place when they tried to poke and prick my little one year old. I know it sounds irrational since I came to the hospital so they could fix him… but I certainly would not have had the strength to be rational without my faith in God, holding my heart still, while I helped hold my boy down so a large jaded man could shove the needle into Jack’s tiny hand. The man couldn’t find the vein while Jacks whole body went purple with screaming, which, at that point, was only in horrific half-second bursts. Then, without a breath in or out for the next very long five seconds, tears fell continuously out of his huge, agonized, searching little eyes. They seemed to look at me like, “I don’t understand! What is this pain?! Why are you letting them do this?! Why are you holding me down?! Please rescue me, comfort me! Pick me up please! Help me, Momma, help me please!” I thought about how two of my brothers must have looked at the Lord that way as they suffered through addiction, withdrawal, depression, and self loathing as they would fail to beat their demon again. “Why won’t you heal me?! Why won’t you set me free?! Where is the Spirit that released all these people I hear of, in an instant?! It seems like I’m crying out to closed, iron curtain in the heavens! I believe! Help! Please! Why won’t you help?! I’ll die without your intervention… Don’t you love me like you say?! Have mercy, oh, God, have mercy!!”

I cried at this look in his eyes, while I sang a lullaby prayer of mercy in tongues softly in his ear. I called him by his full name, Joshua Lewis, so I could bless him with the meaning it carries. God saves famous warrior, be strong and very courageous. After it was finished his color went back to normal while I defied the nurses instruction and allowed him to nurse like he was frantically trying to do with or without my help. His eyes relaxed, rolling back with relief, as he relaxed in my arms. He fell asleep almost instantly. I ran my fingers through his hair that was now drenched with sweat from him trying with all his might to resist being held down. I blew a stream of cool air over his face and wiped the beads of sweat off his nose, cheeks, chin and forehead. I loved him intensely as I watched him finally rest from all he had been through that day. I prayed for my cousin who had recently lost her five year old after a two year battle with cancer… I cried for their sweet family who had seen so much unimaginable agony, and lost their faith in the process. There is no silence like the unanswered prayer for relief for your hurting child. I hoped my boy wouldn’t misunderstand me while I held him down for the doctors to torture him. I hoped he wouldn’t push me away and stop trusting me. Thankfully he is not old enough to be unforgiving and hold a grudge. He clung to me like he knew I was still a safe place. I was so thankful he let me kiss him and rock him and nurse him.

I don’t know why God seems to hold us down sometimes and let us be tortured. I know that afterwards it would be so lonely without a Heavenly Abba Father to cling to. I imagine my hurt for my boys pain and my relief for his faith in me after I let things he can’t understand happen to him, is just a drop in an ocean of these kind of feelings God must have for us as we go through the painfully unexplainable things we go through. I’m not making God in my image, I’m made in His. I love because He does, and I must hurt because he does too.