Often quoted, this phrase became real to me at the scariest moment of my life
Clueless Beginning
My wife and I were married on August 13 (yes, on a Friday the 13th!) in 1993.
We rented a 1 bedroom/1bath, no heat/no air/ 500sq ft attic apartment. We didn’t know anything about anything. We met in college, dated the whole time and graduated. The next logical step was marriage. We made so many mistakes that I would be embarrassed to recount all of them. We were young and dumb and in love.
Unprepared
JoAnne and I embarked on a life in which we were wholly and completely unprepared. It’s not like our parents didn’t try. JoAnne could cook, we both knew how to clean and we both knew how to do laundry. We both knew how to put in an honest days work. These were all traits passed down to us from our awesome and wonderful parents.
But being MARRIED, living TOGETHER, sharing SPACE, all of that took some getting used to. We just weren’t ready for that. It was tough. We struggled. We fought. We made bad decisions. We ate way too much. We stayed up entirely too late. We were living a single life, but as a married couple. And big-time life responsibilities were not ANYWHERE in our view. We lived in a terrible apartment for 6 years! We ate a pan of brownies several times a week. We wrote a lot of checks to pizza places. We rented a lot of movies.
Time to Grow Up
After 6 years of marriage, we found out that we were expecting our first child. Joy and Fear flooded our thoughts. Terror and elation. Cute clothes and college funds. Our first half decade of marriage was characterized by selfish, instant-gratification, short-term decisions. A pivot was in order. And it was painful.
We made our way down the road of doctor visits, hand-me-down tubs from friends, cribs, name-choosing – the whole experience. And we grew up a little, too. We weren’t “ready” (and no one ever really is), but we became more ready than we had been.
The Day Everything Changed
August 11, 1999. About 5 weeks before our baby boy was due. JoAnne felt uneasy as she had grown accustomed to feeling the kicks and twists inside her belly, and she hadn’t felt them in a day or so. We made an unplanned trip to the doctor’s office where they put her on a heartrate monitor. Time passed. Different nurses entered and exited with few words. Tension grew. Finally, a doctor that we had never met, who was on call, entered the room, did a few more tests, and very plainly non-emotionally said these words.
“Your baby stands a better chance of surviving outside the womb than inside. We need to do an emergency C-section right now. DO NOT go home. Go straight to the hospital. They will be waiting on you.”
Words cannot describe the intensity of the fear, raw emotions, blood-pumping uncertainty that we experienced on our way to the hospital.
Just Like You See on TV
Exactly like a scene from your favorite medical drama television show, the ER nurses were indeed waiting on us and a whole team surrounded JoAnne, put her on a gurney and in true TV fashion, gave her gas to put her to sleep immediately and did a heart-throbbing, 5 minute, emergency caesarian section. What I have come to refer to as “the quick gas and gut”.
The blinds to the nursery were open, and I was told I could view my son through the window until he was ready for me to hold him. But the nurses closed the blinds. By then, the waiting room was starting to pile up of supporting friends who were helping me stay somewhat distracted from the obviously horrible situation.
I Didn’t Know the Hospital had one of “Those” Rooms
Shortly after the nurses closed the blinds, I was taken to a room that I didn’t know existed. I would call it the bad-news room. Its a room designed for maximum privacy with just a few seats and away from the public throngs of normally happy and cheerful expectant family members waiting to catch a glimpse of their newest nephew or niece, grandson or granddaughter.
In walked a doctor I had never met and, to the best of my memory, never spoke to again after this interaction. This was our interaction.
“Hi, Mr. Bailey. My name is Dr. Toffaletto and I am the pediatrician on call at the hospital and I am attempting to take care of your son. Mr. Bailey, your son has made no effort to move, breath on his own or even open his eyes. We have a breathing tube down his throat and we are breathing for him, but as of this moment, he has made no effort to live. We are doing everything we can, but we don’t even know what is wrong with him and therefore we don’t know how to treat him. It doesn’t look good, Mr. Bailey. We have called Childrens Hospital to come and get him, but to be honest, Mr. Bailey, it will take them at least an hour or more to get here, and I am not sure your son has that much time.”
With that, he walked out.
My mind, my heart……my wife! My son….my goodness.
Many of the events of that day are a blur, but at some point, maybe even while Dr. Toffaletto was in the room, I was accompanied by my pastor and one of the greatest men I have ever known, Dr. Randy Davis.
He didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to say. So, I just thought. For a brief moment, my mind began to wonder about what it costs to bury a child. I began to wonder if the headstone would have the same date for “date of birth” and “date of death”. Then I started worrying about WHERE to bury him. Where we live now, in my hometown, in JoAnnes hometown? I was sinking fast.
Brother Randy will never really know how much his words helped me. But such a simple question that he asked me, helped me to snap out of the downward spiral I was experiencing in my mind. He said, “Lee, you will need to make a decision very soon about whether you will stay with JoAnne or accompany the ambulance to Children’s Hospital. This is your most immediate decision and you don’t need to think about anything beyond that.”
The Beginning of Multiple Appearances of Miracles
Five minutes after Dr. Toffaletto delivered the crushing news, he stepped back in. It might have been less than five minutes. It certainly wasn’t any more than that. He came back to say that for some unexplained reason, an entire team of doctors and nurses from Children’s Hospital (100 miles away from the hospital we were in) – they had arrived and were working on our son. [We were told sometime later that another baby nearby was in distress and much earlier in the day Children’s had been contacted to come and pick up this baby. They got all their people together, including all their needed supplies and their neonatal specialist and had driven the entire distance to pick up this distressed baby. When they arrived, the baby had stabilized and this team was no longer needed. This entire team simply drove LITERALLY across the street to begin working on our son. The experts that we needed were already in town when our doctor made the phone call!]
By this time, JoAnne was regaining consciousness, and the neonatal intensive care physician entered our room for an update. He said he knew what was wrong, but it still might be too late. Our son had lost most of his blood in the womb through a faulty valve in the umbilical cord and when he was delivered, he had less than 20% of the blood volume needed to survive. His organs, including his brain, are most likely starved for blood and therefore starved for oxygen.
Medical professionals will understand this, but apparently when babies are born they are put through several tests and the results of the test is called the APGAR Score. Max’s APGAR was 0. Max would be given multiple blood transfusions over the next 12 hours if we hoped for him to survive in any capacity.
Honestly, the next 12 hours were a blur. I chose to go to Children’s Hospital with Max since JoAnne’s mom had arrived at the hospital to be with her. I remember very, very little about that time in the waiting room at Children’s. People who were hearing about our situation were kind enough to come by the waiting room and give me encouragement. Occasionally, a nurse or doctor would come in with an update. Most of the updates were not positive. As the afternoon turned into night, the waiting room began to empty and at some point, late that night, I found myself alone and was told by the nurses that visiting hours were up and I couldn’t see him until the next day. So I walked out to the parking lot to look for my car. Someone else had driven it to the hospital. I had no idea where it was.
A Life-Altering Encounter
As I walked to my car, alone, hungry, tired, scared, fearful, and emotionally spent, I finally took in a deep breath. Standing at the front bumper of my car, I spoke these words out loud. “Lord, JoAnne and I have been praying for months that we would raise a son that would one day further your kingdom. How can the death of my son accomplish that?”
In that moment, the second that last word left my mouth, my memory was flooded with times throughout my life where God was found faithful, even in the midst of tragedy. My own mother’s untimely death when I was only 4-years-old and many other memories flowed through my head. Then God reminded me that he gave His only Son to redeem a sinful and broken world. In that moment, helpless and alone, I said “Lord, you are right. You ARE in control and its up to you, and completely up to you, as to how this is going to end. I trust you.”
Real Peace
I stood in that dimly lit parking lot and physically raised my hands heavenward as if I was holding my little premature son, symbolically giving him to God. “He is yours. I trust you.”
The world would have us believe that religion is a crutch, its a man-made way to artificially cope with the world.
But all I can say, is that the Bible is clear that the Holy Spirit will give us a “peace that passes all understanding”. In the moment I was most alone, I reluctantly but trustingly “gave” up what really wasn’t mine to begin with. God entrusts us with children, but in the end, they are His.
At the very heartbeat that I raised my hands in a gesture of giving Max to the Lord, I felt PEACE wash over me like never before. Like never before. A sense of calm, yes, but a peace that the God of the universe cared about me and was going to comfort me (and JoAnne) – regardless of what happened. And that was all I needed to know at that time.
We Couldn’t Handle It
If God showed us everything we would have to deal with in life, we couldn’t handle it. There is no way we could emotionally deal with knowing in advance the inevitable heartache and hurt that we all experience. But Gods grace is enough FOR THIS SINGLE MOMENT. His grace is ALWAYS enough for the moment we are in. That is all we need. I experienced a peace that no one can possible explain except that when I was willing to give over my greatest earthly possession, I had enough peace, grace, hope and faith to allow me to have a restful and rejuvenating night of sleep.
