That 'miracle' baby

By Sharon Latour

I'm not referring to Baby Jesus here. I'm about to tell you the “rest of the story” about my niece's infant, who suffered life-threatening and serious brain damage trauma over the Halloween weekend.

The newborn was in a medically-induced coma due to uncontrollable seizures that had caused her to stop breathing.

The pediatric intensive care unit (ICU) was keeping her alive until the brain trauma healed enough for them to assess her ability to breathe on her own, but the level of motor and cognitive impairment outlook was very dire.

And it was unclear why she came to experience the level of injury she did.

Curiously, I'd just finished a sermon series on the perspective someone who perceives God as a lovingly involved Creator can have on suffering. It was helpful to know, in my bones, that God respects what God made and loves it passionately.

I believed that, even as I challenged God with a “What else you got?” finger poking in the chest, sort of challenge.

But as things unfolded in the hospital environment, the loving truth of God's presence was apparent in a thousand little ways of human care.

And then the baby, this little baby of promise, responded to people praying for miracles.

As I understand it, the Pediatric ICU physician made a bold move and stopped the coma-inducing level of seizure medication and removed the breathing tube.

And the infant ... was fine! The baby was moved to the pediatric ward and began devouring bottled formula. And that's where it happened. Again.

Part of the legal complications in the whole situation was whether or not she had been having choking episodes leading to seizures and asphyxiation or not.

The parents were still being regarded with suspicion. And then the baby repeated the choking seizure while the pediatric nurse was feeding her.

It turns out she was born with an acid reflux-like condition. And despite the parent's calling experts for advice each of the three previous times it had happened, no one understood the severity of what my niece and her husband were reporting.

This is good news for this young couple and all who love them. And the good news keeps coming.

The baby is responding to light, is hearing, and because of other brain activity, they are projecting her ability to walk, after all. She should be discharged very soon.

Don't you love miracle baby stories? Especially if they happen to someone you know?

And I should make something plain that is often said but rarely noticed in real-time: The miracle was as much about our lives being transformed as the baby being given better odds at a more able-bodied life.

Our prayers changed us, just like C.S. Lewis once suggested.

I watched us go from praying for this experience to never have happened, to a full return to health, to her regaining some ability to be self-sufficient, to simply being able to breathe on her own.

I watched us redefine what it means to be human and loved. It all got so basic. In the end, we all simply wanted her to live.

So there have been several miracles so far. We are getting all we'd wanted for the baby. And we are grateful. But, as you can see, we are getting far more than that.

So when I poked God in the chest and challenged, “What else you got?” God ignored my wounded sarcasm and lavished us with sacred care by melting our hearts and re-teaching us what it means to love and be loved in this physical-body life.

We had to be shaken to our core and broken open. And the glue that held all of us was compassion. God's compassion was in hundreds of hospital healers, friends and neighbors, and even strangers passing by the scene of so many wires and apparatus.

So here's my take on this for the rest of us.

This holy-day season, could you consider the possibility that you are the light you long to see this year? Would you consider that you could be the compassionate vessel, made of human flesh and blood, that would be used to break into a wounded heart and begin their healing?

And if you say that you are the one needing healing, I ask you to do the counter-intuitive thing: Do that very thing that you need most, for another. And see what happens.

This recent journey reminds me of how much love, how much compassion, and how much community is right in front of us when we are willing to try to open the eyes of our hearts and look for it.

Shalom!

Sharon is pastor of the Garberville Community Presbyterian Church. Worship is at 10:30 a.m. every Sunday during the school year. Children's Sunday school is offered during the service. Comments or questions should be addressed to: Dr. Sharon Latour, c/o A Pastor's Perspective, P.O. Box 65, Garberville, CA 95542. (707) 923-3295.