I Will Fear No Evil – The Allison Chronicles – Part 5

In Review: My two-week-old daughter is in critical condition after suffering a brain hemorrhage at birth. She needed a reading of 300 mg/dL on a vital test in order to receive a lifesaving operation. The last test had registered a reading of 690 which meant there was no time to get down to 300 before she would die. I had been praying for a test result of 300, and my wife has just called to inform me the next test has come in exactly at 300.

The important thing to note is that I am not uniquely blessed here. If I were, I wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with. Nor do I possess any type of special faith. This is evident when my wife tells me the reading is 300. My first reaction, my very first reaction, is to ask, “Did the doctor say how that happened?” The question perturbs my wife. “No, they didn’t say anything”, she snaps back.

Because she doesn’t care how it happened, it’s just wonderful news. And the

doctor doesn’t care how it happened, he just knows he has been given the opportunity to save a life that he thought was lost. 

But my wife had not been praying specifically for 300, and the doctor had not been expecting 300. I had been the one praying for 300, and I had been the one who knew that achieving 300 was not possible because it was impossible for the reading to drop from 690 to 300 in two days. Oh, I needed to know how this happened.

I must conclude that the laws of physical nature have been superseded, and I guess, that might be a different way of defining a miracle. Given the information, I do not believe the thick fluid started draining out of her brain at an increased rate. This means the fluid did not gradually dilute from 690 mg/dL to 300 over two days; it had to have changed in an instant. And there are examples in The Book dealing with the instant transformation of fluids, including water into wine, and the cleansing of a woman with an “issue of blood”, which interestingly occurs is the Jarius narrative mentioned in Part 1.

Now, if you doubt my conclusion, you are forced to come up with various physical explanations of how the test could now be at 300 when it was at 690 two days ago. And that’s fine, go right ahead, I will not argue with you. However, do realize that it takes as much faith to believe in whatever explanation you devise as it does to believe that God interceded. And just be careful about what you choose to put your faith in.

I had prayed specifically for 300, and now I am dealing with a result of 300. Consider that it is not 290. It is not 310. It is exactly 300. It is as a precise answer to prayer as you are ever going to get. And again, it is not the result of any great amount of faith. It is literally amazing grace. As some of you have already realized, I made a massive error in my prayer. I should have been praying for a blood thickness of 200 mg/dL, giving the operation a high chance of success, instead of the 300 that I not have, and putting the outcome in doubt.

Now you might think someone who received such a direct answer to prayer would run up and down the street proclaiming the news. Maybe shout it from the rooftops. But I respond to encountering the presence of God, more like Isiah, who declares in The Book “Woe is me. I am doomed”. So I took a step or two back and kept these details secret until now. Regardless, I had no time to proclaim anything because there was emergency surgery scheduled for tomorrow.   

Early Wednesday morning, my wife and I meet with the doctor to discuss the operation. It is delicate; it is risky. Eighteen days ago, I could not even conceive of sitting in that hospital waiting while doctors perform brain surgery on my infant daughter. Yes, I’m nervous. Yes, I’m anxious. And yes, it is physically and mentally draining. But there is one emotion missing now that had been engulfing me this entire time.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

The shadow of death is still there. The evil is still there. But the fear is gone.

You see the keyword in that passage is not death, nor fear, nor evil. The only word that means anything here is through. The statement of faith David is making is that he is going to make it through this. This is going to be a brutal walk. There is going to be incredible pain. Evil is present everywhere. But he is walking through it. No matter what happens in that valley, he is expecting to climb out of it on the other side.  

And this is a process. When you enter this dark valley, you are more afraid than you have ever been in your life. But at some point, in this perilous walk, you are forced to stare the evil in the face. And then you have a choice, you can either cower in fear or choose to walk on by faith. Faith may really be the opposite of fear. You emerge from the valley of the shadow of death a much different person than when you entered.

I matured as a man more in those eighteen days that in any other time in my life. It is literally a defining moment, in that I was shaped – defined, if you will. It determined how I view life, how I respond to crises, how I interact with people. Those eighteen days changed who I am forever.

The operation was a complete success, without any near-term complications. I was confident it would be, because Allison had beaten the long odds so many times, I had come to expect it.

And yet the prize for making it over the first three hurdles is this:

#4. If she makes it through all that, she will live with extensive brain damage.

There is no escaping the fact that Allison has significant brain damage, which typically results in severe cerebral palsy.

“Sometime I think it’s a sin. When I feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again.” (Gordon Lightfoot).

Next Time: Beating The Long Odds One More Time – The Epilogue (Part 6).