Oxygen

Perfect, healthy, and normal. She wasn’t any of those things before surgery. For ten very long newborn weeks after I delivered my daughter, I pleaded with the pediatrician she wasn’t breathing right. I described how she would only nurse for seconds at a time before needing to breathe. I told him she would never take a pacifier without spitting it out to stutter breaths and cry. I told him she would experience choke and spasm sounds for no reason. I told him her color was pale and her limbs were limp, her nutrition poor, her weight falling. Sleep was rare for her without episodes of gasping to inhale and exhale. The same was true for me as I laid beside her urging myself awake so I could make sure my beautiful infant was still breathing, terrified she would stop if I slept. I was a mother and it came with strong intuition that something wasn’t right with my beloved. On the eighth time to the doctors office, I pleaded to my pediatrician “I am not leaving here today until something is done for my baby, she isn’t breathing right and I’m worried she won’t make it.” I’d had enough of being told her lungs had a condition called Stridor and just needed to finish developing. I’d had enough of being told I was a sleep-deprived new mother and worried about “nothing.” And I’d had enough of being told “nothing” was in her throat or up her nose or in the chest sounds of a stethoscope. I wanted vibrant unharnessed oxygen flowing into the lungs of my child. I needed full life-giving oxygen flowing into the life of my child. Lord, let me be oxygen for your kingdom.

Within 24 hours of that doctor’s visit, my husband and I found ourselves in the ER of a specialized pediatric ENT unit in the city. We were told the Senior Pediatric Surgeon was clearing her entire day’s schedule to operate on our daughter. They’d found a random cyst sitting in the back of her 10 week old throat the size of a gumball and air was barely squeezing past it. She was starving for air and unable to breathe, eat, or sleep. She could have and would have died. Moments flying around us, we were then greeted by an OR assistant in full blue scrubs and gloves asking me to let go of her. There will never be enough words to describe the moment I had to hand my baby over to the scrubbed assistant and watch her tiny pink blankie and her tinier frail body carried to the OR. There will never be enough words to describe the terror and relief all colliding and crashing at once in my head. This was the twilight zone. “I will hold her little hand in mine the whole time for you, I totally understand, I’m a mother too” came the whispered words of the nurse as she hugged me tight and left. She had given me a moment of powerful oxygen with her compassion. Lord, let me be oxygen for your kingdom.

“We don’t normally allow parents in the recovery room, but would you like to come inside and hold the oxygen for your baby girl?” came the words of the same nurse hours later. With tears flowing and fear falling, “YES, I will!” My husband and I came around the corner and saw our baby on the little tiny bed hooked up to wires and IV’s. The nurse brought me to the side of the bed and gently transferred the little oxygen mask to my hands so I could hold it over my daughters mouth and nose. This was the moment I’d been fighting to have for weeks, helping my baby breathe in and out, in and out, in and out. “She’s waking up, so this is helping her lungs while she does that” explained the nurse. “She’s not in distress, the oxygen is making it easier for her to rest while she wakes up from the anesthesia.” More moments of compassionate oxygen coming from the nurse to me. I couldn’t take my eyes off my sleeping baby. She was no longer gasping for air as she slept, but she also wasn’t in her safe bassinet at home either. Birth to 10 weeks had already been full of strain and stride and I realized in that moment, I was raising a young life that would know more of the same combination. How would I navigate her to more stride than strain? I didn’t know, but I did know I’d be there to hold oxygen to her heart every time she needed. And I did know I would need more nurses in my life giving me oxygen of compassion. Lord, let me be oxygen for your kingdom.

Are we the dependent infant needing oxygen to rest from strain and repair, or the compassionate nurse giving it to a stressed and hungry soul, a held-hand of love until we’re breathing again? In my life, I want to be both. I want to know humility as a child and a warrior. I want to know the robe and the resilient. I want to know the fallen and the fighter within my own soul. I want to live the truth and call the breathe of God Himself to fill my truth no matter what we’re walking through together. It’s my deepest longing in life to breathe for my Lord. To keep walking, to keep waging on towards the kingdom. To serve with all my heart and all my might and all my time so that I can be oxygen of kindness and compassion for the kingdom. It’s also my deepest prayer in life to depend on Him with all my mind and all my needs and all my trust so I can be filled with the breath of grace and love as I trudge and tire. I am journeying through and looking for the joy just like each of you. I am trying to use my gifts and change my gaffes just like each of you. And so often, I cry out to Christ to help me see what He created so I can cherish it the way He does. To see me, to see others through His eyes. Help me see the lives behind the people. Help me see the stars and streams of water behind the Creator. Help me see the human blockage of air so I can act and hear the call and say ”YES, I will!” And in those quieter nights when prayer is speechless and my heart is strengthless, I beg He come to my hospital room of life and hold rest and relief over His baby girl so I can breathe for as long as I need and as deep as I crave. Lord, let me be oxygen for your kingdom.

My dear readers, whatever moment it is for you, whether your holding oxygen for another’s life or needing it desperately in your own, invite the Trinity’s Kingdom and live the truth. Invite the kingdom to your dreams. Invite the kingdom to your loved ones dreams. Invite the kingdom to your strides and strains. Invite the kingdom to theirs. Invite the kingdom of waterfalls of His divine grace to your parched human grit. Invite the kingdom to cascade living grace on them too. Most of all, accept that you can do that. Accept that He can do that. Accept that He will do that. Most of all, dear warrior, accept that He WANTS to do that. God of hope, God of today and tomorrow, God of breathe, God of His own children. Accept. Lord, let me be oxygen for your kingdom.