Lessons from the 10th Floor: Prayer and the Sovereignty of God

On Monday post surgery it felt like a crazy day long parade as we met with infectious disease specialists, orthopaedic teams, etc.  It was really overwhelming as we've not had a child in the hospital post surgery before.  We were comforted by so many working so hard to find a solution to the problems Cameron was having.  Most of that day is a blur for me as we did constant testing.

A cousin of a missionary friend in South Africa found out about our situation and sent me a text asking if she could help..and I decided to meet a perfect stranger and ask her to take me to Target to get some things we needed.  She was a sweet lady and I felt within moments that she was a friend.  Having Starbucks at Target and feeling like I had a few things to last a couple of days made things better.  She left us with a cooler of sandwiches and a note for Cameron and later that evening provided a meal that she dropped off for us.  God is good.

One moment I remember clearly that day is when a man knocked on the door at 3pm.  He said "do you remember me?"  Then he identified himself as Cameron's cardiologist and said we needed to talk.  We stepped out and he told us...the echocardiogram today showed a change in Cam's heart...not only does he have the VSD we knew he had, but now he had muscle bundles and he needs open heart surgery.  We were floored..and felt like we had to keep this news to ourselves until we had a time to process it and accept it and then tell our children in person so they wouldn't fear.  Now we were facing more fears...and this wasn't going to be the end but rather just the beginning of a many month trial ahead.  I closed the door and cried...I said "Rick this is why we lost our adoption..I was confident one day I would understand why that didn't work out for us..and I had no idea it would be Cameron"  There is no way we could have faced heart surgery at the time the babies would have been due.  It is one of the many times in the past 3 years when God has clearly shown why He in love did not allow one thing to work out because He was preparing us for something else.  He is good all of the time.

On Monday evening around 2am (technically Tuesday morning) Cameron's fever spiked and his heart rate climbed to 188 while his oxygen plummeted as well.  He became very paranoid and said that waters were drowning him and he was seeing things...Rick and I were terrified as tons of people rushed into our room and ICU was called.  We honestly thought he was going to die.  They were able to give him several meds and observed him for a while.  It was a scary and helpless feeling..I prayed aloud over him and decided to send a message out on Facebook saying if anyone was awake to pray for him in danger.  It was then that God reminded me of the power of prayer and the comfort he gives in the night..adoptive mamas overseas picking up their children in Bulgaria and the Ukraine answered, missionaries around the world answered and prayed, mamas of newborns who were up prayed..and God answered and kept Cameron safe.  He is Sovereign and when we cry out to Him, he hears our prayers.

Psalm 46:1-2  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble: Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea...