An Angel came . . .

It has happened to me more than once. 

I've been struggling with an issue, disappointment, disillusionment or just down right hurt feelings and taken that pain to bed only to be awakened with the realization that someone was talking to me.

Okay - not verbally - just a feeling..

August, 1977 - 38 years ago.

My third child was about to be born.  The first two (both little girls) had come into this world very easily.  Becca at 9 lbs 2 oz was born about 3 hours after we got to the hospital and it took Renee (10.4 and 22 inches long) an hour longer. 

Surely this one would be as easy.

Wrong.  After a day of labor, when the doctor realized that baby was just not going to be born otherwise, a Caesarian Section brought Raymond Lee Parker, III into this world.  Somehow he had managed to turn enough times to get the cord wrapped around his neck. 

As I began to wake up  - I learned that I had a little boy and that he had been taken to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  The cord, his head seemed a little large, I am a border line diabetic and he weighed 10.2.  To the doctors - reason enough.

I was very ill for a couple of days and couldn't go to see him.  It was the strangest experience imaginable. I missed my little girls; I was still in much pain and taking lots of antibiotics.  It might be the worst three or four days of my life.

And then the time came.  My husband wheeled me through the corridors and into an elevator.  We arrived at the unit and the nurses brought my baby to the glass (I still had a fever; I couldn't go in).  I  felt nothing.  When I write that I feel so strange.  How can a mother "feel nothing"?

Back in my room I lay awake and prayed.  It seemed that my prayers were bouncing off the ceiling.  I prayed myself to sleep.

At some point, it was as if an angel came and sat on the edge of my bed.  And this is what I heard - maybe not audibly - but what I experienced was "it's okay to love him.  If I take him I'll give you strength to bear it".

HUM

The next time I went to see him all I could do was cry.  He had a little undershirt on and I thought he looked like a future linebacker.

There would be months of uncertainty.  But I kept loving him - and the months became years - and he grew -- and I loved him through baseball rather than football; golf, girls, college.  Oh me, let's not go there.

But he did grow up.  And his sisters and I think we prepared him well for his life with a lovely wife and two daughters.

At this time in my life, there is some uncertainty once again.  I'd kind of like an angel to come and sit on my bed.  However, God speaks in many ways - like through other writers.  I have been feeling emotionally exhausted and I read a devotional by Jennifer Rothschild with these words: 

He is the One who makes it well with your soul even when it is not well with your circumstances.

HUM!