I’m not sure how seven years can seem like it has gone by in the blink of an eye and lasted an eternity all at the same time, but that’s where I find myself. I’m living in the tension between survival and healing. My life doesn’t look the way I envisioned. My family is stuck in the middle of an everyday ordinary where miracles are yet to be finished and hard feels normal.
Seven years ago, I tucked my infant son, Wyatt, into his crib for the night, and by morning, my family’s entire world had changed. A rare autoimmune disease attacked his spinal cord and left him paralyzed while we slept, oblivious to the nightmare we would awake to in the morning. There was no fall, no warning, and no way to stop what was happening to his precious little body. I had done everything right. I followed all the parenting rules, and he still got sick. It shouldn’t have happened.
I begged God to heal him. I laid my hand on Wyatt’s chest in the pediatric intensive care unit surrounded by the sounds of beeping machines and pleaded with God to let Wyatt touch the hem of His garment. He needed a miraculous healing. Medicine had no answer for Wyatt’s condition. He had been diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a one-in-a-million autoimmune disease, and there was no cure. I longed for the miraculous healings that I had read about in the Bible. I opened my eyes fully expecting the God I’d trusted since childhood to make Wyatt’s legs move, but seven years later, I’m still waiting.
Instead of healing, God sent peace, and I didn’t want any part of it. I fought to throw it off like a selfish child. Peace felt like a consolation prize. I wanted my baby whole and healthy, and I believed peace meant that God wasn’t going to heal my son. Peace meant that God would be near in the middle of our nightmare, but I wanted to wake up from it. I needed healing. Paralysis seemed too hard, and even with God holding me close to Him, I didn’t see how life could be good again.
In the days and months following Wyatt’s diagnosis, well-meaning friends and visitors told me that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to scream every time I heard it, because okay wasn’t enough. My baby was paralyzed, and I wasn’t dreaming about an okay life. Okay wasn’t good enough for him. It’s not good enough for anybody. I wanted Wyatt to have an amazing, full, and abundant life, and okay always sounded like settling for less.
Jesus didn’t say that He came to give us life to the ‘okayest.’ In John 10, Jesus says that He came to give us life to the fullest, and His fullness doesn’t come with any caveats. His fullness is for me and for Wyatt. Able bodied or disabled, it doesn’t matter. An abundantly full life is available in Jesus regardless of ability.
I was so naïve in those early days. I had gone through struggles in my life before, but nothing that required me to live so completely openhanded. I had no control. There was no way for me to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. I didn’t even know what the picture was supposed to look like anymore. I was blinded by fear and consumed with worry about how Wyatt’s life would turn out. I had an infant, and I was suddenly overcome with worry about how he would go to college in a wheelchair. It was completely irrational, but worry compounds itself. My compounded worry created a make-believe tomorrow full of worst cast scenarios. Living in a made-up tomorrow rendered me useless and left me exhausted. It wasn’t good for me, and Wyatt needed the best version of me.
I fought to cover back up with the peace I so selfishly tried to throw aside, but God was gracious and never took it from me. He was there even when I was too wounded to see Him. I was reminded of Matthew 6:34 which says, “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” For the first time in my life, the weight of tomorrow was more than I could bear, and I finally realized that God never intended for me to carry it. I only had to do today, but sometimes even that seemed like too much.
I started to simply live in the moment I was given, and I soon realized all the joy that I had been missing. I was missing moments and milestones because I was too caught up looking down the road. Wyatt wasn’t miraculously healed in one single moment, but a recovery started with a single finger wiggle, a deep breath, and roll from stomach to back. Hundreds of tiny miracles have been strung together, and I have the gift of a front row seat.
Wyatt is now a rambunctious seven-year-old who loves wheelchair basketball, fast cars, jokes, and hanging out with his brother and sister. He’s full of joy and wonder, and he lives a life that is so much fuller than I could have ever imagined. We both do. There is goodness even when the healing doesn’t come.
Abby Banks a mom turned author and special needs advocate. She is the author of Love Him Anyway, host of Wheel Stories podcast, and blogs at www.fightlikewyatt.com. Abby has passion for encouraging woman to find God in hard places and in the middle of the mundane every day. She is a lover of coffee with too much cream, good books, and guacamole. She and her husband, Jason, reside in Greenwood, SC, with their three children, Jay, Austin, and Wyatt. Connect with Abby on Instagram @fightlikewyatt or on Facebook at Wyatt’s Fight Against TM.
