I went to the office supply store on a mission. I needed to buy my 2024 planners, so I could start filling out the days already booked with appointments. While I was there, I looked for a small pocket calendar to record my daughter’s daily weight. Since July 2023, her heart condition has required us to weigh her daily. The goal is to catch any fluid retention early that would appear as a quick weight gain.
I grabbed the simplest, cheapest pocket calendar I saw and walked away. A couple of steps down the aisle, I glanced through the pages to make sure it would fulfill our needs. That’s when I noticed it was a two-year calendar for the years 2024 and 2025. I stopped and headed back to see my other options.
During the next thirty seconds, a flood of thoughts and questions inundated my mind. I don’t know what’s going to happen this year, and I certainly can’t think about 2025.
Will she be alive in two years? If she is alive, will I still have to be weighing her daily? What will life be like then?
In a short amount of time, I let every thought run through my mind as I contemplated putting the calendar back. Ultimately, I decided to purchase that two-year calendar as a statement of faith to silence the screaming thoughts in my head.
In the deep crevasses of my mind, I have a multitude of fears for my daughter’s future. Most days, I push them down and try not to let them affect my here and now. But I know, if I let my guard down, all of those intense emotions could easily fall out.
For the next 24 hours, the calendar incident seeped out feelings and fears. As I worked feverishly in the kitchen to prepare supper that night, the calendar popped into my mind. What was so scary about the simple little object? It was a surprising source of angst.
Image from @goranab on Unsplash.
The next day, I attended church with my family still not fully understanding all of my responses to the calendar. The worship team started singing their set. Then a familiar song started that grabbed my attention.
Hearing the lyrics of “Great Are You Lord” by All Sons and Daughters ringing through the sanctuary brought me back. Suddenly, my mind flashed back to 2013 in the ICU room observing my daughter in a hospital bed. She was near death, on a ventilator, fighting hard against sepsis, pneumonia, and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. During those three intense weeks, we prayed hard for a miracle and played a variety of worship songs in the room. “Great Are You Lord” was a song in the rotation because it sang about breath and lungs.
Our entire immediate family still talks about that illness and the miracle that happened when my daughter pulled through. There was little hope given when she was placed on the ventilator, but she eventually made a full recovery. The 10 years that have passed since that miracle has healed the emotional trauma and fears that occurred in that hospital admission.
The main feelings associated with that time now is thankfulness to God.
As the song played in my church, God was sending me a message. Don’t worry about the future with your daughter. Remember the miracles that have happened in the past and trust me when you are worried.
The Bible frequently had people remember what God had done for them. This remembering was to build faith and move forward.
I remember the time in 2013 when she pulled through. I cannot forget when she was on a ventilator for another respiratory failure in 2015. I recall all the other health emergencies that she lived through repeatedly. God was there, even in the chaos, helping my daughter to sustain her breath.
After that, I did not give the calendar another thought. It’s a calendar after all, nothing more and nothing less. I did not need to fret over it.
I will remember what God has done for our family in the past. I will have faith that God will be with us in the future.
Evana is a wife and mother of two children. She enjoys serving in her church’s special-needs ministry. Evana is also a pediatric speech-language pathologist and serves children with autism, feeding disorders, and other developmental delays. You can connect with Evana on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog, A Special Purposed Life. You can also read more about her family’s story in her book, Badges of Motherhood: One Mother’s Story about Family, Down syndrome, Hospitals, and Faith.
