I want to thank Scott Price for allowing us to share his recent personal reflections for this week of Thanksgiving. Scott and his wife Laura
have responded to a calling from God to adopt several children with special
needs. Their daughter, Vicki, was able to return home last week after being
hospitalized for 28 days with a life-threatening infection. Scott first shared
this story on Vicki’s CaringBridge blog three weeks ago and it spoke volumes to
me about the power and purposes of our sovereign God. It stirred me to marvel
and give thanks to Him. I trust it will turn your eyes toward Jesus also.
A DELICATE BALANCE by Scott Price
Vicki is in somewhat of a pattern. As evening and night roll around, she likes to "party." Well, maybe party is an overstatement but when there are a lot of people in your room, that should qualify as a party. (We do have one staff person that's on a mission to get a disco ball in the room, but that's another post).
She tends to raise her temp and have a harder time breathing late in the evening and during the night. That brings in the "party." With these things, she worries her doctors, so they draw labs, do respiratory treatments, alter medications and then she decides the party is over and goes back to sleep—about 5 a.m. Last night was just such a "party."
As I ponder this journey, what I am most amazed by is how our bodies are in an extremely delicate internal balance a majority of the time. Consider all of the things you don't think about like breathing or your temperature. Your body just does it! For me, it reinforces my faith in our Almighty God and the fact that He created us. There's just no way that this delicate internal balance we were given somehow arose out of a combo of gases, or from an evolutionary process, or whatever other theories have been concocted over the years. A wise and awesome God thought everything through and came up with this amazing and wonderful design.
What reinforces this great design is how we as nurses, doctors, other staff, and parents are trying desperately to keep Vicki in some sort of balance. We've done a myriad of things with over a half dozen doctors, the lab, countless nurses, Laura, me, and a couple of PCAs observing, getting tests, attempting interventions, and of course praying to keep her scales level.
Early on when we tried one thing, it tipped another thing out of balance. She was on a seesaw for many days. Now the seesaw still tips back and forth, but it is much less dramatic. And it's amazing how one little thing like raising the head of her bed at the wrong time or feeding her too fast can send the seesaw into wild swings.
All of these things just circle me back to an amazing design by a God that really knew (and knows) what He's doing. He told us this was true in the book of Romans:
"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Romans 1:20
This amazing balance that resides in each of us should cause us first to pause at how well it works but then second to realize that God made us and we need to thank Him for that.
Happy
Thanksgiving, friends!
“I praise you because
I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I
know that full well.” Psalm 139:14
