Miracles

If there is only one thing that people remember of me, I hope it is that I believe in Miracles. I don't mean that as any kind of joke. I honestly believe in miracles with all of my heart. I just think that we have forgotten how to see them, and think that miracles have to go completely our way.

I remember in the movie Bruce Almighty, there is a scene where Bruce has been able to play God for a while, and things are going desperately wrong for the world. When Bruce is talking to God he explains that when he answered peoples prayers, he had given them everything they had wanted. And Bruce was asking God how giving people what they wanted most could go so wrong. God, (in this case, Morgan Freeman) says, "when did mankind really know what they wanted." That one line has stuck with me ever since. Although it was said in a movie, I have to admit that the statement is true. Look around honestly and you can see it yourself. People want to be pop stars, and then they complain about lack of privacy and not being loved for who they really are. People want to win the lottery and then say it ruin their lives. People want to be thin, but they are never thin enough. People want plastic surgery to look better, and then have more because they don't look better enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging what people want out of life, or what they do with their life, I am merely explaining that what we want today isn't what we want tomorrow, and the easy person to blame for everything is God.

And the reason I mention any of this is because of the story I want to share. I have been laughed at for believing in miracles, and yet I can't deny I have seen them any more then I can deny the sky is blue. Just because something doesn't go exactly as we hope it will, it doesn't dismiss the miracle. Let me explain...

I gave birth to an amazing little girl, called Amy Elizabeth on the 7th March 1988. She was born nine weeks early, and as a result of this, had many health complications. Amy was born with a missing chamber to her heart, a hole in the heart, facial paralysis, bleeds around the brain, no cartilage in her bronchial tubes, which meant her tubes would collapse and cut off the air supply. There were other conditions that reared their ugly head during Amy's life, and some that were discovered after her death.

This was a time in my life when I didn't believe in God, and was very anti religion. And at this point in my life, admitting there was a God meant that he had done this to my child, which didn't win me over in any way. I can't explain the helplessness I felt as I sat by an incubator, watching my little girl fight for her life, knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do. I have never in my life felt so utterly useless.

Of course I played the blame game, and the blame was all on me. What could I have done differently? Should I have rested more? Had I not gone out that one day, I wouldn't have slipped in the snow and this would never have happened. But worse then that, what if I was just a horrible person and I was being punished. I would sit for hours staring through the incubator just blaming myself, and feeling wretched.

Every time the doctors would come to me it was more bad news. There was another condition she had, another infection, another surgery, another drug. At the age of 19 I was making life altering choices for another person, and I was scared to pieces.

One day I was called to meet with several doctors, and they told me that the bleeds around Amy's brain were getting worse. They needed my permission to discontinue a blood thining drug to prevent her from bleeding to death. Giving permission wasn't as simple as you would think, because she had a blood condition that required the drug, or, she would die. So basically, my choice was...how should I let her go? I asked which was the least painful, and the response was that they would keep her comfortable no matter what. They left me alone to give it some thought, and said that they would talk to me the following day.

I didn't know whether to cry, scream, curl up in a ball or what, but I felt as alone as I could have. I sat next to Amy, wanting to ask her forgiveness for being such a useless mother, and feeling so selfish for wanting to hold her in my arms. You see, it had been weeks and I had never been able to hold Amy.

Well I decided to call a friend for some advice. Don't ask me why, because I didn't plan on taking it. If the doctors couldn't tell me what to do, surely another teenager would be as clueless as I was.

When I explained everything to my friend, they asked if their dad and brother could give Amy a sick blessing. I would have laughed if I wasn't so sick with worry. I was at the point where I was willing to pour special water over her or have a voodoo doctor or anything. I was desperate for her to be better. I couldn't stand to see my daughter cry as they poked and prodded, re-ventilated and all the other things they had to do. To see her cry, and no sound come away from her because the tubes were in the way, rubbing against her vocal cords. And to see only parts of her face move because of the paralysis.

I agreed to the blessing, with no faith, just with the hope that I knew I tried anything and everything.

Well that evening she was given a blessing. I kept my eyes open wondering if I would see something dramatic. I was too stupid to realize that God doesn't have to be all dramatic like we humans can be. I didn't see pixie dust, no angels, no angelic voices, zip, zero, nothing.

As my friends family were leaving, Amy opened both her eyes for the first time. Her face moved, but I was still too blind to see the miracle, and gave it the name of 'Coincidence.' The following day dealt me some humble pie though.

I met with the doctors by Amys bed. They had a machine there to scan her brain and check the progression of the bleeds. I sat there feeling sick, still not knowing what choice to make. The professor watched Amy as she stared at him, as he rubbed the scanning machine over her tiny head. "Did she do that before?' he asked. I didn't care to answer. I was too sick with what was to come to answer questions on what had already happened. He looked at the computer monitor, looked at Amy's name tag on her wrist, looked at his notes, and kept repeating the cycle. All I could think was "what else is wrong?" He continued his pattern, appearing more and more concerned.

"This is your daughter?" he asked. What a stupid question to ask. I had sat by her incubator day and night. I think I know my own child. And I was angry he said that because if he was doubting who she was, then how could he treat her. But he went on to explain that he was lost for words. He said that there was no trace that there had ever been a bleed around Amy's brain, and yet as he pointed to the previous print outs of her scans, it was obvious that her bleeds had been massive. He said that there was no explanation for this, and as much as he knew who his patient was, he didn't know how to explain what he needed to tell me. He said, "I don't believe in God, but I can only explain this as a miracle."

Well I burst into tears, and all the hair on my arms stood on end, and I knew I had seen a miracle too. I ranted on with tears in my eyes, about the sick blessing and the lack of angels, and seeing her eyes and the bleeds stopping and everything else. The doctor looked at my sympathetically as though I had finally flipped. Everything had finally gotten to me, and now I was a looney. But I knew. I knew right then that there was a God, and although I didn't understand so many things, I knew he was aware of my little family. The doctors could look at me in a million different weird ways, but I knew that no matter what, I wasn't alone.

From that point Amy got well enough to hold. She was 6 weeks when I got my first cuddle. She was covered in tubes still and it was scary, but it was incredible too. She was so tiny, and so beautiful, and I was overwhelmed with all the love I felt for my little girl.

By 9 weeks she was allowed to go home, which had seemed impossible at one point.

It was just one week before her first relapse, and something that became a regular thing. The doctors gave me an apnae alarm that would sound when her breathing stopped, but often you could see it happening. The hospital taught me how to do mouth to mouth on an infant, as well as how to do a tracheostomy if her tubes collapsed, as you couldn't get air to the lungs any other way. She had a stomach reflux that would flick her food into her lungs even when it had drugs mixed with it to weight it down. For that, I had to carry equipment with me and I would have to put tubes down her nose and into her lungs and suck the milk or food out to prevent her from drowning.

I remember one time, pushing my daughter in her stroller as we walked to the local shops. She topped breathing and her alarm sounded. I started to breath for her, as a group of people gathered. In between breaths I asked people to call for help. But people are nosy and strange. I was breathing forever for her, and the crowed grew larger. By now I was crying because I knew that help wasn't coming. I had to think of where the nearest telephone was, breath, carry my daughter, stop, breath some more and run with her in my arms, stop and breath some more, and keep doing that till I got to the telephone. Then I had to unhook the phone and let it dangle as I breathed and then spoke and then breathed and then spoke to the ambulance department. No-one helped. I hated everyone stranger in that group. The paramedics took over, and rushed us to hospital.

Amy was taken to intensive care and put on life support. Clergy was sent to talk to me, asking what my last wishes were for her. The doctors told me that she wasn't going to make it, and I felt hollow inside, knowing that my efforts hadn't been enough. I had failed my child.

I prayed for the first time ever. Not one of those lovely prayers you would expect to hear, but a desperate, angry, heartfelt and pleading prayer with a threatening, bargining undertone. I didn't know how to speak to God, and I didn't have time to perfect how pretty it was, but He heard me. This isn't the ramblings of a crazy woman that was desperate, but I stand by everything to this day. God heard me.

By noon, Amy was sitting up in bed and wanting to play. She had become so noisy that she was transferred from intensive care, and moved to a regular ward, which she was later discharged from.

Everything seems like it was doom and gloom, but it wasn't. Amy's little personality changed my life. She would make me laugh, make me cry, and worked hard to do all the things a baby could. We had fun, and she changed my life, and made it a million times better then had ever been. She made me realize that the world didn't revolve around me, and thank goodness, because that sure is a selfish center of the universe.

She looked like she would explode with joy when I entered a room. Her smile made a noise that I can still hear. Her smile was a little crooked. She had big blue eyes. And because of her conditions she sounded a little like darth vader when she breathed.

The professor and many doctors became very interested in Amy, some doctors flew in from other countries to meet her and cover her case. I was told that there was only 3 cases of a child having all the different things that Amy did, (that was back in 88, I don't know what the figures are now) but Amy had been the only one to draw breath. That seemed exciting to them, and I had the new problem of being asked if they could test her for this and for that so they could understand her conditions better. My child was no test dummy. I understood that medicine advances because of tests and experiments, but my little girl was going through enough, and unless they could prove they were helping her, she was nobody's pin cushion.

Well you may already feel that I'm crazy at this point, but our story doesn't end there. I decided to take the discussions from two missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It wasn't easy to ask them to teach me because I had been so darn rude and ignorant to other missionaries in the past. Anyone talking to me about God before would have gotten a response you would expect from a drunken sailor, and here I was approaching the missionaries myself. It was ungrateful of me to know there was a God, to know he loved me, and not want to understand anything I could know about Him in return. Let me put it this way...if I were drowning and YOU pulled me to safety...I can promise you that you would need a restraining order to keep me from being your new best friend. I was warned by people that the missionaries would take advantage of my situation, but as I look back I can certainly laugh at that. These missionaries have been my life long friends, and they are like brothers to me now. I didn't know back then, the blessing that they would be in my life, but I will be forever grateful for the things they shared, for their patience with my resistance and stubborness, for their friendship, concern, and understanding. If everyone had friends like Mike Summers and Leonardo Diciolla, the world would be a far better place.

I decided to be baptized on the 18th December 1988. That was the first sensible decision I had ever made! Those who know me are permitted to laugh cause they now it's true!

Now this is the part I was trying to explain at the begining of rambling. Miracles happen, and we can't deny them just because everything doesn't go our way. And things didn't go my way that night. Amy passed away 6 hours after my baptism.

Now I don't want to dwell on the hurt that followed, because that isn't the point of what I wanted to share, and its not a place you would want me to take you to.

The doctors told me that Amy should never have lived. I say that they were wrong. I say that because she did live. She was here. She made a difference.

I'm no pioneer, and I hate trials, trouble, heartache and problems. Every mole hill is a mountain to me, and I don't handle my lot in life very well most days. But I can't deny the miracles I have seen, nor the knowledge I have that there is a God, and that my daughter is with him. I have every hope that I will see her again, and that has filled me with joy.

I didn't want to be without Amy for one second. I have learned that you don't get over the loss of a child, you only learn to live with the ache of missing them. I have had people tell me that there was no miracle because Amy passed away anyway. I say that is as ridiculous as saying you never had a Christmas as a child because you no longer have the childhood gifts to prove it. I don't claim to understand all things, I can barely understand my 13 year olds math homework! I can only say what I have seen, and what I believe and what I know. When so many leave hospitals with empty arms, I would be an ungrateful wretch if I kept the things I have seen to myself. Am I going to give credit to 'LUCK' for every smile I saw on Amy's face? Or was it 'FATE' that opened her eyes that first time and stopped the bleeds? Why would that be easier to accept? I saw miracles, and I held a miracle, and I will hold her again.

I trust God with my life. Why? because I don't always know what I want for breakfast thats why! I don't like everything that happens in life, but come what may, I'm not alone.

Without saying a word, Amy's life helped me to gain faith, to see past what my eyes could see, to find hope, and to enjoy what I had no matter how short a time I had it. I love you Amy.