Have faith.

That’s what I was told from the very day we found out about Matthew.

Have Faith!!

Have faith that he will be fine. Have faith that everything will turn out great. Have faith that he will be healed. Have faith that the plan God has for us is going to be in our favor.

Have faith.

But how? I have been told on numerous different occasions that my son was going to die. I heard his heart beating from strong and consistent to almost non-existent. I have seen doctors grab him and move him and forcibly stick tubes down his throat just so he can breathe. He’s a baby!! Baby’s shouldn’t be handled like that. But my son was.

When my son’s lungs collapsed, they told me what they had to do for him to make him better. I accepted the news because I wasn’t fully explained what the procedure was. I had no idea until one day I was watching my favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy. A man had a collapsed lung, and the doctors explained to him what they were going to do. They explained so well, that they warned this man that it was going to be excruciatingly painful. They literally cut a hole in the side of his body, near his ribs, they shove a tube through that hole and allow the air to re-inflate his lungs…. there is no medication that would work to relieve this kind of instantaneous pain.

……that’s what they did to my son. When he was first born, he was born alive and breathing. He was, in fact, crying. But five minutes after being born, both his lungs collapsed. And this is the procedure that they did. On a different day, about two months after he was born, his left lung collapsed again. And, again, they conducted that emergency procedure.

It wasn’t until this episode of Grey’s Anatomy that I realized what they did to my son. My  baby. I had no idea whatsoever. It hurts to think about what really happened to him. The ice pick of pain that stabs my heart gets pushed in a little deeper when I think about these extreme procedures my son has undergone.

And throughout this entire experience, all I have ever been told was….

have faith.

I, honestly, can’t explain it right now HOW to have faith.  I just did. For me, it wasn’t an option not to. For me, my son was going to live. There was no other option. If you asked me at that time… all my son ever had were “bad days”… and he ever had were days that God’s miracles and His glories were going to shine. I enjoyed the good days. I thanked God for those days. I needed those every once in a while. I needed a break from the sadness and fear and worry that I often felt. But through all of that… I still have faith.

My son had no other options. He was going to live. And if I didn’t believe it with every ounce of me… than it wouldn’t have come true. I had faith. And I had faith because I had to.