God exists. I know this to be true, not just from my faith in Christ, but from an intense and personal experience—one I didn’t ask for and I wasn’t looking—but that came all the same.
It was another early morning at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio. My four-year-old son was undergoing yet another surgery to repair what the doctors called a TEF, or tracheoesophageal fistula—a birth defect involving a collapsed trachea with vocal cord paralysis. His esophagus was not properly connected and although it had been repaired on his second day of life, he still had other issues that threatened a normal life.
He was fitted with an artificial trachea when he was a month old since the TEF left his trachea underdeveloped. Nearly four years later, they were adding another wedge of cartilage, taken from his chest, into his trachea to keep it open.
My husband’s work meant I was alone that day—but by then my son’s visits to the children’s hospital bordered on routine. Yet they were far from routine. It wasn’t so much the surgeries themselves, or even the recovery time that my son found difficult—it was the anesthesia that he called, “the sleeping machine.” He was strong for just four years old and physically fought going under, one time requiring four male nurses to restrain him till the drug worked.
I left his small, seemingly lifeless body with the medical personnel and numbly made my way back to the waiting room to wait and pray. I knew that my boy was a gift from God and that if he wanted my son back … Well, everything belonged to God, and I knew everything was under His control, even if it meant the loss of my son.
As I stepped into the waiting room, I was engulfed with a sense of pure, overwhelming love. I actually glanced around to see if anyone else felt it. I knew I was being subjected to something beyond myself and my senses. It was the Lord! The force was so strong that my first thought was to take my shoes off for I was on holy ground.
Instead, I collapsed into a chair and opened my heart to God, praying, weeping, and giving Him praise. I have no idea how long it lasted. But like the altars built by the Israelis in remembrance of what God had done for them, an altar was built in my heart that day. God has not come to me in that same way since.
Twenty-six years have passed and my son, now without an artificial trachea, just turned 30. I’m so very blessed. First by the altar built long ago which sustains me today when I doubt or falter. Second, by the gift of watching my son grow in his faith and following the Lord.
By Loretta Rearick
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