surgery will be Thursday

In the midst of a day in which Moriah and I were running between two Boston hospitals, the Cardiac Clinic at Children's called my cell phone yesterday to tell me that Moriah's heart surger will be Thursday, September 24th. We'll spend Wednesday in Pre-Op appointments (how I remember this from Orilus and Jackson's surgeries pre-transplant!) and will receive a surgery time during those appointments on Wednesday. Most likely, we'll be asked to arrive at 6:30 am and surgery will probably begin a while after (8 is my guess). It will take 5 hours, about an hour of which will be the time in which Moriah's heart will be stopped, put on a bypass machine, and then taken off the machine to restart on its own. Writing those words make me want to throw up.

Time, time, time. In typing that paragraph, I realize how often I'm typing times--dates, hours. What struck me over and over yesterday was the calm that Moriah has brought me with regard to timing. Yesterday, again, she had perfect timing. She woke up hungry when we were sitting in waiting rooms. She was awake for her most important appointments, when doctors wanted to play with her and check on her development. She slept while we drove in to the city, between the hospitals, and out of the city. I remember in Haiti, when I was living there for a month right before we brought the boys home, I attended church with another adopted mom. The pastor was preaching in English and Kreyol, and so I was able to understand when he explained that there are 2 words for time in Greek--chronos and kairos (sorry to all my seminary scholar friends if I've misspelled those). Chronos is time as we usually know it--hours, minutes, appointments, schedules. Kairos is "ordained time"--time as God creates it, providential timing. As in planned, or purposeful, or meaningful time.

I got to thinking yesterday that Moriah is a gift of kairos timing. She seems to have this way of arranging my days, even the busiest ones (as these last few have been) to be ordained and purposeful. I've not once been frustrated with her for waking up, eating, or sleeping at the "wrong time." I'm learning to trust her timing. And it gives me this general sense of hope with regards to her surgery, that because it's her, the surgery must be right "on time," coming just as she needs it most. I'm so comforted to know that God and Moriah are conspiring together (at least, I think so) to make kairos time happen.

We had the difficult conversation with Orilus and Jackson last night over dinner about if Moriah could die. We were honest with them. Words can't express how I wanted to just cry at that moment, and wish to have the power to take away all my children's pain--the pain of anticipation and worry among them. We explained to them how difficult it is for us sometimes to believe in God, to trust Him, how angry and disappointed we sometimes are because He doesn't do things the way we want. His goodness is not always our pleasure. And yet, we learned during Orilus' transplant, and will learn again, that though our faith guarantees us no outcomes, it does provide meaning to the narrative of our lives. It helps us to make connections, and to see what otherwise could be unseen and ignored. Things like kairos timing.

So we are trusting this is all purposed and purposeful, somehow. We are hurting so much, and finding again that surrendering is much, much more painful than we ever thought. We so appreciate your prayers for us as we try to trust in God's kairos.