to-do's

Jason is home from work for the next two weeks and after a full weekend visiting family, we began ticking items off our to-do list today in preparation for Moriah's surgery. Call doctor so-and-so. Cancel appointment such-and-such. Meet with Early Intervention. Finish schedule of who is where and who is helping and what we are eating in the next 2 weeks (yes, it's on an Excel spreadsheet). Sort baby gifts. Store too-big baby clothes in the attic. Donate those that are too small. Email. Run to Target for jeans that actually fit, snacks for the hospital, and Jackson's birthday presents (his birthday is in one week). Iron. Make an appointment to have a family portrait taken. Try to maintain smiles--one crying baby, one grumpy teenager, and the rest of us hungry and tired--during said portrait-taking. Answer the phone. Ignore the phone.

It has been a full and busy today, with tomorrow's to-do list already growing, as Wednesday is our all-day of Pre-Op, and Thursday is the actual surgery. For us, tomorrow feels like the last day before it all begins.

On the one hand, we are coping by doing one thing at a time, by making plans (always I laugh at this irony--so much out of our control, and so obviously, and yet I insist on making a schedule, planning meals, and doing other tasks that help me to manage/control what I can). We're not falling apart, in fact, we're hardly crying. We are having difficult conversations--again with the boys tonight, and with each other last night, as Jason recalled (grimly) the meaning of Moriah's name as we find it in Scripture. Moriah is the name of the mountain on which Abraham nearly sacrificed (or sacrificed, depending on your tradition) his son, Issac. We are left wondering...will a "ram" be provided? Will we see the hand of God's provision this time? And how--and how painfully--will our trust in God be stretched? I think of Abraham, who walks down the mountain, and seems to be alone (his son is not mentioned at the end of the ordeal). Why was he alone? What was he thinking then? And I think this mountain-sense--that we must climb the mountain of Moriah's heart-health, that it is an inevitablity we must face--leaves us wondering how we will venture "down" from the mountain--alone, or with our little girl in our arms?

We hope, how we hope, for provision! We comfort ourselves with our surgeon's reputation, and the reputation of Children's Hospital, and the relative ease of the surgery as heart surgeries go. What is not comforting, it turns out, is our faith, insofar as it gives us no guarantees of any outcome. Instead, we find again that faith is being sure of what we cannot see, and that what we cannot see is not the outcome (actually, I can imagine Moriah healthy quite vividly), but God Himself. God is the great mystery, and it seems to us that as the years go by, we understand Him less, even as we grow in our knowledge of His love for us more and more. It is a paradox. I cannot explain it--what it feels to be so completely loved, and yet so utterly unsure that Love means "rescue" everytime.

I've actually been thinking of this, too, this rescue imagery. Some of you know I once completed a lifeguarding course as a high school swim coach. One of the most startling things I learned in that course was that often, to save a drowning person, a lifeguard must push the person under the water, and hold her there until she stops struggling. Otherwise, she will take the lifeguard down with her, putting her own life and the lifeguard's in danger, and thwarting her own rescue. Lately I feel like this drowing person, wanting to take God down with me by outlining for Him exactly how I'm sure He should behave. And He is much too big for that, and too strong, and so He necessarily pushes me down under so that I stop struggling. I must surrender. Perhaps this image is too stark for many of you, but it makes sense to me, and helps me to trust God more, to see that pain can be a great gift, can even result in my own salvation.

We so appreciate your prayers as we continue to grapple with what these days may bring us, to hope that they bring a new heart for Moriah, and to walk with faith and love up a mountain that seems rather steep right now. What will we find there, on our Mount Moriah? We are not sure, but we are sure that like Abraham, like the Jews that followed later in pilgrimages up Mount Moriah to their temple, we will find a great teaching-place, and return from our pilgrimage marked by surrender, and kept in the great Love of our mysterious God.