I’m not sure how seven years can seem like it has gone by in the blink of an eye and lasted an eternity all at the same time, but that’s where I find myself. I’m living in the tension between survival and healing. My life doesn’t look the way I envisioned. My family is stuck in the middle of an everyday ordinary where miracles are yet to be finished and hard feels normal.
Seven years ago, I tucked my infant son, Wyatt, into his crib for the night, and by morning, my family’s entire world had changed. A rare autoimmune disease attacked his spinal cord and left him paralyzed while we slept, oblivious to the nightmare we would awake to in the morning. There was no fall, no warning, and no way to stop what was happening to his precious little body. I had done everything right. I followed all the parenting rules, and he still got sick. It shouldn’t have happened.
I begged God to heal him. I laid my hand on Wyatt’s chest in the pediatric intensive care unit surrounded by the sounds of beeping machines and pleaded with God to let Wyatt touch the hem of His garment. He needed a miraculous healing. Medicine had no answer for Wyatt’s condition. He had been diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a one-in-a-million autoimmune disease, and there was no cure. I longed for the miraculous healings that I had read about in the Bible. I opened my eyes fully expecting the God I’d trusted since childhood to make Wyatt’s legs move, but seven years later, I’m still waiting.
Instead of healing, God sent peace, and I didn’t want any part of it. I fought to throw it off like a selfish child. Peace felt like a consolation prize. I wanted my baby whole and healthy, and I believed peace meant that God wasn’t going to heal my son. Peace meant that God would be near in the middle of our nightmare, but I wanted to wake up from it. I needed healing. Paralysis seemed too hard, and even with God holding me close to Him, I didn’t see how life could be good again.
In the days and months following Wyatt’s diagnosis, well-meaning friends and visitors told me that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to scream every time I heard it, because okay wasn’t enough. My baby was paralyzed, and I wasn’t dreaming about an okay life. Okay wasn’t good enough for him. It’s not good enough for anybody. I wanted Wyatt to have an amazing, full, and abundant life, and okay always sounded like settling for less.
Jesus didn’t say that He came to give us life to the ‘okayest.’ In John 10, Jesus says that He came to give us life to the fullest, and His fullness doesn’t come with any caveats. His fullness is for me and for Wyatt. Able bodied or disabled, it doesn’t matter. An abundantly full life is available in Jesus regardless of ability.
Source: Special Needs Parenting- Key Ministry
