I love night. I love to hear the crickets and the breeze blowing the trees. Night here is especially nice, sitting on the back deck and watching the sky change colors, just enjoying the stillness of a summer evening. As the time wears on I like to go to bed, I'm no night owl. I need my eight plus hours, and I seldom get them. I've been up at two a.m. every night for a year and two and a half weeks...and counting. You might wonder what in the world I'm saying this for - well, it occured to me that even though I've been up in the night, the reasons have changed a lot in a year. In fact I want to go back to the first summer we were here...
August 2009 - It was a beautiful summer night - crickets, a breeze, just right for sleeping. We had only been here a little over a month and were still getting used to all of the sounds (and smells) of life in the country. We were sleeping soundly, as Aedan has finally learned to sleep through at the tender age of one. What more could we ask for! I awoke around two to the awful smell of a skunk. It was so strong, and it got worse and worse until finally I was convinced the thing was in our house somewhere. I got up to look our the window and when I did, something caught the corner of my eye. There, on the floor at the end of the bed was a black shadow...with a white stripe! I screamed and hollered until Steve shot out of bed. I told him the skunk was in our bedroom and it would probably attack us and someone must've left the basement door open and I knew I shoulda checked it myself...in the meantime, he turned on the light without saying a word, to reveal a pair of dark jeans with a white sock on it....
Fast forward to August 2010- I couldn't tell you what the night was like outside, we didn't see many of them. Our home had become the IWK and we spent most nights keeping vigil beside Elizabeth's bed, not knowing what the next moment would bring. There were no crickets - there were monitors, breathing machines, life support systems, doctors, nurses, grieving parents, sick children. Those were the sounds. Handsanitizer and alcohol were the smells. Two a.m. brought the words no parent wants to hear "if we can't get her heart rate down she'll die" We sat and watched as our baby's heart rate raced to 240 beats per minute. We watched as they brought her body temperature down to 32 degrees to try and stabalize her. My cry in the night wasn't about the smell of the 'skunk' someone had let in the house, it was a cry to God to either heal her or take her because I was sure that she could never withstand the sickness that was placed on her...and to be very honest I wasn't sure we could either. We sat with parents who lost their nine month old daughter, and wondered how they would ever go on, wondered how we would go on if we were to face that same outcome. What a difference a year can make in our lives...
Now, August 2011, last night to be exact - I was again up at two a.m. Brought from my sleep by the sound of my sweet (and very loud) daughter. I actually got out of bed (sometimes I pretend not to hear her and roll over and 'accidentally' elbow Steve who gets up and goes to see what she needs) and walked up the hall with my eyes mostly closed. I opened the fridge and got out the almond milk, took the top off of the bottle, poured the milk, put it back into the refridgerator and scuffed off down the hall. I saw her sweet little face (yes, she's beautiful even when she's screaming) and she reached up for me to take her. I held her in my arms, tipped the bottle up for her, and heard her sputtering and coughing. That usually doesn't happen, what could be wrong? Then I felt it, the milk running down my arm and onto the floor, a real river. I should probably have opened my eyes and then I would have noticed that I didn't replace the nipple on the bottle. Anyway, after a change of clothes for her and me, we got a new bottle of milk and then she was happy to go back to sleep. I watched her as she snuggled down in her bed with her elephant and listened to her sigh as she made herself comfortable and I thought, what a difference a year makes! My cry last night was Thank you Lord that you've kept her. Jeremiah 29:11 has always been one of my favorite verses, it has been the one I've prayed over Elizabeth, and all of our children. "For I know the plans I have for you' says the Lord 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a hope and a future."
