One Sick Boy and a Holy Week

Grab a drink and get comfortable in your chair; this is a long post - but worth the read.

Two weeks ago I was catching up on family and friends and read my sister's blog. She wrote about her son Leif and I was very emotionally moved (You can read it here). So much so that I decided to talk about it to our students a couple of Sunday's a go. I titled my talk "A Matter of Perspective." I used her blog about Leif to emphasize the point that life really is a matter of perspective.

Well, I've had to "live what I preach" lately.

This week, Holy Week, is a significant week in my life. It hasn't always been. I grew up not really understanding the significance of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, living in the agony of Saturday, and what it really meant to celebrate on Easter Sunday. In the last few years, we have put some things in place in our ministry to help our students, church, and ourselves grasp the journey and to find identity in what Christ endured during the last couple of months of his ministry on earth.

I am passionate about this week, about the services, about dwelling in the passion, the emotion, the suffering, the death, the emptiness, the anxiety, the confusion, the unbelief, the excitement, the celebration, and the rejoicing; doing all of that along with fellow Christ followers and journeyers. It is important for me personally to try and experience all of what this week has to offer in order for Sunday to be as meaningful and rich as it really is. I think for too long most of us have moved too quickly past Christ's suffering and death and have rushed right into Easter Sunday fueling even more of our want of instant gratification. If you dwell in the moments of this week that aren't so fun, then how much more gratifying will celebrating Christ's resurrection be on Sunday? Moving too quickly past this week and into Sunday is celebrating and accepting "cheap" grace. Walking step by step through this journey and then celebrating on Sunday is accepting "costly" grace.

So, last weekend as I hesitantly looked forward to this week, my prayer was that between family stuff, school work, planning all the services during Holy Week, and the in-betweens, I wouldn't miss what I just wrote about above. My prayer was that I would be able to filter the busyness and that it would translate into my response to what Holy Week means for my life. I asked that God would show me perspective, grace, understanding, and that I would be able to give all of those back some how.

Last Friday we were looking forward to my parents (Bud and Sue) being in town for the weekend and staying with us. I was excited to let them see how Caleb is crawling around on all fours now, pulling himself up, and scooting along the furniture. I was excited to see how they would react to his infectious, whole face smile. I wanted them to hear "ba ba ba ba ba" as he mimics us trying to get him to say "mama" and "dada." Well, that didn't really happen.

On Friday we took Caleb into the doctor because he obviously wasn't doing well. He had a high fever and was really sluggish and clingy - that's just not Caleb. As it turns out, he had an ear infection in both ears. We thought, "Okay, we can deal with that." We got the medicine, went home and began to patch the boy up. Saturday came around and he wasn't progressing, in fact, he was digressing fast. His breathing was faster, his fever was higher, he began vomiting, and we knew something was wrong. We called the doctor and they said to take him to the ER immediately - so we did.

This began a very long weekend and beginning of this week. The ear infection wasn't an ear infection after all, it was RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). RSV is a germ that causes an infection in the airways of the lungs. Actually, RSV is the most common thing that causes colds among adults and children, but for infants and small children it can be dangerous because they can't tolerate the mucus build up like older children and adults can.

He was admitted into the hospital on Saturday night and was put on oxygen to help with his breathing. He was breathing 80 times a minute, normal is 30-40 for a child his age and adults breathe 15-25 times a minute. Try breathing 80 times a minute but make sure someone is next to you because you may just pass out.:)

He slowly got better and we were released on Wednesday morning. Thank you to everyone who stopped by, sent cards and flowers, and gave Caleb some much needed love during his stay at the hospital. He's still got a little ways to go, but he's doing much better and now were just working on getting him back to normal eating and sleeping.

So, we had a crazy few days and nights. It wasn't fun, in fact, it was miserable on every level. It is hard watching your son struggle to breathe, moan in pain, and go from eating like a champ to sucking down an ounce or two at a time.

But...

While we were hanging out with Caleb trying not to be as boring as the wall paper in the room, Joye and I began to find perspective. By this point we were in the hospital for two days with Caleb and we were beginning to throw a pity party for ourselves when Joye said something that completely reverse my attitude about this whole situation. She said, "This gives me a whole new level of respect for and understanding of what the Lenker's are going through." Jayme, Keegan, and their son Joncee have basically lived in the hospital since Joncee's birth. Joncee is a year and a half old now and was diagnosed with eye cancer a few weeks into his life. Later, he was diagnosed with Leukemia and just a month ago or so was able to go home for the first time and begin to have a "normal" childhood.

A little case of RSV is scary yes, and I wish it on no one, but we found perspective - a perspective that taught us to be patient, thankful, understanding, and humble about Caleb's bout with this sickness.

I also began to think about that prayer to God; about how I would be able to filter the busyness and that it would translate into my response to what Holy Week means for my life. I asked that God would show me perspective, grace, understanding, and that I would be able to give all of those back some how.

I sat in the room counting the tics and tocs go by and began to get cynical about this whole experience. Why now? What's up with the timing of all of this? My parents are in town, Holy Week is here, and of all the times for Caleb to be sick, why now? "Figures," I thought, "This is just what I need right now." Pretty selfish, huh? However, because it was fresh on my mind I just said a little prayer, "God, give me perspective."

That's when it hit me. I was asking for God to give me perspective, to help me find the grace and understanding embedded in all that happens this week. Planning and running the services makes it a little difficult for me to be impacted like those attending and experiencing these events, and so I think I needed something to help me understand what this week is all about.

As I sat there thinking all of these things, I began to think about Holy Week from God's point of view. I began to think about what it must have been like for God to watch his son suffer, be tortured, mocked, staked to a cross. I began to think about what it must have been like for God to watch his son struggle to breathe, moan, and go from eating like a champ at the Last Supper to sucking wine vinegar from a sponge offered to him on a stick while he was hanging on the cross.

While in no way am I comparing or equaling what Caleb is going through to what Jesus went through, in those moments I felt an intimacy with God like none other. It was like a moment of real connection with God. Caleb isn't dying, he's not at all going through what Jesus went through, but I think that this week I have grasped just a little more understanding of who God is, how God loves, and why this week is so significant. Sitting in that hospital room exposed me to grace in a way that I have never really understood in a first-hand-experience-way before. I suppose it helped me understand what "costly" grace is.

So, we're home now. Caleb is doing well. He's still got symptoms of a cold, congestion, etc. But he's happy again, he's breathing well, and he's back to the "ba ba ba's." We're not out of the woods yet, but we're a lot closer than we were 6 days ago.

If anything, I hope that you are able to relate to our experience in someway. It really is a "matter of perspective." God didn't make Caleb sick, but for us, he used this as an opportunity to help us draw closer to him.

We hope that for you, this week truly is a Holy one. We hope that you'll discover "costly" grace and that this Sunday will not be "business" as usual; that the danger of redundancy is avoided, and that you will be able to celebrate Christ's resurrection like you've never done before because you have not moved too quickly past the perspective this week grants us.

We love you!
JJC

Here are a few pictures of Caleb's stay at the hospital. Sorry they're grainy. They are from my phone.

This was in the ER - Caleb trying to breath (80 times/min)

Poor baby.

Trying to smile - he wanted to be better so bad.

Laughing in his bed.

Sleeping...a lot.

Joye says that if there was anything good about this experience, it was that he was so cuddly.