I’ll Hold You As Long As It Takes…

I stood there shocked in disbelief. Every single one of the doctor’s words spoken were unintelligible, framed in slow-motioned lip slices to this mama’s hemorrhaging heart.

When our world turns upside down AND implodes!

Hearing tragic news literally jolts your world. It scars and cuts like a knife. It shakes and rocks your world more violent than a 7.5 earthquake.

The doctor’s rushed encounter causes sheer terror. Extreme panic and shock sets in. Only divine and supernatural intervention can restore.

Your hands cup the disbelief along with salty tears released from the ducts of Hoover Dam. You collapse to the ground because your weight becomes too much to bear by yourself. 

As your body folds onto the cold cement floor of the E.R. doorway, your focus zooms to the feet scurrying by and the relentless, torturing, alarm sounds going off from medical devices sustaining lives triggering major PTSD.

Code Blue, Room 2!

The coolness from the floor can’t compete with what’s burning through your heart and mind.  The branding sears, “Code Blue, Room 2; Code Blue, Room 2.”

My mind races back 25 years as I cradle this beautiful blue-eyed baby boy with the sweetest white hair that I spiked up like Bart Simpson.

The joy this mama’s heart pondered hearing what a beautiful baby he was from those passing by; though their initial reactions were that he was a girl because he was such a beautiful porcelain-skinned doll. It didn’t matter, he was my beautiful baby.  He was God’s medical miracle.

Cradling him back and forth became a coping mechanism that would offer him comfort throughout his life.

Setting them free…

Miracles…

I wish I could go back and hold him forever as I squish and caress his porky feet.

Only us mamas can appreciate our infatuations with our children’s feet.

Dislike feet?  Stinky and gross?

Me, too.  That is, until I gave birth to my children.

Suddenly two feet layered in Red Wings and blue slip covers slide into my uncharted pool of tears. I’m agitated because they’re occupying my “personal space,” even though I lay dormant on the hospital’s floor. 

After hearing repeated “Ma’ams,” this fully bearded, piercing dark eyes and haired man wearing a white kippah squats down and squares me right in the face. His lips begin to move, but I can no longer make sense of anything after the explosion of tragedy hit my brain.

I laid there comatose until his physical touch stroking my hair away from my face did my senses start to re-emerge.

He offers to help me up, but due to the paralysis from all the fear and dread and the lack of courage to face reality, he scoops me up into his arms instead and pulls me out of the deadly traffic jam in front of Trauma Room 2.

No sooner than hearing the beat of another’s heart, my eyes fell laser-focused onto the huge lifeless squishy feet hanging over the hospital gurney as many doctors and nurses were performing CPR, inserting tubes and IV’s into my lifeless blue son.

The adrenaline from the broken heart leaped me out of the chaplain’s arms and off the floor as loud battle cries from heaven wailed, causing the medical team to pull the curtain closed.

The chaplain catches me again, pulling me away from the room.

When your visualization is a lifeless baby boy, who may be 6’5″, but who is blue and not responding to medical attention being rendered, your eyes and mind focus intuitively on what’s outside the drawn curtain for survival. 

You frame each second onto the surroundings; his blood on the floor, the fluid bags and needle wrappings and the horrible sounds coming from the trauma team who is now holding your baby boy as long as it takes.

God’s Great Love reaches down to hold me tight through this amazing Jewish Chaplain named Joe. God comforts me through Joe saying, “I’ll hold you as long as it takes” along with scripture from Deuteronomy 31:6:

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

God was faithful in sustaining me. His words are branded forever in my heart and mind, “I’ll hold you as long as it takes.”

And through a life that’s cleaved to those beautiful words, even when there hasn’t been an expected and good ending, I trust my Father God to pick me up and carry me through every tragedy and loss that comes my way.

As far as this 6’5″ baby boy, his striking blue eyes still pierce this mama’s heart with love and strong, yet tender, hugs. This day ended well!

Until next time…

Thank You For Being Beautiful You!