The Makings of a Treasure Hunter

Little girls love to play dress up, play with Barbies, and play house. They love to dance, skip, and run. Some are brought to church and taught to stay quiet, keeping busy by looking at religious books and Children’s Bibles. They are instructed to put quarters in the offering basket when it passes, having been given the coin only seconds before the required action. As part of their nighttime routine, they are taught to say nighttime prayers. I was a little girl of that sort. As the energetic mother of a bustling home, I am sure it was not always timely for my mom to drop other activities and lead my sister, Elizabeth, and me in prayer. She would stand at the doorway to our room in a narrow, dimly lit hallway as we were already bathed and cozy in our beds. She would proceed with folded hands and reverently bow her head, “God, bless Mommy, Daddy, Peggy, Tommy, Barbara, Patrick, Elizabeth, and Deborah. God, bless everyone. Our Father, Who art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.”  She would leave the door slightly ajar allowing beams of dim light to dowse our room. I was afraid of the dark, much to the chagrin of my older and braver sister. This routine is the foundation of my prayer life.

In all those evenings it never occurred to me to pray for strength or endurance. I had zero understanding why the prayer Jesus used as a model would include a need to forgive and ask for deliverance. In all my childhood experiences I never needed God to rescue me. We were a happy bunch, well cared for, active and full of wonder.

At the age of 14, my life was radically transformed at FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) camp in Black Mountain, NC. The keynote speaker must have been 6 foot 2 inches tall, and all around enormous; weighing close to 300 lbs. Her story was more compelling than her physique. She had been a prostitute, a madam. She had done many wild things in her former life even mentoring others to follow her lead, but she spoke of our Savior with such gentleness that was entirely disarming. This Son of God, bruised, broken, tortured and murdered, loved her so thoroughly. She allowed Him to love her like that. In my imagination, I saw that she had been given a small box, intricately wrapped, as a eternal Christmas gift. She had opened it! The treasure within was Christ Himself, in exchange for her life, lived in such complicated fleshly bondage. Then, she extended this same gift to us. The promise of eternal, purposeful life in exchange for all our sin, all our self-centered teenage whimsical wishes. An altar call was given. I froze like a deer in the headlights. How could I, who lived my whole life trying to be a good person, take that step down the aisle, in humility, in front of everyone? How could I, raised Catholic, take that step out and up? I wrestled with myself. Stubbornly, I anchored myself, harboring safety in my established pride. I would not budge for the reckless, public involvement at that altar, up front where the girls were weeping, exchanging their sin for freedom. Nevertheless, His Word, through the speaker, had penetrated deeply. What happened in the anonymity of my wooden chair was nothing short of a life transformed. What had been a routine of waking up and trying to decide what I wanted, would henceforth become a lifestyle of arising and consulting, “What do You want, Father?”

The verse, which served as the focus of the entire week was James 1:2-4 NIV “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” We were asked to spend some time and try to memorize this scripture. With the exception of the Lord’s Prayer,  this was the first Bible verse I had ever memorized. In my naivety, I had no idea why the Bible would talk so much about pain and trials.  I was an American from a healthy family and my father was always providing for us and loving our mother. My conception of Christianity would continue to be filtered, for many years, through an Americanized lens of everything will be good and happy, just like the ending of a Disney movie.

Later in life, when I was 39 and in the throes of a painful traumatic trial,  these words would begin to be life giving, a sort of oxygen mask when all the chips were crumbling.

It started as a day full of promise as my family packed into the van to go to the high risk- doctor to have the first sonogram and gender reveal of the baby. One thing caught my attention as we sat waiting, the nurses and doctor celebrated in the hall. They were ecstatic, an advanced maternal mother’s high risk tests had come back negative. The staff were truly joyful. They jumped up and down with jubilation. Unconsciously I formulated a surprising, forthright musing, “I wonder if they will rejoice like that for me?”

We entered the room bringing a variety of laughter and curiosity. Janae, age 4, was inquiring about the equipment in the room. Kathryn, age 9, was as her norm, full of life. Sonogram goop was applied to my belly to facilitate the wand’s mobility. It was a beautiful moment. I consciously took notice and hid it in my heart.

Once the technician announced, “It’s a girl!” I focused on the screen. I noticed the baby’s head didn’t look quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the shape looked off somehow. This did not remind me of Kathryn and Janae’s sonograms. How peculiar. I asked the tech what she was doing, “Counting digits,” was her reply. I proceeded to do the same, “one, two, three, four, five, six. Six!” my baby girl had six fingers. I held my breathe. My heart skipped a beat.

Things were amiss. Serious things were wrong with my daughter. Dr. Green came in and started talking quickly about all the abnormalities he was seeing. “… and here, in the heart, it looks like there’s a problem. And her head, it’s not shaped right, see? It’s called a strawberry shaped head. There is a lot of water on her brain, on both lobes. That is called hydrocephalus. That might go away in the coming months, but I can’t know for sure. And if you notice here—” and he zoomed in on the baby’s hand, “—excluding the thumb, I think I counted five finger bones, not four. And if you notice…” I couldn’t keep up with all the medical information that he was divulging. My husband returned from the restroom and realized that Kathryn and Janae were being bombarded by this information. He whisked them away so they would not be further traumatized about the awful news about their baby sister.

The baby was eventually diagnosed as having Trisomy 18, Edward’s Syndrome. You may have never heard of this. It is more common than childhood diabetes occurring in one out of five thousand births.  Of the children who are not aborted, 50% never make it to birth. 50% of them do not survive to one or two months and 90% of them fly back to heaven before their 1st birthdays.

My world and faith were rocked by these revelations. The doctors were merciless in explaining over, and over that she would die. They used a phase that should never be used and is a lie, “She is incompatible with life.”

As the shock wore off, I took the thousands of pieces of my shattered heart to my home bathroom which seconded as my prayer closet. My intention that day was to leave the God I had loved for a quarter of a century, “How could this be my reality? How could You let this happen to me? All I have ever wanted to do is serve You since I was a teenager and this is how You treat your daughter? This is my reality?” The tears flowed from the depth of my soul. The pain of this trauma was almost unbearable. As much as I purposed in my heart to gather all my playthings from God’s sandbox and move out of His territory there was only one thing that frightened me more than staying with Him. That was the thought of facing all of this on my own. I knew from spending over a decade in a church that taught predestination, that God was not surprised by this turn of event. He already had a  course of action and a destiny for this child. I would be a fool to leave God, the only One who could guide me through this labyrinth of pain and misfortune.

Father, I’m going to catch You being good. I’m going to search for You like searching for precious gem stones. I’m going to record every good thing You do for my family. All things work for good. All things are NOT good, but good can be found in this trial. I’m going to concentrate on that. I’m gonna find that good and remember to thank you for it! Instead of why me? I say: Why not me? Why not me? I have to trade my weakness for Your strength. My kids, my husband need me to make it. They need me to be strong and not fall apart. Nothing is impossible with You. Your Word is true. I have to be an example to my girls. Please help us. Bless my family. Spare our baby. Let her live. Heal her. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

This is the journey that taught me the value of becoming a treasure hunter when life does not make sense. This blog is filled with little nuggets that I picked up on days that my circumstances were not creating for me a “happy” life. This is the PURE JOY that James spoke of. We need vision to see it. We need to pick it up and celebrate the pure joy that is helping us to be mature and lack no good thing. I hope in sharing some of my offerings found on broken paths, you yourself would have eyes to see the good that God is doing for you! Be abundantly blessed in all your ways.

The baby was named Carly Joy and she lived an extraordinary 7 ½ years. My family was surrounded by a plethora of prayer warriors, and support of many kinds in her education and through family and friends. Perhaps I will one day share some of those amazing stories as well.