Try not to forget

I just got home from three months of life as I've never known it.  Three months of living alone.  Three months of fully relying on God.  Three months of miracle after miracle.  I saw God's grace, power, and faithfulness on a daily basis.

And then I came home.  Within 48 hours we had a puking child.  Thankfully, it was not Victor but being in the same house as Victor was close enough in my mind.  How many times had we been warned about his compromised immune system?  Wash your hands before holding or touching him.  Limit his exposure to crowds.  Limit his exposure to sick folks.  And then the 7 year old gets some sort of terrible 24 hour bug that has her alternating between the toilet and fast asleep in bed.

And I forgot.  I immediately forgot that ultimately I can leave it in God's hands.  I will do what I can to limit exposure and to sanitize everything multiple times a day.  I can remind and re-remind family members to wash up and sanitize (hand-itize as HopeAnne calls it) but in the end I can do nothing.  And thankfully I serve a God who can do everything.  He can give a 25 weeker life.  He can give that 25 weeker a cry at birth.  He can give that little boy a his birth mother's feisty spirit so that he can fight every day of his tiny little life.  He can heal eyes, and lungs, and hernias and protect brains and hearts.

And I'm worried about a little puke?

At least I'm not alone.  Just the other day a friend was talking about Eden's faith and her tears when the culmination of that faith was here with her in PA.  My friend said she wished she could remember not to forget.  Me, too.

When we lived in our former house, my dream house, the one in which I was going to spend my last days (and even the ones after that since the house was bordered on two sides by a cemetery), we built an altar.  I taught the kids about Old Testament heroes who built altars to remember God's faithfulness (Noah in Genesis 8:20, Abram in Genesis 12: 7-8, Isaac in Genesis 26:25, etc.) and we used stones we had collected on various hikes and vacations and built ourselves an altar.  Each stone represented a time in the life of our family where God showed His goodness to us.  It was to help us not to forget.

Looks like it was also Dress Yourself Day.

But then God asked us to move and it was hard.  And we forgot.  Looking back, moving was the best thing for our family in so many ways.  But we were hurt and it was hard.  In the end, I'm convinced that what we learned through that experience helped us through this one.  Without the "hard" of moving from friends, family, school, and dream home, there would have been no "hard" of bringing Victor home.

I wish we had brought that altar, those stones, with us in the move.  I wish I could remember what each stone represents.  I wish I could always remember God's faithfulness.  But since I'm human and I forget, it's time for another altar, or a symbolic reminder to never forget.

Deuteronomy 4:9
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

And Victor did not get sick nor did anyone else.  In fact, he is getting chunkier every day.  He still needs oxygen during feeds and we keep it on at night, but his need for it is diminishing daily.  He sees the pediatric ophthalmologist tomorrow and the pediatrician again on Friday.  He is getting signed up with early intervention.  God is good.  All the time.  All the time.  God is good.