31 days of Good Deeds

(click here for the series)

~ Day 31 ~

Piled onto one bed.

That’s how we do it.  That’s how we say our prayers at night.

I’m not sure which challenge is greater – fitting eight people onto one bed, or getting six little people to hold still long enough to finish our words to the One who holds this overcrowded bed together.

…and, please keep Daddy safe on his trip.  

Little voices piled on request after request.

Mama finished with one final prayer,

Please, God, let something really cool happen on his trip.  Please let him have an experience he can share with us when he gets home.

Please put him in front of someone.

I’m not sure why I asked for that.  I’m learning to love the unexpected – the thrill of this journey.

Babies tucked in, bottoms patted, lullabies hummed, lights out.  

It was a day trip for my warrior; a long flight in the morning with a return late into the night.  These trips are a treat – the nights I know he’s coming home.  Remembering endless evenings –  and months upon months of nights alone –  with these slumbering little ones.

He walked in the door just before midnight.

Squeezing me tightly, he said,

You’re not going to believe this story.

My eyes widened in anticipation – I love a good story.  

I was sitting next to a woman on the plane.  She was typing away at something.  

Those airline seats.  There’s nothing like being stuffed into a flying tube with one-hundred-fifty strangers, as we try our best to maintain personal space.  Not much personal space in a two-by-two seat.  We face forward hoping all goes well as we are propelled through the air in a chair.  No wonder my warrior likes a single seat jet.

She was typing something and I could see that she was crying.  I handed her a tissue and said, “I hope those are happy tears.”

She smiled, nodded, and took the tissue from my hand.  “Oh, yes, my husband and I are flying out to adopt a newborn baby.”

My warrior went on,

Oh that’s great!  How many kids do you guys have?

She smiled and said,

This will be our fourth.  They are all adopted.

I love a good story about happy families, happy children, and happy endings.  Then, he went on,

Karin, then she told me that this new baby… was born without a brain.

I froze and my eyes filled.  My thoughts ricocheted between mommy love and speech pathologist truth.  My mind went to countless souls, young and old, that I have treated with one brain disorder after another.  No brain?  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,

He only has a brain stem.

The brain stem.  The part of our brain that provides basic functioning: heart rate, breathing, sleeping, and eating.  The basic functions that, on the surface, seem like the only things a newborn wants to do.  But, there is so much more going on in a new healthy brain after it signals that first breath of life.  So much hidden from our eyes in these new ones we bring into the world.

But, not this little one.  Only a brain stem.  No more.

My warrior, this daddy of six, continued,

She told me about the baby – she showed me his picture.  He’s beautiful.  He looks perfect. His mother has already signed him over.  She can’t do it.  She can’t take care of him.  So, Karin, this lady and her husband are flying out to pick him up.  They are taking him home.

I couldn’t quite believe what he was telling me, and then there was more,

So, we compared family photos.  I showed her the kids and she showed me hers.  Her older two are teenagers now.  They also have a two-year-old.  This toddler only has half of his brain.  The left side is missing.  She told me that he makes noises and climbs with his one functioning side.  He loves to climb on his daddy.  Karin, he’ll never talk.  

The doctors told them that he would never walk; but he’s proved them wrong.

My mind spun.  The left side of the brain, where language finds its home, is the reason our babies can whisper,

I love you.

He told me that she was worried.  Not about the long-term.  She was concerned about the things every mother of a new one wonders.  How will I take care of a newborn and a toddler?  She had done it before. Sometimes knowing what’s coming gives us pause.  She spent her flight in the pause – thinking, talking, wondering.  Until she and her husband would land and wrap arms around newborn life.  This life, short of a miracle, would be brief.  

Brief… but loved.

The young mother went on to tell my husband that they had only just been notified of this baby’s birth.  It was a last-minute thing.  He needed a home, and they got the call.

And, they said,

Yes.

She added,

I was just writing to my sister to tell her about the baby.  I don’t know yet what we will name him.  I wrote to her as you handed me a tissue… I told her that a good Samaritan next to me had just given me a tissue.

I smiled, as he told me,

Karin, I just gave her a tissue – she was crying.  I’m no good Samaritan.  They are adopting a baby with no… brain.  I just gave her a tissue.

I hugged him hard,

To her, honey, you were a good Samaritan.  It takes all good deeds, big and small, to change this place.

You know, I asked God to put you in front of someone.  Someone with a story.  He not only gave you a story…

He also dried her tears.

And, this… this is how it rolls.  How this place spins.  One good deed after another.  One story more magnificent, more heart-wrenching, more eye-opening, more life-altering than the next.  We all have stories.  Stories pass us by day after day… as we move past each other.

The trick is… to open our eyes.  Open our hearts... our ears.  To find the space between.

To lay down our watches, our expectations, our previous notions.

There are no small deeds – in this world of great needs.

His watchful eye will place us face to face with soul after soul… 

and, sometimes, all that is required is an open heart…

and a tissue.

 

Hebrews 10:23-25

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.