Trust

I've been thinking a lot about TRUST.  It really is a puzzling thing to consider.  What do you trust?  Why do you trust?  Do you tend to trust unless something proves untrustworthy, or do you only place your trust once the thing proves itself to be true?  And of course, it all depends on the thing or the one whom we are considering.

Take this chair I'm sitting in.  I didn't really consider it before I sat down.  A quick glance and my mind knew it was a chair.  I trusted it would hold me up without turning it over and inspecting it's nuts and bolts.  In that same glance I could see it was one of those reclining chairs and appeared soft, so I trusted it would be comfortable.  More comfortable than the wooden chair that we tend to just put our stuff on or maybe a visitor who won't stay long and can sit there and be uncomfortable for 20-30 minutes (he's probably a bit uncomfortable anyway visiting people like us who are emotionally fragile, exhausted from doing nothing for 3 weeks, and hearing those alarms on all the monitors that we've learned to ignore).

But what about Louisa.  I trusted her going in to this.  There were many times Carissa and I talked about this during the pregnancy.  She would say things like, "what if we end up staying there for months?"  Or, "what if she ends up one of those kids who needs a heart transplant, what if she can't get off bypass, what if she dies during the surgery, what if we never get to hold her, what if the other kids never get to hold her -- the little girls just say over and over how excited they are to hold her, what if, what if, what if...?"  Usually, I would say something like, "Yeah, her heart is a total disaster and she has to have at least 3 major surgeries, but everything else looks good.  The echos look good.  There's no reason to assume she won't be a routine case for them and we'll be home in the 2-3 weeks they said it would take if all goes well."  So, we planned that way.  I trusted her then.

Last Saturday, we were there for rounds in the PCTU.  Rounds are an interesting thing there.  Many times I looked around that huge room we were in.  I think there are 8 beds in that part of the PCTU.  The Bay area is reserved for the sickest kids, often the ones immediately post-op.  We'd see kids coming back from surgery at all hours of the day or night.  I wondered how on earth they could keep track of all these kids safely.  All the meds, all the rhythms, all the vent settings, all the chest tubes, the infections, the blood gases, and all the things they were doing that we didn't even know they were doing.  A bunch of men and women with all their personal problems and flaws and limitations keeping the sickest little ones in the world alive.  It's crazy.

So rounds every morning is a herd of doctors, nurses, dieticians, fellows, residents, etc.  They have a systematic way of reviewing all the issues for each patient.  On Saturday, the doctor who was on-call said to us, "You know, there really isn't a medical indication to keep Louisa in the ICU.  We just don't trust her."  We agreed, "We don't trust her either!"  So, we all decided to keep her there for the rest of the weekend.  But it got me thinking more about trust.  It also got me thinking about the other thing the doctors and nurses keep saying about Louisa and her course, "She's in charge here, she's calling the shots."  I know what they're saying.  They're saying that at this point, we just react to what she tells us about how she's doing.  But it's funny, she's a 3 week old infant.  She's never made a decision in her life.  I'm not even sure she "thinks" let alone "calls the shots".  So, who is calling the shots?  Is it really just a variety of cells and physiologic processes all reacting to her single ventricle and the surgery they did to correct her problem?  Is it really all cause and effect?  Clearly, there is some of that.  Her heart rhythm is goofed up, they check her potassium, it's very low, they give her potassium in her IV, the heart rhythm goes back to normal.  It seems simple.  But aren't there millions, perhaps billions, actually an infinite number of variables going on outside of our control that we have to "trust"?

What makes potassium potassium?  Who is keeping the right number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the potassium molecule to keep it potassium?  And how can we be sure that the potassium they measured is really accurate?  And if normal is 3.5-4.5 then what if the level is 3.47989?  Is that close enough?  We could go on and on.  Someone must be behind the scenes doing all this.  Ultimately, we have to put our trust in something.  We can trust in the doctors and the nurses and the pharmacists and the medicines, but ultimately, we have to trust that they are interpreting accurate data and making the right decisions to make our baby well.  I like what Dr. Z keeps saying, "We can talk about all the statistics, but there's only one Louisa."  But again, Louisa is 3 weeks old.  She's not deciding when to dump her potassium or when to breath, or when to go into cardiac arrest, or when to push her own chest tube out, or when to desat.  Someone is.  It's God.  I'm sure of it.  And we've prayed and our church and families have prayed and He's seen fit to act in our favor and grant our requests.  He restarts the heart, he fixes the potassium, he stops the pleural effusion, he tells the heart again to beat.

But, can I trust Him?  Do I trust Him?  Or do I just trust my feelings about Him?  Or my idea of Him?  If He's God, do I have the luxury of trusting only what I want to trust Him for, and trust myself for the rest?   No.  I trust Him for all of it -- all He says and does.  I should find out how He communicates with His people and learn all there is to learn about Him.  He is trustworthy.  He has not failed us yet.  And He actually commands me to trust Him.  It isn't really an option.  So, every day we have to proclaim that we trust Him, and tell ourselves again that we trust him.  We trust Him because He is the Truth.

"And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you."  Psalm 9:10.

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him."  Psalm 28:7.

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday."  Psalm 37:4-6.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight."  Proverbs 3:5-6.

"He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord."  Psalm 112:7 (I love that one right now!).

So, last night when she began to choke and gag after her feeding and her oxygen saturation dropped to 39 and we yelled for the nurses and people came running and they placed her grey and lifeless looking body in the crib and we watched her throw up and called the on-call doctor who found her chest tube had worked itself out and then watched the numbers come back up while they ran all their tests and got her back in a stable place again we had to keep trusting.  Were we going to say goodbye right there at that moment?  Would she take another breath?  Was her fragile heart going to stop?  We didn't know.  But we did know all the above verses.  We knew that no matter what happened, the Lord is good.  We can trust Him.  We can trust that He delights in giving us the desires of our hearts.  He doesn't forsake us.  He's our strength and our shield and we are not afraid of bad news.  Even if he calls us to say goodbye to Louisa today, our hearts are firm.  They'd be broken, but firm.  And only the Lord can do that -- make broken hearts firm.  Praise the Lord.
  

Our view this morning.  Carissa said, "A reminder there is still beauty in the brokenness."

And a song called "Trust" from an album that has been a great encouragement to us -- written by Matt Hammitt from Sanctus Real.  Amazing album.  Louisa has the same heart defect as their little guy, Bowen.  Matt wrote the album, "Every Falling Tear", for their time in the hospital after Bowen was born.  The album has helped us a ton through some of the darkness.