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8/30 @ 8:00am ~ We started out the day optimistic about finishing up our stay. When we came in for his 6:00am feeding (after a wonderfully full 4.5 hours of sleep), we were saddened to hear he missed one of his opportunities to drop down a ml of his sucrose; however, as noted yesterday, he did recover down to 1ml before the 9:00am feeding.

Well, at 9:00, he was indeed at zero and his IV was removed!

He was still hooked up to the monitors (so he wasn’t cordless), but at least he didn’t have this huge block on his hand with tape all over it. We could hold both his hands, and this made us both very, very happy.

He was also removed from the bililight, so this increased the chances that his blood sugar would lower, since he was using only his body now to both warm himself and didn’t have an IV dropping sucrose into him.

He struggled throughout the day to maintain above 60 on his sugar levels. We had a couple of tough readings and both Rosanna and I reached a low point in the day when he read 42 at his 3:30 feeding. We were told that he would need to go back on the IV if he dipped below 40.

I wasn’t sure what to do at this point. Rosanna was really down about it, and I was, too. It was a struggle to get him to eat the amount of food he was supposed to, and we were both starting to stress out and had a lot of fears creeping into our brains.

Not sure how I arrived there, but I read Psalm 18 to Rosanna and Jude. In it, a very descriptive vision of God is given in how He hears prayers and acts with almighty power to deliver His people. It starts off with this…

18:1 I love you, O Lord, my strength. 2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. 3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies.

This reminded us of who God was, and to me, the word “refuge” resonated heavily with me. He saves those who run to Him.

6 In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.

This amazed me that Jesus, who is now before the Father who dwells in unapproachable light, can hear the cry of one person from a tiny little hospital in tiny little Saint Paul, Minnesota. Even though He is “far away” in terms of being massive and huge and overwhelming, He is accessible and near and intimately aware of our difficulties.

The psalm continues with a rather terrifying and awe-inspiring picture of God coming in dense, dense vapor, smoke, with hailstones and flashes of light, and able to defeat the psalmist’s enemies with the breath of His nostrils. Read about it in Psalm 18:7-15.

What happened to us as we were hearing these things about God was that we were being reminded as to what kind of God He is, what kind of person He is. It was entirely what we needed to hear, that The Lord is MIGHTY. The Bible, the Word, was used to describe Him on a scale that my mind cannot recall with ease. It painted, through drama and powerful images, a picture of an immensely powerful — and tenderly loving — Father to me.

It was like an anchor just dropped. All of a sudden, I was tremendously calmed and at peace with what was going on. I thought of some of my good friends who have had much more difficult labors and post-labor struggles. I thought of Abraham and Molly, whom I knew would give anything to get to spend a half hour in a special care unit with Felicity.

Frankly, we had nothing to complain about and everything to rejoice over, as well as trust God to continue to be gracious to us.

Rosanna and I had a discussion for about an hour after this in our room about how in light of eternity, it can be truly said that every single thing that happens to God’s children we will thank Him for. I thought about past events in my life and how, at the time, I hated them and saw them as a frowning Providence from God; and even now as I consider those events, I am on my knees thanking Him for what He did in sending me what, at the time, seemed like a bad gift. In light of eternity and many times in this life, we can look back and see a difficult test as a gracious gift and would not have had it any other way.

We now returned to Jude’s 6:30 feeding with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and other fruits that come when our hearts are focused on HIM and His goodness and not on the way we want things to go in the moment. It changed our whole perspective and attitude.

He read well at 6:30, and read even better at 9:30. By 12:30, he had made great improvements and was doing better and better each time. We went to bed very content that all things were going to work together for our good no matter what God allowed to happen.

What we experienced was the same thing that Pastor John talked about in a message he gave a long time ago on Jonathan Edwards. Here’s what he had to say and consider the wisdom of his approach with what we experienced on this day:

About five years ago during our January prayer week, I decided to preach on the holiness of God from Isaiah 6. And I resolved on the first Sunday of the year to take the first four verses of that chapter and unfold the vision of God’s holiness,

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high an lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

So I preached on the holiness of God and did my best to display the majesty and glory of such an unapproachably holy God. I gave not one word of application to the lives of our people (not a good practice regularly).

Little did I know that in the week prior to this message one of the young families of our church discovered that their child was being sexually abused for over a year by a close relative. It was incredibly devastating. There was police involvement. Social workers. Psychiatrists. Doctors. They were there that Sunday morning and sat under that message.

I wonder how many advisers to us pastors today would have said, Piper, can’t you see your people are hurting? Can’t you come down out of your ivory tower of theology and get practical? Don’t you realize what kind of people sit in front of you on Sunday?

Several months later the sad details began to come out. And the husband came to me one Sunday after a service and took me aside, and said, “John, these have been the hardest months of our lives. You know what has gotten me through? The vision of the greatness of God’s holiness that you gave me the first week of January. It has been the rock we could stand on.”

John Piper, The Pastor as Theologian: Life and Ministry of Jonathan Edwards