Little Miracle Man - Elisha's Prayer

The mornings at the hospital always seemed the worst.  It's when the doctors came around and told us what was going on, medically, with Elisha.  It was Wednesday morning and the neurosurgeon, his students, our room nurse and the PICU doctor were in our room.  I really liked the Attending Neuro Doctor.  He was approachable and had kind eyes.  He looked at me and said, "We are a bit concerned because Elisha isn't responding the way we would like him to at this point."  He walked over to Elisha, placed his thumb on Elisha's brow and pressed hard.  He said, "This should be causing a reaction from him and it's not."  I wasn't sure what kind of reaction Elisha was supposed to have so I asked the doctor.  He said, "What I'm doing is very painful.  He should be trying to reach for the pain to stop it." I could feel fear trying to rise up in me and I said, "I respect your role as his neurosurgeon and what you know as a doctor but faith is bigger than what I hear you saying, what I see, and what I feel."  I looked at him and said, "This little boy is going to baffle you."  I could see concern behind his eyes but he didn't say anything more. I really didn't care what they thought of me.  What I said was truth.  It may not have been a truth they understood but it was our truth.

Nate and I had decided to put up verses all over Elisha's room.  Everywhere we looked in Elisha's room we wanted to see God's promises.  We wrote verses on notecards and taped them to the hospital room window and his bed.  Some of the nurses even gave us scriptures to put up.  The nurses would tell us our room was so peaceful and they loved when they were assigned to our room.  Some of the staff in PICU loved to stop by because of how peaceful the room was.  We knew it was only the Holy Spirit.

One of the items we had in Elisha's room was a prayer Elisha had written.  Our neighbor, who is also the headmaster at the school Elisha went to, shared a prayer with us Elisha had written in school the previous year.   How did the Lord know we needed this prayer?  Elisha wrote his prayer and it was a prophetic word for his story and our lives.

Our praying nurse was in our room listening to Elisha’s chest.  I noticed she got quiet and was very attentive.  I asked her if everything was okay.  She said, “I am going to get the doctor to come and check on something .”  We waited for her and the doctor to come back to the room.  Honestly, I wasn't scared.  I was curious what was going on.  Once they came back to the room, the doctor pulled out her stethoscope and listened to Elisha’s left side and then his right.  She looked at us and said, “We have a little bit of an issue.  Elisha’s lung has collapsed.”  I thought to myself, “Here we go again!”  We cleared out of the room so they could do the procedure to re-inflate Elisha’s lung.

Nate and I went into the family lounge and prayed.  We kept holding onto God’s promise of healing and covered our worry with God’s truth.  Nate had this resilient and unmovable faith.  He looked at me and he said, “Do you remember the sermon on Sunday?  It was about the disciples in prison, praising God.  What was really cool about that story, Robin, was they were mindful of the prisoners and the prison guards.  Their circumstance didn’t prevent them from doing what God had called them to do.”  I asked Nate where he was going with what he was saying.  He said, “Baby, God has given us a peace about Elisha.  No matter how difficult the battles we face with Elisha we know God will get a greater victory. So why don’t we start ministering to others on the PICU floor?”  Thinking back to that moment, my heart is swelling… How did I get so blessed to have this amazing, faith-filled, Holy Spirit led husband?  We chose, right then and there, to be God’s hands and feet in an area where fear and hopelessness reign.  Elisha’s words from his prayer came to mind as a call to Nate and me, “Grant to those who suffer that they may have peace and strength, that we may we have faithful hearts through the Lord our God, Amen.” 

Elisha’s procedure was done and the tube they had inserted into his left lung was exposed as we walked into his room.  All I could think of when I looked at him was how tough that little guy was.  Here my twelve year old little boy was lying with his skull removed, breathing on a ventilator, with a collapsed lung, a broken femur, in a coma… and he still was the cutest little guy I had ever seen.  I’m not biased either.  He has the cutest little nose and a cleft chin.  I always have told him I’m going to bite him.  Don’t you ever think something or someone is so cute you want to nibble them?  Ok… maybe I’m crazy like that but Elisha really looked as cute as ever.  I leaned over and whispered to Elisha how much I loved him and when he wakes up I was going to bite his little cheek. 

Nate asked one of the nurses who was on the hall that hasn’t had many visitors and needed some practical items.  We knew there were several people sleeping in the rooms with their children every night who didn’t have the support system we had.  She said she couldn’t tell us much about what was going on in the rooms but she would be happy to take anything we had to some people she had in mind.  We had a ton of snacks and extra blankets so we packaged them up and handed them over to her.  It would be the beginning of lasting relationships created with some of the people on the hallway.