“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer” Little did I realize when I posted this quote by Corrie Ten Boom, to my Facebook page, that it wouldn’t be long after that my trust would be put to the test. Trust isn’t something that I do easily. To trust is to put your firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something, now that is not easy to do. A good example of trust would be; when we go for surgery and are about to be put to sleep, you have no choice but to put your full trust into the medical team that they will do everything humanly possible to perform a successful surgery. Are we guaranteed beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything will go fine? No we are not! But we have to trust that it will. So we have to willfully surrender our very lives to the medical professionals and hope that all will go well. TRUST!
Just after I posted that quote, Lisa’s phone rang. Now it’s been months that we have been waiting for a call from the Shriners Hospital for Children in Montreal. The purpose of this call would be to notify us of a time when Lauren’s surgery would be taking place. The surgery itself would be the first of two, the other which would depend on the success of the first and would be done at a later date. This first surgery would be a trial surgery to determine if a baclofen pump would be suitable for Lauren. The actual baclofen pump implantation is a surgical procedure performed to permanently implant a pump that delivers baclofen to the spinal fluid to treat Lauren’s severe spasticity and dystonia that is refractory to oral medication in Lauren’s case.
I knew by the look on Lisa’s face, what this call was all about. As much as we were anticipating this call, you can never prepare yourself for it. We knew that this was just the beginning of another long journey that we so didn’t want to put Lauren through again. The call confirmed that Lauren’s surgery would take place on June 7th. You see, Lauren has already endured more pain in her short life, then most adults experience in a lifetime. Where is the fairness in this? Why do we have to expose her to this trauma once again? Why can’t God just release her of this horrible disease? Didn’t He say, “Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not…”? So many whys! Not a lot of answers. I believe we are well into our right to question. Who in their right mind would want to expose their child to pain?
But yet there are no other alternatives, no other choices! So we are left to, TRUST! Trust that the medical field know what is best for Lauren and that God knows best. Both of which require us to surrender our trust and faith into someone outside ourselves. Placing Lauren’s life into the hands of someone else other then our self. Now, that my friend, is not easy to do. Being a Christian doesn’t make that decision any easier, doesn’t mean that we can’t question, and have concerns and worries. After all, we are human and God totally understands. Jesus himself questioned God when He said, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ WHY?
In spite of our human weakness, we realize we have to trust, once again, into an higher power. For without trusting, what are we left with? Nothing, no hope, nothing. So we will trust and pray that everything goes well and this surgery will give Lauren a little better quality of life. It’s all we can ask for.