Good Can Come From This

This post was started on October 17, 2022. Today is now ten days later. I cannot explain fully what derailed my completing the entry, but, say only, a lot has changed during this interim. The post began with this:

On Sunday, October 16, this loving blessing came through Barbara Brodsky:

The Mother to Debra (10/16/2022)

I love you.

I know you heard what I said to the friend before you. The joys, the challenges, and with the challenge, “What gift have you brought me?”

You are wise, My Dear One, and you understand that the challenge comes with a gift, but sometimes in your hurry to get through the challenge you don’t pause long enough to really see and to know the gift. Watch that fix-it mind that wants to push through it rather than pausing and saying, “Yes, ah…. Challenge, challenge. I am here to receive your gift.”

And just rest there for a bit.

The gifts reveal themselves to you but you’re still in a hurry to move through the challenge rather than experiencing the fullness of the gifts.

“What gift have you brought me? Thank you. Thank you.”

And it’s fine at the same time to say, “Yes, but this is too heavy for me right now so I wish to release it.” It’s fine to ask that, and the gift will return again in another form.

I am with you and helping you. I love you.

The “challenge” over the past few days surrounds our 22-month-old great grandson, Jackson. On Monday evening, October 24, Jackson had a seizure. He was taken by ambulance and admitted to Pediatric Intensive Care at Children’s Hospital at Erlanger in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he has continued to have absence seizures, meaning they are detected on the EEG, but not by the human eye.

Imagine a toddler with tubes and leads and restraints, and lots of pokes and lots of medications, and nothing at all normal…. that is where Himz (one of our nickname for Jackson) still is at the time of this post on Thursday morning, October 27.

Of course, our concern and compassion is for Jackson, but also for his mom, our granddaughter, Courtney. And for our daughter, Stacey, Courtney’s mom. And for Jackson’s dad; Papa Bear, G-Pa…. Uncles, Brad and Adam. We are all shook to the core with these developments.

John is so bonded to Jackson. Jackson was a major part of John’s healing goals when he went through the open-heart surgery in January. Getting to Tennessee in April on our way back to Michigan was about seeing Jackson.The color of Jackson’s favorite green blanket became a cue image for John’s recovery.

This has been such a clear time for me of noticing myriad points of view in a single experience. My own childhood medical trauma (being hospitalized and treated for polio at age five); my terror when Stacey was about that age and face-planted into a fieldstone fireplace requiring a trip to the emergency room for stitches; month’s old grandson Brad’s being taken by ambulance during a Saturday night snowstorm with RSV…. Seeing every condition like waves in the ocean. Each appearing as separate, but part of the whole.

Here is a recent photo of Jackson happily eating his first sandwich.

I was not very skillful when Stacey had to have stitches. In fact, they would not allow me to go into the room with her because I was so distraught. The memory of John and me leaving the hospital with our baby (Stacey) folded into the crib under an oxygen tank with her baby (Brad) is as active now as it was 32 years ago.

Each experience is woven together. Some threads are more obvious. Some patterns are more hidden.

On Tuesday afternoon as Jackson was being sedated for an MRI, having a spinal tap to rule out some infection that might be causing the seizures, and wired with a continual EEG…. I wrote in my journal: “Good can come from this.”

At meditation online that afternoon Sheilana’s poignant opening words, ”Why do we try to figure it out? Why don’t we just live and breathe and let it just be what it is? Is there any reason for me to believe that it should be anything or any way other than it is?”

The theme for that evening’s class with Barbara Brodsky: When something startles you, or pain arises or fear, what state and stage of consciousness opens habitually with that challenge?

Wednesday morning waiting news about how they were all doing, I put the following scripture on the Basham Family list:

Romans 8:26

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans….

Again this morning I wrote in my journal: “Good can come from this.”

P.S. On Wednesday afternoon Stacey stepped out of Jackson’s room to give us a call. It was the first time we had spoken on the phone since all of this occurred and she was crying. A stranger handed her a card. Many of you have seen that card in a Sacred story post, but for any who have not, here is the link: Card From a Stranger
P.S.S. Just as I was about to push publish, news that when the EEG was taken off Jackson sat up and smiled. His mom said, “I never knew how much I missed that smile!”