Paths

Gavyn spent exactly a week in the hospital in December. We could visibly see that his left shunt was broken and took him to the ER. He ended up having an entire new shunt placed the next day. Instead of getting better he only got worse. After three days of observing him the team took him in for a second surgery; to repair his right shunt that had started to malfunction and also to preform an ETV. It was a scary week with many ups and downs. Things I'm not ready to write about now. 

Ryan and I took turns staying at the hospital and coming home to sleep. I'm not sure I was better rested when I came home, but it was good to see my three boys and tuck them in at night. One of those nights, I can't remember which, I laid in bed crying and yelling at God. Thinking about the healthy and whole Gavyn who grew in my belly and lived peacefully here on earth for a week. Wondering why God let an infection cause so much havoc on his body. Leaving him frail and susceptible to many, many surgeries. I cried. I yelled. I cried. I begged for a miracle. I cried some more. And in the darkness of that night, in the stillness of my heart, I heard God speak to me. Audibly. Gently. Firmly. He spoke to me of Gavyn's path. A path he laid out for him before time. It was the path he was made to walk and no one could have changed that. This is his path. 

A few weeks later I read this scripture and cried. These were the words I was hearing without really hearing them. If that makes any sense at all...

"And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them." Isaiah 42:16 (emphasis added)

I've been a little obsessed with thinking about a persons path now. How we all have unique and individual paths we will walk. What that looks like and how God's hand is in it. I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and there is a reoccurring theme of fixed points in time and space. Things that can never be altered. I think of Gavyn and his infection. I believed for the first four + years of his life that someone, me, a doctor, could have changed him getting sick. Now I believe it was a fixed point. There was no changing it. 

I was reading Psalm 139 today, it is such a beautiful Psalm. Here are the verses that spoke to my heart...

3 You search out my path

5 You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

9 If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me.

13 For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

I am not sure where God's path for Gavyn's life will lead. This could be the end of the surgeries. It could only be the beginning. That is something we just have to walk through.