Let Me Tell You A Story...

It began 17 years ago on a warm, July afternoon in a mobile home up a dirt road. There lived a family in that house. A family of seven. Three boys and two girls, all homeschooled, with their mother and father. The youngest was only three and a half, and I remember that the best out of all the children's ages; though the eldest must have been around fourteen or fifteen.

The time was shortly after a lunch - the food being a big pot of spaghetti. The mother had gone to lay down because she didn't feel well. The father was at work. The children were gathered in the living room as they watched Reading Rainbow. There was something funny, but when the children paused it for their mother to come and watch, the mother said she didn't feel well enough. Then she was leaving out the door with their grandma.

From that moment on, nothing made sense. It didn't make sense for nine long months, and even after that, I don't think it made sense until all the children were grown. And by that time, it was hard to comprehend the depths of what happened. Time numbed the urgency. Time numbed the sorrow. Time numbed the loneliness, but time didn't entirely take those feelings away. There was always something in the bottom of the children's hearts when they thought about that July afternoon 17 years ago.

17 years ago on a warm, July afternoon, a church was burning. Most of emergency personnel were downtown at the scene. When the mother called her brother-in-law who worked for the fire department to ask what she should do, he told her to drive to the hospital. It would take too long for an ambulance to get there. It would take too long...

Because the mother was having a heart attack. Not just a light one where you go the hospital. They give you medication. They help you, and then you get to go home to your family soon.

This was the kind where you almost die. Where your heart gives completely out and can't work on its own. Where machines keep you alive as you wait for a completely new heart - somebody else's heart.

This was the kind of heart attack where you almost die again and again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. This was the kind of heart attack where you spend nine months away from your family.

The mother was gone. The father was gone, to work and then to the hospital on the weekends.  For the children, it was somebody different or the somebody different but the same every day. People became adopted aunts and uncles and grandparents. It was meals brought by strangers and church family. It was every other weekend over the mountains to the big hospital in the big city where they ate bacon, cheeseburgers in the cafeteria and watched cartoons in the hospital waiting room. Sometimes they'd get brought popsicles. Sometimes they'd get to see their mother. Sometimes they'd get to hug her. Sometimes...

Sometimes they could only look through a window and wave and say 'I love you' in sign language.

But at night, back at home, after the father had sang hymns in the hallway till he hoped they were all asleep, the youngest would cry. She would cry herself to sleep, keeping her two older siblings who shared the same bedroom awake, because she missed her mother so much.

There were comings and goings. There were almosts and not quites. There were Christmas presents from the church. There were people who showed overflowing love. And praying. There was lots and lots and lots of praying. And there were miracles. Miracles like how the local hospital had just trained people to use the machine which saved the mother's life two weeks prior to that July afternoon.

And then there were sad miracles. In early March of 2000, a man who was studying to become a pastor was driving home with his fiancée from college. They were hit by a drunk driver. The fiancée was killed immediately, but the young man lived a couple days in the hospital before he died, but he had chosen to be an organ donor. His heart was the one which perfectly fit what the mother needed.

The heart was Jesus' heart already. And that was a bittersweet thing.

On March 7th, the mother was given a new heart. And every March 7th is a Birthday, of sorts. A celebration of another year of miracles.

I have a vague, 3 and a half year-old's memory of those nine months, but there are still things I remember quite clearly. And since last Tuesday was March 7th, I wanted to write something about it. I wanted to put into writing how broken everything can be without a mother. I wanted to remember how lucky I am to have had a mother these 17 more years because no matter how common transplants might become - they will always be a miracle.


We met the parents of the donor. All seven of us. They love Jesus too.