Hilary Yancey - Forgiving God: A Story of Faith

I learned I was pregnant after an argument. Is this even real coffee? I asked angrily after taking a small sip from the mug Preston, my husband, had just placed in front of me.

Yes? Preston looked at me quizzically.

We kept only regular coffee in the house, never decaf, so it was an odd question to ask. In response, I burst into tears.

Alarmed, Preston asked, Whats really going on?

I mumbled something about being sure I would fail all my graduate classes that semester and probably something about how I was the worst philosopher Id ever met. I cant remember exactly what I said next, but I remember Preston taking a step back, leaning up against the sink, and asking, Should you take a pregnancy test?

The thought hadnt occurred to me. I shot Preston what I hoped was a withering look and marched into the bathroom. In defiance, I took the spare test we kept under the sink, prepared to prove that I was being the reasonable person, thank you, and my tears had nothing to do with something as wild or uncontrolled as hormones. The pregnancy test is meant to take a full two minutes, but the plus sign appeared after a handful of seconds. I glanced down while drying my hands and there he was. The pink lines kept deepening as the seconds ticked by, a faint pink quickly turning almost magenta, as if someone kept retracing the lines with a marker. My son Jackson has been forceful in proclaiming his existence ever since.

When I opened the bathroom door, Preston was on the couch, listening to the soundtrack to a musical called Violet. The title character was belting out a refrain from On My Way as I walked to the coffee table and perched on it, holding the test.

Left my troubles all behind me

Back there when I climbed on board

Jordan Rivers where youll find me

Its wide but not too wide to ford.

Violet is the story of a girl who wants to be healedphysically healed. Its a story about faces that look different and the hope that those faces might change. Its a story about the miracles we ask for, even when we dont ask out loud.

We listened to the soundtrack on repeat that first morning of our changed life. Sutton Foster sang us to the CVS for extra tests. We drove down the highways of Waco, our voices joining the cast. We wondered if it was a boy or a girl. We wondered where we would fit a crib in our studio apartment. We laughed about the fight over coffee. Sutton Foster belted that refrainJordan Rivers where youll find mebut we didnt feel anywhere close to that river or the story she sang.

A few months into our pregnancy with Jackson, we received a phone call. The nurses thin voice slipped out of the speakers on my phone, and with it words: words with medical definitions, cleft lip and palate, follow-up ultrasound, high-risk pregnancy. Now, when I lean up against the bricks of the room where I first heard those words, they echo back, the walls keeping a record of the moment that everything changed. From there we had ultrasoundswhat felt like hundreds, but what I now know was only nine. The maternal-fetal medicine specialist ordered a fetal MRI, an unusual procedure, attempting to understand our sons face. There were second and third phone calls. The news rolled in. Jackson had no right eye, a very small jaw and chin, no external ear. Significant facial cleft, they called it in the genetic counselors office when we asked what language we should use to tell family and friends. I inhaled the words, and they filled my lungs with cold water, and it seemed that every breath for the next twenty weeks of my pregnancy came out like a gasp.

During those twenty weeks, between the first phone call and Jacks first breath, we drove hundreds of miles to and from the hospital, to and from each consultation, each proximate diagnosis. When we drove, we listened to songs about miracles. We listened to praise music from our childhoods, gospel choirs, and old hymns. We never played Sutton Fosters song, but we were still singing about the Jordan River. We were still singing about water that Jesus might walk on to come save us from what each appointment said was probably coming.

After Jack finally arrived, we lived forty-three days in the NICU, our hearts beating outside us in a blue, yellow, and red crib in what was labeled the Pink Room.

Jack had surgery just three weeks into his life to receive a tracheostomy and gastrostomy button (G-button)his breathing and eating both to be done through tiny tubes nestled in tunnels of tissue carved by surgeons. We were scheduled for seventeen consultationsover three pages of appointmentsbefore we were discharged. We drove home on a gray November morning too tired to think about singing. Jack slept, and for the first time since that twenty-week mark, I didnt have anything left to pray.

* * *

Jacksons first and favorite lullaby was Poor Wayfaring Stranger. Im only goin over Jordan / Im only goin over home. He still falls asleep leaning against my chest as I sing. I tell him again and again that these are the songs of our family: We are traveling up to the river, to the edge of it, and somehow, out into the water itself. I whisper across the wisps of his blond hair that I do not know how we came here, how to measure the expectations we once had against the weight of the miracles we were given. Jesus was calling us allEven you, Jack, I sayto get out of the boat and come meet him. Meeting him, I promise Jack, is never what you once imagined.

Someone bought The Jesus Storybook Bible for Jack, and it says that when Jesus is sent from the Jordan River, it is the beginning of the Great Rescue. Jesus rises from the water to do works many could not have believed except that they had seen them. Some couldnt believe them even then. Jesus comes up from the river to meet us: wayfarers with just our toes at the edge of the water, trying to find our way. Jesus was sent away from the Jordan to bring us back to it. To make us get out onto the water, far beyond where we might have gone on our own, out where our feet cant touch the bottom. Im coming to believe thats where we find God. In the river thats wide, but not too wide. Thats where I am now, searching for him. Thats where he took me, and where I brought myself.