From: "Shawn & Sarah Gardner" gardnersforgod@msn.com
Date: October 2, 2007 5:02:10 AM GMT+02:00
Last night one of Caleb’s nurses, Maronel, looked like she was beginning to cry as I told her how Sarah and I are feeling and dealing with the realization of Caleb’s condition. I wasn’t sure if she was crying, but when she told me that she was becoming quite attached to Caleb I figured she had been and that she was feeling emotional about him. Later, however, she came back in and I thought I would encourage her with some of the same encouragement I had been receiving through the emails and in meditation upon Caleb and suffering. It didn’t have the effect I was hoping for. She cried quite openly then. I was a little puzzled, but I thought what I was saying must be hitting some chord in her and kind of continued. At one point I said something like, “At least Sarah and I have accumulated enough experience in walking with God to know in a time like this that He is Good and loves us and Caleb more than we ever even could. At least we don’t have to deal with doubts on that matter.” It was at that point that she revealed to me what was obviously tearing her up. With tears dripping down her nose she asked me, “How do you know? How do you know God exists and that He is good? With so many religions and things said about God and life how can you be sure?”
Her question caught me a little off guard because, at the time, I was trying to comfort Caleb who was experiencing some discomfort and she had told me weeks ago that she was a Christian and goes to church. I was under the assumption that we were talking from the same set of assumption. As we spoke I realized that suffering was what posed a problem to her. She and her husband, who also is a nurse that takes care of Caleb, have a nine year old daughter who was born with several special needs. She struggles to learn, speak, and interact with children her own age. I think that Maronel’s struggle went beyond her daughter however. At one point as I shared about how I came to know that God exists and that He is good, I shared about how He helped me, and continues to help me, to deal with certain vices that had dominated my life. She was really interested in knowing more about that and indicated that she feels unable to overcome a certain undesirable habit.
I went on basically recalling how God revealed Himself and my sin through His Word, and how it brought me to a point of eventually talking to Him. I told her how I thought I was crazy when I began speaking to God, like I had gone off the deep end and was suddenly believing there was Someone actually there listening. But I figured that if I doubted there was no better thing to do than to just admit it and ask Him that if He was really there, and really like Jesus, to let me know because I didn’t want to go on one more day living in ignorance. As I went on with all sincerity recalling what God had done in my life I eventually concluded once again relating the whole of those events to the confidence we are able to have in God’s goodness now. She plainly said at that point, “I wish more than anything I could have what you have.”
I told her that I wished she did too. I began recalling for her the whole stream of events and actions on the part of the Body of Christ from the beginning of this trauma with Caleb up to the visit we recently received from Michael Gray and Jason Hanselman. At that point I concluded once more and drew her attention to the love shown in such a visitation. I told her how people in the Church sacrificially gave and insisted upon sending our friends to come see us. That is God’s love. She just sobbed.
There are so many things that God is showing us about Himself through this sad time that my stories of His graciousness to us flowed from me at about the rate that her tears did from her. I realized through relaying those stories that what had changed me and gives us peace at this time is nothing more than a long chain of experiences of being loved and accepted as we are. Being saturated with that kind of unconditional love for so long helps us to know who God is and who we are to Him, and thus gives us peace in times of grief. That is what Maronel said she wanted when I asked her what I could pray for her.
Maronel told me that our family has touched her life from the time we have arrived. I told her that it wasn’t us. That’s Jesus in us.
We cry most nights about Caleb. But our tears are not just from saddness or grief. They are that; but they are mixed with hope and joy and peace. When I look at Caleb and consider his current condition and all that will need to be done in order for him to regain his faculties I often get a striking image of how we humans must appear to God: one of my most cherished children, debilitated by a sinister and horrible tragedy, but who will day by day be renewed until he is raised to glory if I have my way with him.
Last Friday our teammates in Mozambique and many others of you all joined in fasting and praying for Caleb. We all obviously want to see Caleb fully restored. At this point that would most certainly constitute a miracle. Thank you to all who are praying. At this point we are pacing ourselves in our hope in preparation for a long distance miracle. We hope that by the end of two years Caleb will have regained a high percentage of his faculties.
The doctors and their devices cannot say to what extent Caleb’s brain has been damaged, nor what capacity he may regain or how long it will take to regain it. We are on a one-day-at-a- time program of observing Caleb and responding to what he shows us he is able to do. All his IV’s have been taken out and he is no longer on any medication except something to help him rest from time to time and a small dose of oral heart medicine. He is still receiving his food through a tube going through his nose into his stomach. Today he was able to swallow about seven spoonfuls of yoghurt though. That is good news! We are hoping to get him to where he can eat without a feeding tube before being discharged. A neuro-physiotherapi st comes by twice a week now and is trying to desensitize his over-sensitized nervous system. If you just touch him on his face and some other places he winces and whines. He whines most of the time he is awake. He still doesn’t seem to respond to us visually or audibly. They say his eyes are well and his left ear too, but that it might just be that his brain is not properly interpreting those sensations yet. We’ve been encouraged, however, from several stories we’ve heard of children who have had the same symptoms after long ICU experiences and brain trauma, but that are doing well now. We’ve also noticed Caleb responding positively to the physiotherapy and slowly regaining some muscle control and use. So, all these things together have given us even more reasons for hope.
When Caleb eventually is discharged we may hang around for a several more days until we feel comfortable taking a 20 hour plane ride with him back to the States. Between now and then I, Shawn, will be taking a trip up to Nampula to organize our affairs there. We have no idea what the future will hold; what opportunities, challenges or changes will present themselves. However, we know Who will be there to walk us through them.
Your fellow pilgrims,
Shawn, Sarah, Benjamin, Olivia, and Caleb
October 18, 2007
Hello praying friends and family!
TO GOD BE THE GLORY!
We have some great news for everyone. After nearly 8 weeks in the hospital, Caleb was discharged today!!! He has remarkably improved over the last week and this great day has finally arrived! It is so exciting to see him rolling over, sucking his finger, big eyes looking around and ears that hear us when we talk, etc. He is learning to sit up again on his own (can't do it without support yet) and starting to reach out for objects. He smiles when his brother Ben plays with him and really looks at us when we call out to him. Huge news is that he learned to suck from a bottle again so he is drinking all of his milk from his bottle so they removed his feeding tube on Tuesday. What a joy to be able to hold him without any wires or tubes attached, in our own 'home'!!!!! At this stage I would say Caleb is acting like a 6-month old but even just a few days ago it was like a 2-month old so every few days he is really improving. It gives us so much hope for the future!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday Caleb had a repeat hearing test and both ears passed (a few weeks ago he was not hearing from his right ear)! He can not hear low bass sounds from his right ear but can hear normal and high range sounds without a problem. We will repeat the ear test in about 6 months. He has stopped the heart medicine and before we fly to the States he will have one more check-up with the cardiologist to make sure that his heart is working strong without any problems (his heart took quite a beating when he was so sick and was weakened from all the infections and medication; however the doctors do not think this will be a long-term problem). His pediatrician has decided, with our approval, against doing the MRI. He says that the MRIs are not always conclusive and can not be used to to diagnose, and that Caleb is doing so well we need to just proceed with helping him completely recover. Also it would require Caleb to be completely sedated again which we are not crazy about since he finally seems to have all the heavy medications out of his system. If in the next few years we have any problems or concerns then we can do an MRI at that time which would be more practical. So just one more check-up with the doctor and we can be on our way!!
It was fun to take Caleb back upstairs to the ICU ward (he had been moved to the pediatric ward a few days ago). The nurses came and immediately grabbed him, carrying him around the ward saying good-bye to everyone. They were all smiling and laughing and just as happy as we are I think to see him going home on the road to recovery! We are so very thankful for all that the wonderful doctors and nurses have done for us, and as a small thank-you we are having a pizza party for the nurses this Saturday.
So our plans are to spend another week or so in Johannesburg, getting more comfortable with Caleb being at home and getting everything in order for our trip to the States. We will hopefully arrive in the US towards the end of the month, spending a few days in Denver seeing Shawn's mom before heading over to Grand Junction, CO, where we will be living for the next few months while we consider what road to take in the near future. Caleb will most likely receive regular physical therapy for the next few months as well.
How can we say thank-you to all of you? Thousands and thousands of people, friends and 'strangers', have been praying. Wow! Isn't God so good??!! We pleaded with Him to heal Caleb completely, and just look how far Caleb has come the last few weeks, against all odds! We have so much hope that God will finish this good work and continue to heal Caleb in the months to come!! We pleaded with Him to strengthen us during this whole ordeal, and the peace that He gave truly does surpass all understanding. We say it again, WOW-- ISN'T GOD SO GOOD!!!!!!!
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. God has provided for our financial needs, emotional needs, physical needs-- He does much of this through YOU! Thanks again!
Oh, check out our website at http://www.gardnersforgod.org/ for some pictures of Caleb in the hospital!!
Your grateful friends,
Shawn and Sarah Gardner
Benjamin, Olivia and Caleb!!
Date: October 2, 2007 5:02:10 AM GMT+02:00
Last night one of Caleb’s nurses, Maronel, looked like she was beginning to cry as I told her how Sarah and I are feeling and dealing with the realization of Caleb’s condition. I wasn’t sure if she was crying, but when she told me that she was becoming quite attached to Caleb I figured she had been and that she was feeling emotional about him. Later, however, she came back in and I thought I would encourage her with some of the same encouragement I had been receiving through the emails and in meditation upon Caleb and suffering. It didn’t have the effect I was hoping for. She cried quite openly then. I was a little puzzled, but I thought what I was saying must be hitting some chord in her and kind of continued. At one point I said something like, “At least Sarah and I have accumulated enough experience in walking with God to know in a time like this that He is Good and loves us and Caleb more than we ever even could. At least we don’t have to deal with doubts on that matter.” It was at that point that she revealed to me what was obviously tearing her up. With tears dripping down her nose she asked me, “How do you know? How do you know God exists and that He is good? With so many religions and things said about God and life how can you be sure?”
Her question caught me a little off guard because, at the time, I was trying to comfort Caleb who was experiencing some discomfort and she had told me weeks ago that she was a Christian and goes to church. I was under the assumption that we were talking from the same set of assumption. As we spoke I realized that suffering was what posed a problem to her. She and her husband, who also is a nurse that takes care of Caleb, have a nine year old daughter who was born with several special needs. She struggles to learn, speak, and interact with children her own age. I think that Maronel’s struggle went beyond her daughter however. At one point as I shared about how I came to know that God exists and that He is good, I shared about how He helped me, and continues to help me, to deal with certain vices that had dominated my life. She was really interested in knowing more about that and indicated that she feels unable to overcome a certain undesirable habit.
I went on basically recalling how God revealed Himself and my sin through His Word, and how it brought me to a point of eventually talking to Him. I told her how I thought I was crazy when I began speaking to God, like I had gone off the deep end and was suddenly believing there was Someone actually there listening. But I figured that if I doubted there was no better thing to do than to just admit it and ask Him that if He was really there, and really like Jesus, to let me know because I didn’t want to go on one more day living in ignorance. As I went on with all sincerity recalling what God had done in my life I eventually concluded once again relating the whole of those events to the confidence we are able to have in God’s goodness now. She plainly said at that point, “I wish more than anything I could have what you have.”
I told her that I wished she did too. I began recalling for her the whole stream of events and actions on the part of the Body of Christ from the beginning of this trauma with Caleb up to the visit we recently received from Michael Gray and Jason Hanselman. At that point I concluded once more and drew her attention to the love shown in such a visitation. I told her how people in the Church sacrificially gave and insisted upon sending our friends to come see us. That is God’s love. She just sobbed.
There are so many things that God is showing us about Himself through this sad time that my stories of His graciousness to us flowed from me at about the rate that her tears did from her. I realized through relaying those stories that what had changed me and gives us peace at this time is nothing more than a long chain of experiences of being loved and accepted as we are. Being saturated with that kind of unconditional love for so long helps us to know who God is and who we are to Him, and thus gives us peace in times of grief. That is what Maronel said she wanted when I asked her what I could pray for her.
Maronel told me that our family has touched her life from the time we have arrived. I told her that it wasn’t us. That’s Jesus in us.
We cry most nights about Caleb. But our tears are not just from saddness or grief. They are that; but they are mixed with hope and joy and peace. When I look at Caleb and consider his current condition and all that will need to be done in order for him to regain his faculties I often get a striking image of how we humans must appear to God: one of my most cherished children, debilitated by a sinister and horrible tragedy, but who will day by day be renewed until he is raised to glory if I have my way with him.
Last Friday our teammates in Mozambique and many others of you all joined in fasting and praying for Caleb. We all obviously want to see Caleb fully restored. At this point that would most certainly constitute a miracle. Thank you to all who are praying. At this point we are pacing ourselves in our hope in preparation for a long distance miracle. We hope that by the end of two years Caleb will have regained a high percentage of his faculties.
The doctors and their devices cannot say to what extent Caleb’s brain has been damaged, nor what capacity he may regain or how long it will take to regain it. We are on a one-day-at-a- time program of observing Caleb and responding to what he shows us he is able to do. All his IV’s have been taken out and he is no longer on any medication except something to help him rest from time to time and a small dose of oral heart medicine. He is still receiving his food through a tube going through his nose into his stomach. Today he was able to swallow about seven spoonfuls of yoghurt though. That is good news! We are hoping to get him to where he can eat without a feeding tube before being discharged. A neuro-physiotherapi st comes by twice a week now and is trying to desensitize his over-sensitized nervous system. If you just touch him on his face and some other places he winces and whines. He whines most of the time he is awake. He still doesn’t seem to respond to us visually or audibly. They say his eyes are well and his left ear too, but that it might just be that his brain is not properly interpreting those sensations yet. We’ve been encouraged, however, from several stories we’ve heard of children who have had the same symptoms after long ICU experiences and brain trauma, but that are doing well now. We’ve also noticed Caleb responding positively to the physiotherapy and slowly regaining some muscle control and use. So, all these things together have given us even more reasons for hope.
When Caleb eventually is discharged we may hang around for a several more days until we feel comfortable taking a 20 hour plane ride with him back to the States. Between now and then I, Shawn, will be taking a trip up to Nampula to organize our affairs there. We have no idea what the future will hold; what opportunities, challenges or changes will present themselves. However, we know Who will be there to walk us through them.
Your fellow pilgrims,
Shawn, Sarah, Benjamin, Olivia, and Caleb
October 18, 2007
Hello praying friends and family!
TO GOD BE THE GLORY!
We have some great news for everyone. After nearly 8 weeks in the hospital, Caleb was discharged today!!! He has remarkably improved over the last week and this great day has finally arrived! It is so exciting to see him rolling over, sucking his finger, big eyes looking around and ears that hear us when we talk, etc. He is learning to sit up again on his own (can't do it without support yet) and starting to reach out for objects. He smiles when his brother Ben plays with him and really looks at us when we call out to him. Huge news is that he learned to suck from a bottle again so he is drinking all of his milk from his bottle so they removed his feeding tube on Tuesday. What a joy to be able to hold him without any wires or tubes attached, in our own 'home'!!!!! At this stage I would say Caleb is acting like a 6-month old but even just a few days ago it was like a 2-month old so every few days he is really improving. It gives us so much hope for the future!!!!!!!!!!
Yesterday Caleb had a repeat hearing test and both ears passed (a few weeks ago he was not hearing from his right ear)! He can not hear low bass sounds from his right ear but can hear normal and high range sounds without a problem. We will repeat the ear test in about 6 months. He has stopped the heart medicine and before we fly to the States he will have one more check-up with the cardiologist to make sure that his heart is working strong without any problems (his heart took quite a beating when he was so sick and was weakened from all the infections and medication; however the doctors do not think this will be a long-term problem). His pediatrician has decided, with our approval, against doing the MRI. He says that the MRIs are not always conclusive and can not be used to to diagnose, and that Caleb is doing so well we need to just proceed with helping him completely recover. Also it would require Caleb to be completely sedated again which we are not crazy about since he finally seems to have all the heavy medications out of his system. If in the next few years we have any problems or concerns then we can do an MRI at that time which would be more practical. So just one more check-up with the doctor and we can be on our way!!
It was fun to take Caleb back upstairs to the ICU ward (he had been moved to the pediatric ward a few days ago). The nurses came and immediately grabbed him, carrying him around the ward saying good-bye to everyone. They were all smiling and laughing and just as happy as we are I think to see him going home on the road to recovery! We are so very thankful for all that the wonderful doctors and nurses have done for us, and as a small thank-you we are having a pizza party for the nurses this Saturday.
So our plans are to spend another week or so in Johannesburg, getting more comfortable with Caleb being at home and getting everything in order for our trip to the States. We will hopefully arrive in the US towards the end of the month, spending a few days in Denver seeing Shawn's mom before heading over to Grand Junction, CO, where we will be living for the next few months while we consider what road to take in the near future. Caleb will most likely receive regular physical therapy for the next few months as well.
How can we say thank-you to all of you? Thousands and thousands of people, friends and 'strangers', have been praying. Wow! Isn't God so good??!! We pleaded with Him to heal Caleb completely, and just look how far Caleb has come the last few weeks, against all odds! We have so much hope that God will finish this good work and continue to heal Caleb in the months to come!! We pleaded with Him to strengthen us during this whole ordeal, and the peace that He gave truly does surpass all understanding. We say it again, WOW-- ISN'T GOD SO GOOD!!!!!!!
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. God has provided for our financial needs, emotional needs, physical needs-- He does much of this through YOU! Thanks again!
Oh, check out our website at http://www.gardnersforgod.org/ for some pictures of Caleb in the hospital!!
Your grateful friends,
Shawn and Sarah Gardner
Benjamin, Olivia and Caleb!!
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