Trials in the early years

I love the story of Job in the Bible. It puts Satan in his rightful place under the power and jurisdiction of God. When events seem tragic and capricious I need to remind myself that the enemy has only limited power. He can only inflict harm as God grants him permission.

During our first term in Guatemala it felt like Satan was trying to chew us up and spit us out. Our struggles were non-stop. The actual events were perhaps purely physical, but the attacks on our heart were spiritual in nature. We questioned the faithfulness of God, fought against the lies of the enemy, and never felt so alone before or ever since. The temptation to quit was strong and persistent.

For three months after arriving at language school in Antigua I was on bed rest, threatening miscarriage. Within twenty four hours of Timmy's birth the next spring, it became apparent that something was wrong. I spent the next seven months nursing him around the clock trying valiantly to put some weight on this tiny baby.

Women in the village where we lived offered much criticism and advice (don't eat pineapple, don't hold him upright, keep his head covered, etc.), but even doctors in the city were unable to diagnose the reason behind his failure to thrive and why he couldn't keep his milk down. We made trips to Guatemala City repeatedly, seeing a pediatrician and running tests on Timmy. When compared to malnourished Guatemalan babies, Timmy looked okay, even though he was clearly not growing.

About the time it became critical to seek a specialist in the states, I came down with hepatitis, preventing any possible international travel. Once my bilirubin levels were normal, Jim had come down with hepatitis, too, and our trip was again delayed. Finally in November we began the long drive to Dallas from Guatemala, and an experimental surgery corrected the problem with his esophagus.

Although he weighed 8 lbs. 8 oz. at birth, six months later he still had not reached ten pounds. During that time, people suggested that maybe the problem was that I didn't have enough milk supply. Those people never saw how I spent my days mopping gallons of milk from the floor. They never saw how I spent my day nursing the baby, and then changing his clothes, my clothes, and washing the milk stained ones out by hand, hanging them out, and then mopping the floor while the laundry dried. Then I would sit down and nurse him again. Eventually I became skilled at aiming the up-shooting milk to hit the floor, or when possible rushing him to a kitchen basin, thus decreasing my laundry loads. Any way you look at it, it was exhausting, caring for Timmy, recovering from hepatitis, and chasing a toddler around.

Once Timmy was hospitalized in Dallas and fed through a tube, I was given a break from nursing 24 hours a day. The hospital staff first looked at me as though I was a despicable mother who had neglected to feed her child, but later their disdain turned to admiration as the nurses watched me fill up four 8-ounce bottles in one sitting with an electric breast pump. That's an incredible amount!

Any way I look at it, those were despairing times. It wasn't until later that we realized how important that testing time was, how God was using those trials to strengthen our confidence in his faithfulness. I'm grateful for the way He allowed each and every situation to prepare us for future even bigger trials.

To be continued....