Deep calls to deep

Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfalls;

all Your breakers and Your billows have swept over me.

Psalm 42:7 HCSB

Cody ran down the hall and stopped in the doorway, “I have SEIZURES!”

A mom five feet away gasped and grabbed her toddler to her chest in horror.

Cody took off into the room while I stood frozen in the doorway.  Stunned at the other mom’s behavior.

Ashamed of my son’s seizures.

The billows have swept over me

After having missed several weeks, this was our welcome back to the first Mommy N Me group since the epilepsy diagnosis.  Cody was four and actually couldn’t really say “seizure” so it sounded more like “Caesar”…but that mom knew.  Everyone in the room knew.

At some point I took a few steps into the room and suddenly another mom was standing next to me.  I didn’t know her well; she had only recently joined the group.  But she had seen my face and my shame and came to save me from the deep that day.

“I have a friend whose son has epilepsy.  Would you like me to send you her name and email?”

Somehow, I affirmed I would…with a nod or a “Thank you,” I can’t remember.

I have no trouble remembering that other mom’s reaction though.  I can still picture it clearly…and I emotionally react to it just as clearly.

The Deep responds

Some days you awake to grief so intense that just getting out of bed is a victory. Then there are days when you just plain wake up on the wrong side of the bed. The next day, maybe in response to that first mom’s reaction, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Thankfully, I had enough self-awareness to realize it when I wrote,

“I don’t get a pass today from blessing others just because it is a tough day – no ‘taking a break.’” 

The good news is that God never takes a break from blessing us.  He isn’t just sitting back watching you struggle.  He is poised for action and has responded before you are even done asking, or, often in my case, begging. 

But we never have to beg God to act – He is waiting for, begging, us to act.  To act by letting go of free will and calling Him into the game, into action.  And he acts – every time.  Believe that.  He is putting something in motion you can’t even fathom. 

We alternated sleeping in Cody’s room for 18 months because he had so many night terrors and nightmares that we found it easier for one of us to sleep in there.  We could calm him down from the extra bed we put in his room instead of getting up multiple times a night and walking in from our room…and that ended up being the way we heard the first seizures, which only happened at night.

You might not see it right now, you might not like “right now,” but never doubt God is there. 

He is there when people act cruelly to you.

And when someone rises up and pulls you from the deep.