Keep up the fight

 This morning in school Bostyn was asked to write about her first memory. When she told me what she had written—about her eye infection when she was almost four—I looked at my phone and realized that today marks 10 years since she sat in a hospital bed and fought for her life. I will never forget the miracles that took place that brought her home weeks later, and the many earthly and heavenly beings that helped her keep fighting.

The second day . . . when her other eye begin to close, I remember her begging for us to help her. She was gasping for air, and her neck was getting bigger by the minute. There was nothing we could do and the doctors had even begun to have fear in their eyes, as they talked about the infection’s rapid rate, every one of them coming to visit with little or no answers at what was taking over our little girl’s body.

At one point I found myself in the hall tucked into a little corner outside our room, crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. A doctor walked into the room and brought another one out. “I don’t know if this one is going to make it, if that infection keeps spreading, we are going to have to put tubes all down her neck and try to drain some of it out in the morning, or she isn’t going to be able to get oxegen.” They didn’t know I had heard them. I sat there helpless, picturing my little girl with tubes down her neck and her other eye so swollen she could no longer see us.

I prayed harder in that quiet little corner than I had ever prayed in my life. Moments later I found myself standing in front of a whole room of nurses, at first I quietly started begging for their help, then words—I still don’t know how I knew what to say—began flying out of my mouth. I pointed at one and told her what kind of specialist to go call, and another to get me the town’s infectious disease specialist... and on and on until I had given everyone in that room a job to do. For a few seconds they all sat there and stared at me like I was crazy—and to be honest . . . I might have been. I looked around and said, “Now. She needs you to go now.” Within 20 minutes her room was full of specialists I didn’t know existed. They worked together and found the infection to be something different than she had been treated for so far. By morning she had stopped gasping for air and her other eye never did close all the way. 

Sometimes we have to just have faith, and other times we have to fight. I have never seen anyone fight so hard as my little girl did ten years ago. She was a little warrior. Her eyes have never been the same; she can’t go anywhere without her thick glasses or contacts, but besides a little scar that she still carries . . . you would never know the fight she had to battle to be here.

We don’t know what people are going through, or what they will yet be asked to endure. We don’t always know what their stories are, or the little parts of their journeys that make them who they are today. 

I am grateful for Bostyn and her warrior heart. I have watched her endure this unplanned life with so much grace and wisdom. I know this moment, when she was young, prepared her for many more fights she would be asked to champion just two years later. She is a light for us all, and probably one of the funniest people I know. So glad I know you Bostyn! Thank you for always reminding me that miracles are real, angels are near, and to always keep up the fight.