When does faith turn in to denial? When Mighty Z was born I had faith that God was going to heal her utterly and completely, (I still have faith that He will heal her, but it is different now,) so much so that I refused to believe that she was going to be trached and be on a ventilator. I truly believed that it was going to be a complete miracle and that Mighty would come home happy, healthy, and whole. I had visions of going from church to church telling people of this mighty miracle.
After Mighty Z was trached, my bubble popped. I went through a time where I felt God had forsaken me. It says in the Bible that if we have faith as small as a mustard seed and tell a mountain to go throw itself into the sea it will go (Luke 17:6). I felt that I had much more than a mustard seed of faith but God hadn't moved. I realize now that what I had was denial. I mean really, how can you go through thinking you have a healthy baby only then to realize you have a special needs child without denial knocking at your door?
By the time that Mighty Z came home for the first time, she was six months old. I had come to grips with the fact that this was the way it was and that God had not left me, but that he was helping me get through this. I then started telling people that, only to hear “You have to have faith that Mighty Z will be healed! Don't confess that she has CCHS(Congenital Central Hypoventilation Syndrome).” All the sudden I started to hear denial knock on my door again. I had two choices at that moment: either to stand up to the truth, which was that my baby had this terrible disease, or to deny that there was anything wrong. I chose to stand up to the truth, but in doing so I felt guilty. My guilt was telling me that I had no faith in God, and that this was not the way I was brought up, and how could I turn my back on faith?
Only then I remembered that when God led the Children of Israel to the Promised Land, He had Moses send out spies. When the spies came back they did not lie and say that there was nobody in their Promised Land-- they stood up and said ‘yes, there are Giants in the land’ and Joshua and Caleb said ‘there are giants in the land but our God will prevail.’ Once I reread that I realized that even though Mighty Z was on a ventilator and according to the doctors would have to bury her before her first birthday, My God would prevail. (CCHS had no test for it at the time of Mighty Z's birth, and nobody in Oklahoma had seen it, so they had no idea what her prognosis was. Also there was really no support group so we didn't know Mighty Z would be OK.) And my God has prevailed. Is Mighty Z healed? No, not yet, but she is off her ventilator during the day, and she is twelve years old going to school every day. I would say that God has led me out of the wilderness.
I have found that God doesn't give children with disabilities to strong people: He gives them to ordinary, everyday people; then He helps the parents to grow stronger through the journey.01 02 12
