The Lord has so many ways of showing us His love, character and care. One of the ways He does this is by relating to us as our Heavenly Father. He is so much like a protective parent who stands up for us and won’t allow us to be bullied by fear.
It was the spring of 1997 and Brandon was 13, Jason was 11 and Stephen was 9. Stephen was getting his blood drawn (to check his liver enzymes) every 3 months since he had his liver transplant at the age of four months. He was taking his anti-rejection drug twice a day, and he was growing up. He’d been in the hospital four times up to this point. However, the amazing thing was that he hadn’t been in the hospital for seven years!
Seven years before, a couple of Mennonite pastors, who were part of our local pastors’ group in New Jersey, asked if they could anoint Stephen with oil and pray for him. In those days I had certainly read about that kind of practice in the book of James, but I had never been exposed to that in our denomination’s circles. It was 1990 and our two-year-old had already been hospitalized four times. So, I talked with Lynn about Stephen getting prayed for, and she was, of course, all for it. One afternoon I brought Stephen into one of our meetings and I said, “Ok, you guys go ahead and pray for him.” I didn’t know what to expect because, as I said, I’d never experienced anything like that before.
I remember the younger associate pastor holding Stephen in his lap and the older senior pastor took out a little vial from his pocket. He opened that vial and the fragrance was wonderful. He put a little oil on his forefinger and then touched Stephen’s forehead. Then he prayed a very sweet prayer that was filled with gentleness and love. I remember thinking, “Hey, that’s kind of cool.” I felt the presence of the Lord during that brief prayer and I never forgot it.
Now let us fast-forward seven years. A couple whose child had averaged a hospitalization every six months for the first two years was now looking back at seven years (since that prayer) with tremendous gratitude. During those seven years our family had lived overseas twice for a total of fourteen months. It was March 1997, and we had returned to America after serving in Great Britain. We were staying with my father, in his condo in the Orlando area.
One day we decided to take a day trip to the beach. We packed up our 1968 red Volkswagen van (whom we had named, Lucille) and we headed for the beach in Melbourne, Florida. A few hours later we were packing up to leave, and we noticed Stephen was “dragging” a bit. We didn’t think too much about it until we saw that he was pale and getting more and more lethargic. Stephen hadn’t shown symptoms like this since he was two years old. Our family rushed back to Orlando and within a short time we knew that something was terribly wrong. We took Stephen to the emergency room and within a few hours I was in the back of an ambulance with our son. We were headed down the Florida Turnpike to a transplant center in Miami. A few hours later we arrived at the hospital, dazed and exhausted. The story of how the Lord provided housing for our family while we were in Miami is on the “Impossible” page of our website.
After two weeks in the hospital, we brought Stephen “home” to Dr. Joe’s house. Dr. Joe was a liver transplant surgeon at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. We were the guests of this wonderful Brazilian family for about six weeks. We attended their Brazilian Baptist Church when we could and cannot say enough about how we were loved by that congregation. Obviously we didn’t understand a word of Portuguese during the preaching or singing, but we didn’t care! We were being loved on and cared for by some of the sweetest people we have ever met! With Dr. Joe’s permission we were given the “green light” to take a trip up I-95 to visit for two days and one night with Lynn’s mom and older sister who were on their way to Florida to visit a relative. They very much wanted to see Stephen and his brothers if it was alright with the doctor. Well, guess what city my mother and sister-in-law were heading to in order to visit their relative? You guessed it, Melbourne. The same city that we’d been in just a few weeks ago when fear struck deep in our hearts. We had no earthly desire whatsoever to return to Melbourne, ever!
We were blessed by a dear couple in the Atlanta area during our Miami stay, and we decided it would be much more comfortable to travel to Melbourne in a rent a car. I’ll never forget that just as we were about to leave the Miami city limits on our journey north, Stephen cried out, “My stomach hurts.” With those words fear shot through us again. The kind of fear that hits you in the stomach first and then shoots through your extremities. We learned from the doctors that when blood enters the stomach it causes cramping and a lot of pain. The stomach was not made to digest blood, hence the pain that comes along with blood in the stomach. Lynn and I looked at each other and our first thought was to turn around and head right back to the safety of Dr. Joe’s house. Within a minute or two of “holding our breath” Stephen let us know that the pain was gone, and we cautiously and nervously continued our journey to Melbourne.
Later that day we arrived in Melbourne and the boys got to visit with Granny and their aunt. The weekend was a blessing and a bit of a reprieve from the intensity of our time in Miami. We know now that the blessing of our boys seeing their granny wasn’t the main objective that our Heavenly Father had in mind. He wanted to teach us that nothing from our past should have the power to hold us hostage. He wanted to show us that sometimes the only way we can have victory in a situation is to walk right through the very place that hurt us so badly in the past. Going through situations like this is not a matter of our “pulling up our bootstraps” and deciding, “Ok, I’m going to do this today.”
Our Heavenly Father knows when we are ready to go back to the battlefield. He is quite capable of orchestrating the events and the condition of our hearts so that we are ready to receive ALL the lessons and healing He wants to bring to a given situation. I remember going through that weekend holding onto the hand of our Heavenly Father VERY tightly. As the Lord was trying to teach us lessons of faith and trust, the enemy was clearly at work as well. One of the doctors on the transplant team in Miami (Stephen’s bleeding episode in Miami stopped “on its own” according to medical report) told me during a consultation, “Mr Slavin, what you have in your son is a ticking time bomb. It’s just a matter of time before it goes off again.” I remember thinking, “Why would you say that? Where is the hope in this kind of talk?”
We can hold onto the Lord during the most pressing of times, or we can succumb to the words of the enemy and walk in the fear of whatever kind of “ticking time bomb” is going on in our lives. We thank Him for the power of His Word which brings about HIS perspective on the trials we face. What comfort we can find in the words of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
In our next post, we’ll continue with the story of how the Lord “ambushed” me during a moment of prayer and completely changed the direction of our lives! Let us know how we can pray for you as the Father leads you on to…The Next Step.
