no matter what

The last hour has been the wildest ride God has ever taken me on. I feel certain Stellan would say the same thing if he could.

Stellan flipped into V-Tach, Ventricular Tachycardia, earlier today. V-Tach is potentially deadly, much more so than SVT. The doctors began to pump Lidocaine into Stellan. I had no idea that drug could be used that way; I knew it only as a sister drug of Novocaine, which numbs your mouth at the dentist's office.

Anyway, at the moment all of this was happening, Stellan's only iv suddenly blew. Thus began an emotional time, messy, lots of scurrying by others, and panicking on my part. I talked to my friend Carrie briefly as I was not able to reach my husband. She put that V-Tach post up and sent out Tweets on my behalf.

Literally at that moment, I felt God's presence so strongly. The Lord Himself only knows how quickly word about Stellan spread and how many of you were on your knees. I stood by Stellan and gazed into his eyes and talked to him, letting the hubbub and commotion fade away around me.

Do you believe in the power of prayer? Because I do. And so does Stellan.

After the Lidocaine, Stellan's heart came out of V-Tach. He slipped into some heart block after that, and then some crazy rhythms that were just aberrant. And then, as quickly as everything had begun, Stellan fell instantly and immediately into a deep, peaceful sleep.

And then the craziest thing happened.

His heart rate flipped for a time into perfectly slow and normal sinus rhythm!!!

The cardiologist started laughing and giving everyone high fives, I was elated, and the team of nurses had huge grins on their faces. Just like that, Stellan's PICU room started to clear out.

As I sank into the soft chair beside Stellan's bed, I knew that God had answered our prayers.

Or, had He?

Yes, indeed. God answers prayers! He does, He heard us all, I have no doubt. I believe in the power of prayer!

And I also believe that God knows what He's doing, and that the way He answers prayer can still be confusing to us mere humans. Before I even had time to anticipate that this might happen, and after I'd considered beginning to write an upbeat Stellan is in perfect sinus post, things changed in the blink of an eye again.

Stellan went back into SVT in the mid 200s, the cardiologist came back in and ordered his Esmolol to be discontinued and began to instead give Stellan a different Beta blocker and Stellan's blood pressure plummeted dangerously low.

I had deja vu and I remembered how up and down things were with Stellan this summer when he was still in utero. I remember thinking things were great, then terrible, then great, then terrible.

I remembered how confused and frustrated I felt when I wrote this post back then.

And as I re-read that old post today, I feel in many ways the same as I did back then. But also, in very many ways, much different. I am more seasoned with these kinds of ups and downs. I understand that this will take time to figure out Stellan's persistent SVT. I know that God's answer to our prayers might not come in the form of a quick fix. But I am not calloused to that. It's not that I am cold to the fact that there will be ups and downs; instead, I know that God is in the ups and downs, and not just a mere bystander. I know I have a long way to go in my maturity in my relationship with God to say the least, but yet I feel today a depth of communion with Him that I did not know back in August.

I recognize God now as more of a real presence in my life than I ever did before Stellan. My heart has been softened to accepting His will for my life, for our children and their very lives, and for my marriage ever so much more than before our sweet baby boy was in our lives.

And all of that, my friends, is a miracle. Just as the miracle in Angie's life is that, because of God, she is able to be at peace with sweet Audrey's death. What a miracle!

So, yes, we dirty our knees in the knowledge that God can cause Stellan to live a long life on this earth and cause his SVT to eventually resolve with medication, while also knowing that even if He does not, Stellan already is a miracle.

What an utterly unspeakable joy and pride that my husband and I have that we are the parents of this very special boy whom God chose for all of this. For all of this. Every up, every down, every step closer we took to our sweet Saviour because of our son, every medical problem, every dimpled smile, everything.

Stellan is a miracle, no matter what.