Driving

The other day, on the way to Pratum to pick up the boys from school, I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw Abby was nodding off. I watched over the next couple minutes as her eyelids drooped, her body sagged, and she finally dozed off into a deep sleep. My last glance back I suddenly had a flashback, to watching a younger Abby, on a different road, nodding off the same way.

In the flash of my eye I remembered that Abby and I have been driving buddies for a long time. We used to wear out the tread on the tires between Salem and Portland as we went to all her appointments with medical specialists. At Emanuel Hospital there was the developmental specialist, cardiologist, nephrologist, orthopod and physiatrist. At Meridian Park in Tualatin we saw her occupational and physical therapists. In Clackamas she had an eye doctor. At the bottom of the OHSU hill was Randall, our favorite orthotics guy, and somewhere in Portland was another orthotics office we visited twice. At Dornbecher we saw another pediatric orthopod, her neurosurgeon, and eventually her eye doctor/surgeon.

So many appointments and surgeries and check-ups and interventions. In that moment my brain surrendered memories of prism glasses, neck braces and hospital rooms. Waiting rooms, exam rooms and surgery recovery rooms. And in it all Abby and I had a routine.

As often as possible I made her appointments for mid-morning. We would get the boys to school and head up the freeway to slide into her appointment just barely late. After she had been seen by a doctor, or a therapist, or fitted for an orthotic, we would head back to the reception desk, make our next appointment and head for lunch. We had a favorite eatery at each place. Emanuel has the Heartbeat Cafe. OHSU has the Daily Cafe at the bottom of the tram. Tualatin has a Jack in the Box just over the freeway overpass. Each place had a lunch spot that became our date. She would get a juice and fries, I would try to find something reasonably healthy, and we would enjoy the surroundings. We were experts at elevators, fountains, parking garages and riding the tram.

Abby was also an expert at sleeping in the car. With belly full, and morning spent, she almost always fell asleep somewhere near the Terwilliger curves on the way home. Once I was out of downtown Portland I would call Jeff and give him a report on the morning's appointment. As we talked, I would glance in the rearview mirror to see how close she was to falling asleep. Her eyelids would start to droop, her body would sag, and then I would glance back and she would be sound asleep.

And it was that sound-asleep-in-the-car-moment last week that brought, in a flash, all these memories crashing through my heart. What I've just typed took less that 10 seconds to flit through my brain and land at this thought, "I need to blog about why I call her a miracle."

It's so easy to forget, in day-to-day life with a perfectly normal 4 year old, where we started and what she had to go through to get here. Every now and then, when she's running around nakey, I catch a glimpse of a scar on her spine or her sternum and I'm astounded that I've forgotten about her life and death encounter with a heart surgeon, or her straightening encounter with the neurosurgeon. I marvel at the normalcy of life.

There was a season, not too long ago, that there was nothing "normal" about my day-to-day life, and that's why I call my daughter a miracle. A daily reminder of God's all-sufficient grace to carry us through the hard winter nights of the soul. A ray of sunshine straight from the throne room of heaven. A sparkle of joy, laughter, delight. I don't know what God has planned for Abby Joy, but I know it's special, because she is so special.