Happy Birthday Nana!

This might be the most important post I ever write because it makes good on a pact that I made with God when he answered our fervent prayers and allowed me to play witness as He revealed His miraculous ways in restoring the health of my nana last year…

Here is what you should know about my nana, she is full of life and always positive. I mean always! Frequently reminding others and myself  “life is fun if you choose to look at it that way”.

She seeks out joy in the nearest and farthest of places and out of her love for people and their stories will use just about anything to start a conversation. (This would cause her to buy and get some of the wackiest things growing up and she would always say “This is a conversation piece”)

SO I HOPE I CAN DO HER JUSTICE IN CAPTIONING HER HERE…

It was exactly a year ago that I went to go celebrate her 85th birthday with my mom. We took the day and drove over to her home in Lake Placid and met her for lunch at the Golden Corral. There isn’t a person in that town that she hasn’t met that she doesn’t consider an instant friend. So it’s no wonder she would pull over the waitress, ask about her family and then immediately begin gushing about hers.

She told me to open up my old Instagram page and show the kind waitress all that I was able to do with yoga and we spoke all about the new projects I was embarking on. I was both honored and yet somewhat embarrassed, but Nanas (especially on their birthdays) can get away with just about anything.

We ate cake, sang happy birthday and visited awhile longer as she told us about the cruise to Cuba that her and her husband had just booked. As my mom and I drove back home later that day I remember thanking God in that moment for the steps He had directed which had granted me the freedom of enjoying days like that day.

Then about 3.5 months later we received a call that made me wonder if that was to be the last memory of time spent with her I was to have here on this earth.

She had left on the ten day cruise with what I’m sure she thought was a cold, but she would return that following Sunday and be rushed to the hospital when we received the call telling us she had collapsed and was being admitted with double pneumonia and more tests being run.

My mom left early the next morning to go check on her while I stayed behind prepping to give a presentation to a group of awesome women on the topic of prayer.

My mom gave us our first update letting us know that Nana was going to be transferred to ICU because the infection had turned into sepsis taking over not only both her lungs but her entire body. I knew that didn’t sound good but my mom assured me not yet to worry.

Tuesday mid morning came around and I sent a text to my mom to check in. What I received back I recognized as a vague “glossy” text with something to the effect of “the doctors are still working on trying to control the infection, if anything changes I will let you know but good luck with tonight”.

I knew she was blowing me off, but I also trusted my mom in that if she thought I should be there she would for sure let me know.

So that night I shared the power of prayer with 15 women. I shared strategies to pray, I told them my own working prayers, and we started a challenge together to exchange our prayer requests so we could pray without ceasing and ignite our prayer life over the next 40 days for each other and ourselves.

I was both humble and proud of the work God and I did that night, but little did I know that I would need to find a new strength and rely heavily on all that I had just shared.

I had described prayer, as a portal to bring the power of heaven down here to earth and that is exactly what my nana would need.

What my mom had shielded me (with love) and instructed my whole family not to tell me until after my presentation was done, was that my nana had gone into heart failure with other vital organs following the night before.

Her body was working too hard to try and fight the infection and breathe through her pneumonia-ridden lungs. The doctors had decided that they needed to medically sedate her and put her on a ventilator to give the antibiotics enough time to catch up and work.

My mom later shared that my nana had tears filling her eyes when they went to sedate her. And as my mom reassuring her that this was just for a little while so she could get better, my nana responded “I have lived a full life”.

She wasn’t scared of death because she knew where she would go.

In the moment this can feel like both the blessing and curse when you are dealing with someone of faith because selfishly you want and need them to stay with you here on earth, fighting what is ahead and not making peace too soon to go and be with God. We knew she had lived a full life, but we didn’t think that yet meant that she was done living it.

My mom would stay there urging for everyone else to just stay engaged in prayer and their daily routines. She said she would let us know if anything changed, but there was nothing we could do right now since nana was sedated and we were just waiting for the medication to work.

The news over the next few days was a rollercoaster of ups and downs…sometimes a glimmer of hope her numbers were looking better and other times seeming nothing was working at all and getting worse. And quite frankly trying to navigate each doctor’s point of view was a job amongst itself.

My mom took a break and came back to join us for a family dinner to celebrate my brothers birthday and mentioned she had taken a picture of nana in the hospital. I asked to see it and she refused.

This was a signal that my mom was relying too heavily on her own strength and trying to lovingly shelter us from the severity of what was going on. I knew that she was scared she wouldn’t see her mother again and yet didn’t want to show the picture and have us remember her in that way.

I made the decision that night that I was not going to allow my mother to do this alone. I knew my strength in conviction could battle her stubbornness because I have that same spirit she has in me too. So we took two cars back over to visit my nana in the hospital the next day. My mom thought I would stay for the day but I packed for as long as I needed.

My nana had already been in ICU for a week and nothing had changed. Her levels were quite frankly not much better, her heart was afib, and endemic swelling was taking over her body, which put more pressure on her kidneys.

It had started to be discussed amongst our immediate family before I left that we needed to get her moved. I was sure that the lovely doctors and staff at her small town hospital were doing all they could but I also knew from my days in the medical field that they did not have the same updated equipment and resources as other facilities do.

My mom assured me that they were doing all they could, my aunt who is a nurse assured my mom of the same. But I felt convicted. All I knew is that I needed to feel like WE were doing all we could to make my nana better.

So I upped my prayer game with a specific request. “Lord, I feel like my nana would be better cared for at another hospital if that is true I need you to help have her moved!”

As I walked into her closed cramped ICU room my conviction was even stronger. We would take a break and walk outside to update my aunt and I was loudly in the background voicing my concerns. I’m sure I was frustrating my aunt who didn’t think there was more that could be done, not to mention it’s not so easy to move a patient on life support, as one might naively think. If we wanted her moved we would have to have another doctor at another hospital make space for her and agree to take on her case. We would also have to find transport and pay for the move. We didn’t have any of the contacts or resources for the above.

As we walked back up to her room the hospital chaplain entered in behind us and asked us if we would mind if he prayed. Of course we accepted, very appreciative of more hands and feet lifting our hopes of healing up to God.

That day felt long and frustrating but as I saw the chaplain later in the gift shop he told me that he had seen miracles before and believes that even those in the “comatose state” can hear our prayers. My response was as steady and strong as I have ever answered. “Thank you. We are a family of believers and we choose to live by faith not by sight until God opens our eyes to something else.” His response. Oh I could tell.

I prayed extra hard that night to somehow find a way to have her moved and for God to grant her the strength to keep fighting and healing. I also decided to send it out to the group that I had just tried to empower with my presentation on prayer.

I hadn’t wanted to burden anyone before. I didn’t want to overshadow or distract them from their own prayers or the prayers of the group that we had passed out to focus on.

But then I remembered my words from the presentation on prayer I had shared and used them to challenge myself in this limiting belief.  This is how that conversation with myself went:

First– I serve a God of unlimited miracles who is not distracted by even the smallest of requests.

Second– if I was expecting a miracle then I wanted more involved in that process so they too could feel blessed.

Then the fear creeped in… what if she didn’t wake up on this side of heaven and all that I had asked others to pray would give them a reason to think their prayers had not been answered. I was suppose to build their faith not deflate it.

I rallied back relying on a set of verses that I had fasted on (“coincidence” enough during the time we ate at the Golden Corral celebrating her birthday in the beginning of the year):

“What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” The father instantly cried out “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”

Mark 9:23-24 NLT

And as I worked to rid my own unbelief and sent out the message of prayer request I also decided to write out my own fervent prayers.

I woke up the next morning, looked out her window saw the sunshine over the lake from the back of her house, gazed back at all the pictures of her adventures that were hanging in the “travel room” where I had slept and thought DEVIL- NOT TODAY.

No matter what happens I refuse to hold onto fear because I am giving power solely back over to my faith. I let my mom go ahead to the hospital and assured her I would not be far behind.

I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote out my prayers. I thanked God for the gift of my nana and prayed for her full-restored health. I prayed for the care and wisdom of the doctors and nurses seeing over her as they were acting as the hands and feet of Christ. I prayed for the renewed faith and strength of my family and the will of God as our Healer to be done. Then I opened up my study bible and thumbed to “heal” in my concordance and at the bottom of my page and spilling on to the back of the piece of paper I secured MY prayer with HIS PROMISES and finished it at the bottom with AMEN (Let it be done).

I walked into the room and with a piece of tape hung that written prayer over her bed for all to see. This was God’s room now!

As my mom walked back in she shared a conversation she had with the head nurse before I got there. She kindly just asked again if another hospital would be able to do anything else. Of course she was met with a mix of reassurance but resistance, and where she feared that she was now going to be marked as a “trouble maker” God began to make a way.

The hospitalist came in and started his morning rounds directed to my mom saying “I understand you are questioning the care of your mom (nana)” and as my mom began to politely apologize for any misunderstanding and tell him how appreciative we were of all they had done, he said “well I’ve spoken to my partners at the hospital in Sebring and they have agreed to take her in. We are just waiting on a room”.

I knew in my heart this was God’s FIRST answer of many needed…

What I can tell you is her recovery had SO MANY moments like this in it! And our faith was tested with EVERY SINGLE ONE!

We even thought her time was over when we had to sign a DNR but God was NOT YET DONE!

By the end, the whiteboard in her room where they keep all the vital contact information read

“GOD LOVES YOU” … we still aren’t sure who initially wrote it, but I can tell you GOD’S HAND was in ALL OF IT!