Broken Promises

Chapter 7 - The NICU, Part 2

Although a Christian since childhood, I have felt distant from God many times in my life. Some say they have always felt that God was there for them. I usually felt alone, like God did not love me, or at least that He did not care. I cannot explain this. I am not sure if it is because I overthink. Maybe this experience with your birth was all proof my feelings were valid. God showed me everything I wanted in life: A wife to have as a partner and a child to love. He would rip both away.

Before your birth, I never understood how people could pray without ceasing until I became one of those people. I would sit there for hours praying with words, thoughts, and tears. I would beg God to heal you, to let me take your place. He ignored me. I would fall asleep at night with prayers on my lips and wake with them continuing.

I had never heard the audible voice of God before this time. I had always been a little curious, maybe even skeptical, about people who said they had heard it. A week after your birth, I heard just as clear as if a person was standing beside me, "she is going be okay." At that moment, I felt an intense peace as the tears were torn out of my dehydrated eyes. To this day, I wonder if what I heard was God or the auditory hallucination of a man who had not slept for days. Either way, that moment shaped my resolve. God would heal you if I trusted Him.

While you were in the NICU, someone printed a bible verse and put it on your bed. It was Jeremiah 29:11.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Many days, it took all I had not to rip it off and shred it. It was already a lie. He had harmed you. What other plans could He have for you? What kind of God would break you or, at the very least, allow a child to hurt? What plan was worth that sacrifice?

I asked myself what God wanted me to learn from your breaking. If there was a lesson that took killing you to learn, then it was not worth learning. It is an unforgivable burden to place on anyone. What the hell was the plan?!

I have thought about this verse so many times, both before you died and after. I have no better understanding of it or 'everything happens for a reason.' I cannot accept there is a reason for a child to die, especially before she has had a chance to live. I cannot fathom how God could leave you broken for ten years with no intention of healing you. I cannot process what I heard in the NICU. I cannot understand any of this. Whatever this plan was or still is, it was never worth your life.

Months before you were born, I had decided that your first book would be The Cat in the Hat. I had the book long before I needed it. I brought it to the hospital in anticipation of your birth. I wanted so badly to read it to you on the first night of your life. That did not happen.

It was a few days before they stabilized you enough and my thought processes worked well enough to remember that the book existed. The first night reading to you left me shattered. I choked on all the words. This was not real. This was not how it was supposed to be. You were not supposed to be lying in that bed with tubes keeping you alive. I should have been holding you in my arms. The NICU nurses were not supposed to be there and crying seeing me read to you. It was just supposed to be you and me, father-daughter. The first memorable moment of a long tradition of reading to my little girl as I tucked her into bed. 'Supposed to be' underscored my new thoughts.

I hate that book now. It represents everything that did not and would never happen. It represents the loss of stories I would never get to tell you in ridiculous, funny voices. Even though I read to you every night, I was never the same. The words came from love, but they cut as they came out. They left so many unhealed scars that still ache.

I do not know where all those books went. After you died, I donated most to kids who were sick or disabled. The presence of those books crushed me, and I had to get them out of the house before I destroyed them all.