Rejoice (33 page)

A Word from Karen Kingsbury

Oftentimes when I write a novel, God presents me the opportunity to live through things he wants me to tell you about. During the writing of countless novels, I marveled at the strange similarities taking place in my life. But the situation that came along as I wrote this novel was almost more than I could believe.

Four months after I’d written the first chapter of
Rejoice,
the chapter that sets up Hayley’s drowning, I got a call from a close friend in Arizona. Her sister—another friend—needed prayer because her nineteen-month-old son, Devin, had fallen into an irrigation canal in central Arizona and drowned.

Little Devin traveled the canal for nearly a mile—eighteen minutes—before a neighbor saw his body and pulled him from the water. Eighteen minutes. Devin’s body was blue and lifeless; he was not breathing, and he had no pulse.

Nevertheless, the neighbor administered CPR while a helicopter was called to the site. Devin was life-flighted to Children’s Hospital in Phoenix, where he was put on life support. The lead doctor pulled aside Devin’s mother and told her that the next two days were bound to bring about brain swelling, a condition that would push Devin even further from the possibility of ever waking up. To make matters worse, the family was asked to consider organ donation since Devin was basically brain-dead, being sustained by machines and pumps.

On the phone with me that day, my friend’s request was simple. Pray. Pray for a miracle for Devin.

I’d like to tell you that when I hung up the phone, I rejoiced in God’s healing power and prayed exactly as my friend had asked. But I didn’t do anything of the sort. Instead, I begged God to let Devin go home. Let him run and skip and jump and catch frogs along a lake in heaven, where he would be free from the prison of his brain and his body.

You see, Devin looks very much like my little Austin. White blond hair, tanned skin, blue eyes. A boy with more testosterone than blood coursing through his body, one who had found his greatest joy running and jumping and living life to the absolute edge.

The same way Austin does every day.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Devin confined to a hospital bed, barely cognizant of the people around him, unable to run or jump or ever play again. And the picture was more than I could bear. I added up the facts and told myself that eighteen minutes underwater would never result in a miracle. Never. And if Devin couldn’t smile or get out of bed again, then what was the point?
Take him, God,
I prayed.
Set him free in the fields of heaven.

Two weeks passed, and against all medical odds, Devin was still alive. My friend would call on occasion and give me updates. Good news was always tempered with the reality of his situation. He could cry, but he couldn’t recognize his mother so he couldn’t be consoled. He could open his eyes, but the drowning had left him blind forever. He could turn his head, but he had no control of his arms and legs.

That month, I was asked to speak at an event in Phoenix. The way the flight schedule worked out, my plane arrived five hours before the event, so after checking into my hotel, I took a cab and met my friend and her sister at the hospital, at Devin’s bedside.

He was awake, looking even more like my Austin than I remembered. Nurses had him propped up in bed with blankets. Padding was wrapped around his arms so he wouldn’t hurt himself when his body seized, as it did several times each minute. Nestled beside him was a red Elmo doll, his favorite. In a slow, brain-damaged way, he moved his head from side to side and made a deep, throaty sound. He blinked, but also in slow motion.

His mother went to the opposite side of the bed. “Devin.” Her voice held a hope and love that showed she had gotten past the initial shock of seeing her changed son. “Laugh for Mama, Devin.”

And that’s when it happened.

Devin followed the sound of her voice and looked at his mother with vacant eyes. His lips lifted into a little-boy smile and he laughed. It wasn’t a normal-sounding laugh, but it was a laugh anyway. A response. Proof that somewhere beyond the obvious brain injury, Devin still lived.

The tears came then.

They streamed down my face, and though I was able to carry on a conversation through much of the next two hours, the tears never stopped. Not once. Not while Devin’s mother talked to him, not while his legs seized straight up in the air, and not while I massaged his calf muscles in an effort to ease the tension there.

Through it all, I wept. Very simply, I was caught up in one of the saddest moments I’d ever been a part of. But it wasn’t only because lying before me was a little boy who, until a few weeks earlier, was wonderfully vibrant and whole. It was that, for sure. But it was something else.

Watching Devin, seeing him interact with his mother, told me that I’d prayed for the wrong thing. Never mind the statistics and medical understanding of a child who had been underwater eighteen minutes. My God is bigger than all of medicine combined, bigger than brain damage and drownings, bigger than any limitation our bodies might put on us.

There and then I was convinced beyond any doubt that God could heal Devin. I held that little boy against my chest and let my quiet tears fall on his cheeks. Then I rocked him and leaned my face close to his ear the way I would with my own children.

And I begged God for a miracle for Devin.

I saw in that hospital room a family who was choosing to rejoice rather than give up. Rejoice rather than medicate their pain. Rejoice rather than believing the dismal reports from doctors.

When I left that afternoon, I could only do the same.

I went home and told my family about Devin. My parents assured me they would pray. Don and our kids looked at pictures of Devin and prayed along with me. My friend had a specific prayer, which I lifted to God every day: that come August, Devin would be off feeding tubes. That when he turned two years old, he might be able to eat his own birthday cake.

The first significant good news came two weeks later. My friend called with an update, and I went to my parents’ house to tell them the news.

“I’ve been wondering how he is.” My father hugged me. “I’ve been praying every day for God to give Devin back his eyesight. For some reason that’s been on my mind morning and night.”

“Dad . . .” My heart skipped a beat. “That’s the news. The doctors have done a series of tests and they’re sure. Devin can see again!”

I’ll never forget the way my father’s mouth hung open, the way he brought his hand to his face and let his head fall forward. My father had believed God was able, and now his tears were those of joy.

Since then, Devin has continued to improve. On his Web page, www.devinsmiracle.org, click the word
prognosis
and you’ll see a brief testimony to the truth. It says, “Devin’s family rejoices in God’s goodness.” They refuse to give a prognosis, since only God knows the plans he has for Devin.

Obviously much of what you’ve read in
Rejoice
was taken from my time with this precious little boy, my heart for him, and his recovery time. Please pray for him. If you have children, tonight before you hit the pillow, take a moment and thank God.

I’m glad you journeyed with me through the pages of
Rejoice
. My family is doing well. God has brought us two more kids—this time a nineteen-year-old who lived with us for six months, and a twenty-one-year-old—two young men who in our home seemed better able to follow the Lord and make good choices. Depending on the day or the month, the total number of kids in our house is often eight, sometimes more: three biological, three we adopted, and a handful who have adopted us.

Life is full, with constant reason to rejoice.

Oh, and I just received another bit of news from my friend in Arizona.

Devin turned two last week, and at a party attended by friends, family, and the neighbor who pulled him from the irrigation canal, he ate a piece of his birthday cake.

God is good!

Until next time, in his love,

Karen Kingsbury

P.S. Oh, one more thing. The poem Elizabeth wrote for Luke before his wedding was something I’d first written for my own children. The idea that we miss out on our children’s last moments in a given stage is something I’ve thought about for years. After discussion with my husband and kids, I turned Elizabeth Baxter’s
Let Me Hold You Longer
into a children’s picture book, a special story you can share with your children—whatever age.

Let Me Hold You Longer
is available now in bookstores and online. Though my primary focus will always be life-changing, emotionally gripping adult fiction, I’m thrilled to bring you this special children’s book. The illustrations are light-hearted and whimsical, so that your kids will be laughing, even as you are holding back tears.

As always, I’d love to hear from you.

e-mail address:
[email protected]

Web site address:
www.KarenKingsbury.com

Please come visit and check out the reader forum and the guest-book links so you can see what other readers are saying and meet new friends.

A Word from Gary Smalley

By now you’ve figured out that the title
Rejoice
didn’t mean this book was full of only good times and celebration. Rather, the calling of every member of the Baxter family was to find joy in the midst of great trials and pain. Jesus tells us to be joyful always, to consider it pure joy when we face trials of many kinds, to rejoice in the Lord always.

Rejoice. It is the command of Christ that his people keep a positive outlook, that we find a reason to smile even through our tears. And the reason?

Because we are what we think.

In my years working with relationships, I’ve seen two of the principles in this book played out time and again. First, the idea that couples struggle when tragedy befalls them. And second, the truth that couples always do better when they choose to be joyful, regardless of life’s circumstances.

The following are five life seasons in which you will better serve your relationships by choosing to rejoice.

REJOICE IN THE MUNDANE

Though we will all go through hard times, most of us are not in the midst of a situation as difficult as the one faced by the Baxters after Hayley’s drowning. The key, then, is to find joy in the ordinary times. Many marriages are dying slow deaths because people walk through life half awake, passing each other in the halls and barely remembering to say hello. A woman once told me that she attended a barbecue with friends, and partway through the meal the host had her laughing hysterically over a funny story.

“I remember that it felt strange to smile, and then it hit me,” she said. “I couldn’t remember the last time I had smiled at home with either my husband or my kids.”

Sometime this week, when you’re doing nothing more than hanging around the house, catch your reflection in the mirror. If you haven’t smiled in the past hour, smile. Rejoicing in the mundane makes dull times become happy. Remember, act with your head. Your heart will follow.

REJOICE IN THE DETAILS

Life is full of countless hours spent sorting mail, paying bills, balancing checkbooks, and managing debt. These details are necessary, but they don’t need to rob us of our gladness. Next time you’re in the middle of such a task, put on uplifting music—worship songs or something that makes your heart sing. If music isn’t available, allow yourself to converse with the King of the Universe as you pay bills or sort mail. This type of determination will cause you to feel a kind of deeper joy, the joy God commands we have if we are to walk as a Christian.

I know a woman who does all such mundane tasks seated with her family watching a warm or fun-loving movie.

“I’ve never been much into movies,” she told me. “But that way I’m surrounded by those I love, and they think I’m watching a program with them. The tedious nature of paying bills or balancing a checkbook simply disappears in that setting. It’s my way of choosing to be filled with joy even while I’m doing something so simple.”

REJOICE IN FRUSTRATION

Recently a friend of mine told me about a bad day her twenty-year-old son had experienced. He had just spent a couple thousand dollars fixing his transmission, and that afternoon he had to be at the fire station for a professional picture with the rest of the firefighters. When he went out to his car, less than twenty-four hours after getting it back from the shop, the engine wouldn’t even turn over. He took his mother’s car and went to get his hair trimmed, but his hairdresser yelled at him for coming in before his hair had fully grown out. Flustered, he set out for the photo shoot and took the wrong exit off the freeway. By the time he found the right location, the picture had been taken.

He went home that day and gave his mom a hug. “The devil wants me to be mad, Mom. He’s been poking at me all day.” The young man grinned. “But not this time. It’s a great day, and you know what? I’ll figure out the car, things will be fine with the hairdresser, and next season I’ll make the photo shoot.” He shrugged. “No point wasting today over it.”

Therein lies the lesson. Don’t waste today by letting life’s little frustrations rob you of your joy. Determine to be joyful anyway. Practice makes perfect in this area. Pretty soon when someone asks how you are, you’ll answer, “Good!” And guess what? You’ll mean it!

REJOICE IN RESTORATION

Sin is one of the great thieves of joy. Our happiness can be robbed quickly when we get sucked into a familiar sin or any sin that causes us to be lost in shame, guilt, and the dark shadows of wrongdoing. One client of mine was having an affair for a year before the people at his medical office caught on.

“We were a group of Christian doctors, and we’d made our reputation that way,” the man explained. “They told me they wanted me to seek a period of time away from the office, a time for restoration.”

Initially, the requirements this man’s friends demanded of him seemed overwhelming. “I was more depressed than ever,” he said.

But then one of his closest friends reminded him of James 1, and the command of God to be joyful in trials. The man realized that God was pruning him, developing his perseverance, and that by choosing to embrace the discipline joyfully, he would grow from it.

As soon as his attitude changed, as soon as he began rejoicing about his restoration, the process began to unfold miraculously. He met with counselors, kept an open book of his life before his peers at the medical office, and six months later he and his wife were happier than they’d ever been.

“I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened,” he told me, “if I hadn’t determined to rejoice in the restoration process.”

REJOICE IN SORROW AND TRAGEDY

God understands grief. Jesus wept when he saw the crowd’s response to Lazarus in the tomb. Death, illness, and painful trials were never God’s intention for his people. Since the fall of man, it has been the way of the world. But even so, God gives us a way out of the misery.

Be joyful! Rejoice always!

This doesn’t mean you’ll never cry. To the contrary, if your heart is soft for God, you’ll cry often. You’ll weep when it’s your turn to stand vigil at a hospital bed, or when you stand there on behalf of someone else. But if you make a decision to rejoice, then deep inside you will always have a reason to go on, a reason to get up in the morning. Your grief won’t be that of a person without hope; rather you will grieve because pain and death and tragedy are sad. Very sad. But you will have hope because you will believe the truths that go along with faith in Christ. God is in control. . . . He has a plan for everyone who loves him. . . . Death is merely a door for those who believe in him. . . . And he will make good out of every situation.

See?

What other response could we have to that kind of God but joy?

For more information about how the concepts in the Redemption series can save or improve your relationships, contact us at:

The Smalley Relationship Center

1482 Lakeshore Drive

Branson, MO 65616

Phone: 800-84TODAY (848-6329)

Fax: 417-336-3515

E-mail: [email protected]

Web site: www.smalleyonline.com