Our God is a God of Miracles
Our God is a God of Miracles
By Becky Watson
Our God is a God of miracles.
He is intimately involved in the details of our lives. He loves us. He did not spin us out of a primordial soup and then leave us be. He cares about us. He is our Father.
This basic, foundational understanding of God’s character is pivotal to every doctrinal aspect of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As children, one of the first songs we learn is “I Am a Child of God.” It’s not just a nice tune, it’s central to everything else we learn. Of all the grandiose titles God could have chosen – Alpha and Omega, Elohim, The Mighty God, etc. – the one He prizes most is: Father.
We have to learn this for ourselves. Humming primary tunes is not enough to see us through the trials and troughs of this life. We have to feel in our hearts that we are demi-Gods: children of divinity, and therefore of infinite worth.
I recently re-learned this.
Two weeks ago, my eleven-year-old son was racing a friend on an electric scooter. No helmets. They bumped; he fell. He came bawling in the door clutching his shoulder, and we immediately iced it. Within minutes he had calmed down and said all he wanted to do now was take a nap.
Stop.
Take a nap?? Eleven-year-olds don’t nap unless forced. And maybe not even then.
I asked him if he hit his head and he said yes. So then I enter full head injury-mode, checking his pupils and going through the list of symptoms. He was negative on each one. I googled “should I let a kid sleep after hitting his head,” and the top three sites said yes, sleepiness is a concussion symptom, but as long as they’re not vomiting, scrambling words, or pupils dilating, it’s okay to let them sleep.
So I did.
He slept for about an hour, and then I woke him up because we had friends coming over for dinner. At this point he started complaining about his back, where we found some road rash. (This was turning out to be quite a scooter accident!) I ran a bath for him and told him to soak and join us for dinner when he was ready. Soon afterwards I was bustling about playing hostess and putting the finishing touches on dinner. A good forty five minutes later I went to check on him … and he was asleep in my bed.
Now all alarms were blaring in my head. My husband and I called our guests into the room to take a parent poll. One of our guests had a brother who is an ER doctor, and we took advantage of the relationship by texting him about our son’s strange sleepiness. The doctor responded that of course it was difficult to say without assessing our son himself, but if he wasn’t nauseated, and he was talking fine, and his head didn’t even hurt, we didn’t necessarily have to rush to the hospital.
So we let him go back to sleep.
A few hours later, our guests gone, I couldn’t sit still. Something was WRONG, and I knew it. My husband and I woke up our son again – this time he was very difficult to wake. But once up, he seemed fine: talking and walking normally, no nausea, not even a headache.
Now, some info about me. I have a lot of kids. I’ve seen a lot of injuries. I am 100% a “wait and see” kinda chick. (Consequently, I have waited a few days only to discover a child has a broken arm. Oops.) But that’s how I roll; I’m not an alarmist, and since I’ve learned that time and patience cure most ills, I rarely if ever rush to the doctor.
But my Heavenly Father insisted I take my son to the ER. A nagging, quiet feeling that pounded in my heart. So I did.
The doctors quickly assessed him and discovered a broken collarbone (hence the hurt shoulder) but they didn’t seem at all worried about his head. The comment was, “oh, he probably just bonked his noggin pretty good, but we’ll take a scan to be sure.”
And discovered a massive brain bleed.
The next few hours were a whirl. An ambulance came, lights and sirens blaring, to transfer us to Phoenix Children’s hospital. A neurologist met us in triage. Within an hour he was having brain surgery, and hours after that we were in the ICU, his head half shaved and an enormous, horse-shoe shaped scar attesting to the fact that this was no simple bonk on the noggin.
As I’ve related this traumatic experience, again and again I hear others comment: “wow, good thing you listened to your gut.” “Wow, good thing you trusted your intuition.” “Wow, that ‘Mom Feeling’ saved his life.”
No. I attest that no, it wasn’t my gut. Or intuition. Or some mysterious Mom Feeling. It was all the Father.
Because I KNOW my gut. My gut is to wait. My ‘mom feeling’ is to keep calm and see-how-you-are-in-the-morning. If I had trusted myself, my son would have died.
I testify that Heavenly Father saved my son. And I am so, so grateful.
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