Shaken

I've been dealing with a lot of different things this week. We started the project that brought so much frustration. I don't foresee a lot of progress but I will do what I can to help it progress. Matt is applying for jobs and hoping things go well. His buddy, Casey, is apparently on a few short lists at some other schools so that hopefully means the two won't be in competition with each other. Those things have been weighing heavily on my mind, but the biggest thing this week has nothing to do with me. A friend, who was more of an acquaintance until we started bonding via the world of facebook, has been in the hospital with her youngest little one. At 6 weeks old, he has been an inpatient for the last week. He's been having episodes of apnea since the day he was born and it reached a point that caused his docs to send him to my place. The strange part for me is that even though he's not my child and despite his mother's unrelenting faith, on Tuesday I felt my faith being shaken. I felt myself beginning to doubt everything I've always believed and wondering whether God was really there and listening. Afterall, this child is perfect, unblemished. And yet, here he is in a hospital bed, baffling the doctors as they open every door to find the answer. I don't know how to describe the feeling that came over me as I held my own daughter and remembered her time in the NICU. Then, my faith was strong and I was not. This time, I feel like my faith was shaken. But I looked at this mother, this woman who hasn't left her child's side, who has various verses from the Bible written on the board in her son's room to give her strength, hope, support. She inspires me and yet I feel ashamed that my own faith was challenged when she is facing such challenges. I pray every day (nearly constantly for her child) and have even had a night full of dreams where all I did was pray. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned all around this child, not only by the doctors, but by me. Perhaps I need to have her faith or ask for that strength or some semblance of it. All I know is I was astounded as the thoughts passed through my head and yet, I wondered how much of that is from deep within me and how much was just a fleeting insecurity. In the last year, I went through all those "religious" challenges between pretty much everything and my dad. I believed nothing could shake me after that. Clearly, I was wrong.