Jehovah-Shammah: The LORD Is There
This name of God emphasizes His presence.
Ezekiel 48:35b: ...and the name of the city from that day shall be, The LORD is there.
Exodus 3:12a: And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee:
Matthew 28:20b: ...and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
After a history of miscarriages, burying our stillborn son, and battling periods of infertility, my pregnancy with Reaghan was like a cool breeze on a sunny day. It was perfect. She was perfect. But still, I worried. Once that seed of doubt in your body's ability to carry a baby to term has been planted, it is hard to uproot. The devil tends to it, making it flourish with every twinge your body makes, at every doctor appointment where it takes a split second longer than it did the last time to find a heartbeat. He is the Master of Lies in the Garden of Doubt and Deceit.
Yet, despite the odds that the devil made sure to let me know were stacked against me, I carried a healthy baby to term and had a healthy pregnancy. My water breaking in the middle of the night 10 days before my scheduled c-section was a fun and exciting surprise. We hurried to the hospital and Reaghan Delainey-James was born less than 7 hours later, tiny but oh so perfect. We were in love and praising our Savior for His mercy and grace.
But our time in the sun was quickly overshadowed.
She was tiny. Tinier than we'd expected at just 5lbs 1oz and seemed to be having trouble stabilizing her blood sugar on her own. She was working hard and nursing like a champion but was burning off all her energy as soon as she was taking it in. They were sticking her heel and checking her blood sugar at every feeding. She was pitiful and I felt like they were using her for a pin cushion.
Then Brandon had to leave with my boys. He took them home, trying to keep as much normal in their little lives as he could with so much new going on. He was coming back first thing in the morning with the boys. We didn't plan on being there more than 2 nights anyway. It was a short inconvenience to deal with before we could all be together at home.
Then my Momma had to leave. She'd been up since I'd called her to come sit with the boys when my water broke and excitement was giving way to exhaustion.
But it was fine. I had my baby and everything was going to be just fine. This was all just temporary.
But then the 24 hour mark came and Reaghan's blood sugar was still low and there I was alone as my brand new baby was taken from me and admitted to the NICU. I didn't even have time to call Brandon before they took her from me. I was nearly hysterical by the time I did get a hold of him and as I sat there alone, watching the nurses blow one tiny vein out after another trying to put an IV in her little hands and then her feet, and finally getting it placed in her scalp, the devil took me right over the edge into full blown hysteria.
God had abandoned me right there on the C wing of the neo-natal intensive care unit. He had played the cruelest of tricks on me. He had taken me through 37 weeks of a perfect pregnancy, had given me the most beautiful daughter, had let me hold her, nurse her, kiss her, and now He was going to take her from me.
The devil is most powerful in the art of persuasion.
The next 5 days blurred one into another. I hadn't stepped outside the walls of the hospital since I had walked in to give birth. There were no windows in the NICU, just curtains separating the cribs from each other. Sleep was not allowed in the NICU and if it hadn't been from sheer exhaustion it would have been impossible to attain anyway. The constant beeping of the machines, the bright lights, the nurses calling back and forth to each other, but the worst was the silence of the babies. The NICU was at full capacity the entire length of our stay, 40+ babies fighting to survive. Some winning. Some losing. And with the exception of one little baby boy, there was no crying. It was haunting and terrifying.
The only breaks I took were the mandatory hour in the morning and again in the evening when I would grab a bite to eat, for the doctors and nurses to do their rounds, and a scant hour or two for sleep if my Momma was there to relieve me. The thoughts of leaving Reaghan alone were suffocating. As if, if I left her alone, she wouldn't be there when I returned. Twice already I had left during a mandatory break only to return to her with more wires and more lights because once her blood sugar had stabilized and she was able to control it, her bilirubin shot sky high and entered dangerous levels. Our last night there, she was under triple photo-therapy and I could not hold her at all, not even to nurse her. It was the longest night yet that I'd had to endure.
I wish that I could say that these 5 days were spent spiritually trusting in God and leaving it all in His hands but I can't. I was hurt. I was angry. I felt completely and utterly alone. I was judgmental. I lashed out. And then I was taught a lesson. And it was a most difficult one to learn. But it was swift and it brought me closer to the Lord than I'd been in days.
It was a lesson that taught me just how present Jehovah-Shammah had truly been, not just during this ordeal, not just during my pregnancy, but in the last 5 years of our lives. He had set things in motion long before so that we would be protected in His love, mercy, and grace. Had Brandon and I continued on living the lives we had been after we got married, our daughter would not just have been battling low blood sugar and high bilirubin levels, but fighting to breathe, fighting to live, she may have been fighting a battle that she couldn't win all because of choices that I as her Momma had made, just as so many of the other babies laying in the very same NICU were.
I look back now on that time spent in the NICU and realize how paltry that 5 days seems. So many of those babies had been there for weeks and for months, going days without a single visitor, only being held to be changed or to be fed. Yet the Lord was ever present there. He was there in the seasoned nurses who held me while I cried, who treated my baby as if she were their own. He was there in the volunteers who came in just to hold those tiny babies who had truly been abandoned so that they'd not starve for tenderness and human connection. His love was there, woven into the handmade blankets, hats, and booties given to the babies there in the NICU, some of whom would never leave.
Yes, Jehovah-Shammah was there in the C wing of the NICU, of that I am sure. Just as He is there in all the other times in our lives when we can feel Him the least.
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