Tag: Graham

Chattanooga Nights: The Graham Posts

Each and every evening, Sandy prayed over her baby boy – even into his young adult years – the words “Sleep sweet in Jesus…”

Night was never Gra-Gra’s favorite time; he didn’t sleep through the night until he was 11 years old! These were his most vulnerable hours, those pre-‘nighty-night’ moments.

I can still hear Sandy call out in her same sing-songy way, “Gra-Gra, time to go night-night!” and our little man reply, “I don’t want to, mommy.” But then, knowing he so disliked the night, would help him ease into it by indulging their sweet ritual.

For many years, they shared this mommy-and-son time; incidentally, it is when Graham often opened up about the things that either bothered or mattered to him. Sandy would climb into bed with her beautiful baby boy (at whatever age) and listen to his dreams, fears, burdens, day’s recaps and tomorrow’s plans.

We didn’t know it as we drove away from Erlanger with our new baby, but a night was coming to us, so dark and dreadful. How we needed our Father to climb into our bed with us and tell us it was okay to close our eyes and sleep, that he was keeping watch over our souls.

Ernst

Before we could take our baby boy across the state line from Tennessee into Georgia we had to get permission from child services in our state. Because the little guy came early we weren’t able to get the requisite home visit in time. We had to scramble to get it done and make sure every duck was corralled and every T crossed to go from Point A to Point B. The next twenty-fours hours from hospital hand-off to home would require some pretty fancy footwork.

The game plan was to leave our son with Sandy’s sister in Chattanooga while we raced the two hours in time for an afternoon home visit with our very by-the-book no-nonsense child services officer, Ernst Bierkerut. Yeah, whatever you’re picturing in your head, that’s him. Imagine our glee, when after a grueling two-and-a-half-hour session, Mr. Bierkerut was finally, mildly, unenthusiastically, somewhat okay with our home being borderline acceptable.

“You may go get your son,” he deadpanned.

We, on the other hand, danced like little schoolkids and cried happy tears to the heavens. Ernst may have even slightly smiled.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
– Job

Friday, September 29, 1989 Chattanooga, TN

Eight years earlier, I face-planted into the thin smelly carpet of my dorm room and told the Lord I was done with living life on my terms and behaving like a libertine when I was away from my Christian college’s campus. The hypocrisy is over. The rebellion ends here and now. Whatever it takes. Whatever I need to surrender.

Now, eight years later, on the exact day and in the very same city, I have a son. It’s not lost on me that, one, dates are important to God within the sphere of human events, and, two, though I lost something valuable (my legs), I gained something infinitely better: fatherhood.

The Lord gives, takes away, and gives much more in its place.

Eight years. Eight, as I understand Hebrew numerology, relates to new beginnings. Sandy and I had come to the end of our season of longing and pleading, despair and dashed hopes. God came through, as he does. The heavenlies had shifted and a new day had come for this childless couple.

Ernst gave his permission, as if he could stop anything God ordained, and we were off to Chatt-town to get our boy.

We roared into town, throwing the car into park in the driveway. The small house was packed with loved ones, all celebrating this next mile of our journey with us. A quick supper, we were saying our good-byes in the dining room when a family member came around the corner from the living room. His face was white as a sheet.

“He’s not breathing.”

Three harrowing words. In a simple turn of phrase our world suddenly started splitting at the seams. Little peanut Graham was still as a stone in his carrier, head lolling to the side. Frantic, we dialed the emergency line at the Children’s Hospital and, after describing the symptoms, were told to get him there as fast as possible.

Sandy’s mom climbed into the back seat with our newborn and we beat a path to the same hospital where his life began, a twenty-minute drive away. We caught nearly every red light en route and were at one infuriating moment stopped by a slow-moving train. My mother-in-law tried to keep us calm by saying Gra-Gra was fine, still faintly breathing. “But hurry.” [Later she told us she was frightened because nothing she tried brought any kind of response. At one point, she was convinced he was gone. ]

By the mercies of God, we arrived at Erlanger and a waiting team of responders literally wrenched our son away and rushed him behind large steel doors, disappearing from view, our tiny bundle lost amid a blur of scrubs and white.

Our next moments dragged by until a doctor came out to us and said he’s alive, just barely, the preliminary tests show some kind of infection, perhaps even meningitis, they would need to do a spinal tap ASAP, do we give our permission…wait here until we finish…

Seemed to us that Death was doing all the swallowing this time……

A nurse told us the tap had been performed and they were waiting for the results. “Would you like to see your baby?” she asked us. We were directed to a room closed off by a wall of glass for viewing. A tiny, naked little body, just a stub of a tiny person, was stretched out on a metal table, electrodes, lines and tubes somehow draped in, on, and around him. A small bandage covered his lower back, covering the spot where they drained some spinal fluid. Sandy reached for her mouth. We both silently wept.

Dear God…our little boy…

We never left the hospital. The ICU waiting room was our bunker and the first night as our newborn son’s legally recognized guardians was the longest of our lives. Sometime during the night, I needed to find a secluded spot and found an alcove nearby where I could cry out to God for answers.

“Father,” I pled, “what is this? Why, God? Why?” Silence. “I don’t understand,” I continued. “Will my son live?”

More silence. Impregnable silence.

“Please, oh God…please…we need a miracle here…tonight…ohjesusohjesusohjesus…please…help…”

I’ve never heard the audible voice of God, but I’ve come close and the closest I’ve ever come was in those next few seconds as I waited for news – any news – from the Great Physician. I am most certain He said:

Your son will not die, but live. I have a purpose for Graham’s life; Satan knows it and wants him dead. Rest now, I will not let that happen…

He did recover. Results for meningitis returned negative. Evidently, he had contracted a bug during the birth process and his tiny body had to learn to fight it off. He was meant to live.

He spent eight days in the hospital and we never left his side. Eight days. There it is again. The number eight. Perhaps I’m reading far too much into it, but please allow me this. It’s not a panacea but a signpost that God was near, he was with the three of us, and Death was being swallowed up in his victory.

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Woodland Park: The Graham Posts

Let me tell you about a Sunday morning when Sandy and I learned we would become parents to someone else’s child.

I hope you’re sitting down because this could take awhile. It’s far more than an adoption story, but I’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s start here.

When it was finally in our power to do so, we named our child “Graham” (after Billy Graham) but the poor lad had to answer to several others. Gra-Gra. Gravy Train. Graham Cracker. Grambo. Bubby. But in the beginning he was simply, in the eyes of the court, “Baby Boy N___________.”

Permit me to give you some background: I wanted five kids – four girls and one ruggedly handsome, rough-and-tumble boy. That dream, however, came to a crashing halt when I was twenty-one. Because of a spinal injury I sustained in college I learned I would more than likely not be able to impregnate my future wife.

Technically speaking, I’m a complete paraplegic, the break of my spine happened at the 7th and 8th vertebrae, thoracic level. Draw a line completely around your torso, just above the middle of the back, and you get the idea as to where all my sensation ends. Everything below that line does not function normally. Sayonara, male potency.

The day I learned this I looked over at my mother. “Well, Mom,” I offered, “I guess you’re going to have to settle for an adopted blue-eyed, blonde-haired granddaughter.”

I remember how her face softened into a tender, doting, couldn’t-be-prouder ‘mom-face’ and how her eyes twinkled when she said, “Oh, I’d love an adopted granddaughter!” She might’ve even clapped, I don’t fully recall.

So when I heard that impossibly young voice say into the phone eight years later, “Congratulations, Dad, you have a son,” my heart, I must confess, gave a momentary whimper. I was pulling for a girl. Now, don’t you just hate me?

But wait, I’ve gotten way ahead of myself and need to back up a few city blocks. I married my college sweetheart, my best friend, and the most selfless person I’ve ever known. Sandy knew everything about me already, so she walked into our marriage with eyes wide, w i d e open.

She knew about catheters, pressure sores, bowel programs, ramps, wheelchairs, dysreflexia, and, of course, impotence. Sandy married me knowing there was a very real chance we’d be childless.

But we prayed. And prayed. Then prayed for six and a half more years.

Fertility clinics. Tests. More tests. Even more disappointments.

Sorry, Mr. Mitchell, you’re less than a man (what I heard, not what they said).

Still we tried. And failed. Then we turned to adoption agencies. We need your hard-earned moolah up front. All of it, if you please. Home studies. A baby abandoned at the hospital. Hope.

Oh, sorry…somebody else got to it first. A teen-aged girl is thinking about giving her child up…nope, the grandparents are going to adopt, sorry…

Hope-less.

So we prayed, and prayed some more. For years.

One Sunday morning in August I awakened to a pretty cool gig for a young preacher. Only twenty-eight, I was going to fill in for a well-known pastor at one of Chattanooga’s largest churches. It was a pretty big deal for me to be there, not to mention given both crowded morning services.

I can’t even recall the sermons I preached that day, but what happened in between those services is easily remembered. A tearful conversation between Sandy and a young woman changed our lives forever.

In between the morning services Sandy and I were asked to share our stories with a large group of single young adults. Our story is a really romantic tale which only deepens with time, and we love to talk about it.

Following our tag team sharing the moderator opened the floor for questions. Among those in the group that morning was a pregnant 17-year old, and as Sandy and I bantered, God was already beginning to write an epic story on her heart. And ours.

She said what?!?

I edged my wheelchair closer to the edge of the platform, completely caught off guard when I saw Sandy standing on the bottom step, unabashedly crying.

Oh no. What’s this? Did I say something wrong? When I left her, she was speaking with a young girl. Did I offend the poor girl somehow?

Sandy climbed up another step. I inched closer. I could see her eyes weren’t just damp, they were shimmering pools.

“Did you see that girl I was talking to just now?”

Her stage whisper seemed strained. I nodded carefully, dread and fear seizing me. She choked back a sob.

“Do you know what she told me?”

Here it comes. Steady, heart, steady.

“She said…she said…”

Her head dropped as she collected herself. Oh, dear Jesus…

“She told me she wants us to have…to have…(more soft sobs)…she said she wants us to have her baby!”

It was right then the dam burst in Sandy’s soul and the floodwaters got free. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

God bless that petite young vessel with the large blue eyes for being the answer to our prayers. God used an obedient stranger to interrupt the narrative of our lives and, on a single Sunday morning, flipped the script on our roller-coaster razor-thin hopes.

Our blessing with a cute round belly was 17-years old and seven months pregnant. She’d been eyeing another couple for her baby’s placement but couldn’t get a fixed peace in her spirit. She heard one thing in our Q&A and all of a sudden she knew why.

As our time with the young adults drew to a close, someone asked us about children. I thought the inquirer wanted to know if children’s ministry was included in our calling. I said no.

“No,” she pressed, “I mean, do you yourselves have any children?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I answered, slightly embarrassed. “No, unfortunately, we don’t have children…”

Sandy broke in. “But if you’d like to know if we want children…Oh yes! We’ve been praying for over six years and we’re still hoping for a miracle –”

My handlers were already coming through the doors and moving in my direction so that would have to be the final question. Someone prayed a quick benediction and hands gripped my chair’s push handles while another cleared a path. I turned toward Sandy and started to mouth something when I noticed a young lady who was obviously pregnant swoop in and pull my wife aside.

In very short order I’d be exchanging one very puzzled look for quite another when my wife met me at the bottom steps of a church platform on a Sunday morning when everything changed.

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Good Grief: The Graham Posts

Copyright © Tayfun Eker

Burying your child bites. At any age. And Christmas, no less. If it wasn’t so sad, it’d seem almost ‘made-for-Lifetime-tv’ cliche.

An empty stocking. A poignant absence. A cask of memories stoppered, it’s aroma sealed off so that only the fragrance left over could be imbibed. It’s tough sledding.

Yesterday I returned two books to the library for my bride. The sweet girl with the kewpie doll voice asked about our holidays. I paused a couple of ticks, then lied. It was great, etc., etc., family in town, etc., great food, laughs, etc., etc….

Her co-worker overheard and added, ” oh that’s good; mine was the best in memory.” I bowed and took my leave. I could’ve sucked the air out of the atmosphere right then with a story made for Kleenex, but what possible end would that achieve? So I wheeled toward the exit, smiling, and kept our library a tissue-free zone.

My next stop was the neighborhood hair cuttery. What the heck, I thought. It happened. I can’t hide it forever. So when the smiling girl behind the counter asked my phone number, I knew her screen would pull up two names, mine and my boy’s.

“Are you Scott?”

“That’s me,” I said cheerily enough.

A few clacking noises of fingernails on keyboard, then, I took a breath and took my chance.

“You can remove Graham’s name.”

I did it. I requested the erasure of my son’s memory from their hard drive.

She laughed, probably a little too loudly for anyone’s comfort.

“Remove it?” she half-smiled, but now seemed momentarily puzzled.

“Yeah, go ahead and take it out.”

In retrospect, I’m pretty sure she thought I was being facetious? Because now she smiled a full-white-teeth smile.

“I know its morbid,” I continued, “but he’s no longer with us…”

What happened next caught me off-guard.

“Okay, Mr. Mitchell, right this way…”

She never even acknowledged what I said. I followed her to her station and parked in front of her mirror where I saw the reflection of a dad who had just lost his son, laid his body to rest, and would never know the feel of grandkids bouncing on his paralyzed lap.

In ten minutes, the insipid business of clippers on head and hair on floor was over; I paid, tipped generously, and quietly removed myself from the premises, already on to the next jejune errand.

Sigh.

Life goes on.

Good grief.

Tonight, as I compose these thoughts, I’m surrounded by the din of small talk and redolent aroma of coffee in a bookstore cafe. No one here knows me, thankfully, or what I’ve just been through.

I find the juxtaposition of conflicted feelings has got me all Sybil-ed out. On the one hand, I’m safe in my nest of anonymity. On the inexplicable other, I want to tap on my cardboard cup with my plastic spoon and announce to the room I’m grieving. I somehow think if I did that, a few might be mildly irritated by the interruption, some would be confusedly alarmed and others might smile, nod in deference, then return to their paused-on paragraphs, none the wiser. Who would it help? No one, most of all me. I easily relent.

It’s been almost two weeks removed from “the dreaded call” and the suddenly-childless couple are braving the public. We want to, yes, need to, get out, but we’re not yet ripe for frivolity.

The day after laying our son’s body in a scar in the earth and paying our soulful respects, someone wanted us to leave all that weight and grief behind and let Madea turn our mourning into dancing with them. Completely understandable. But nowhere near our radar.

There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Amen, Clive. I so get you.

It’s hard to be on Facebook these days. For all its good, it can be painfully obtrusive or, even worse, obtuse. Aloof. People’s lives (rightfully) have already moved on past our momentary grief. We’re just not that interested in friends’ parties, get-togethers, selfies and animal snaps. But I too have been the unaware perpetrator of similar ‘crimes’ against others’ sorrow. Sitting here atop my own ash heap of dirge, I’m acutely aware of it.

We’ll move on, yes, but grief is, paradoxically, healing. So we’ll heal here in the warm bath of hurt. And praise Him in the pile.

On the day I knew of my son’s departure from this hard earth, I was visited by a friend. He came to the house, drew a chair close beside my own in the dining room and wept there with me, wordlessly, for fifteen minutes. Tears didn’t run down his cheeks, they flung outwardly to the floor. After he hugged me and held my hand, he prayed a few-second prayer, hugged me again then left. I still talk about that visit. There was no Romans 8:28, though it’s no less true. No counsel, though we welcome words of life into our soul. No bumper sticker theology. No tweets. No platitudes. Just grief.

Good grief.

We’ll be okay. We are okay. We’ve been prepared for this. God has made us ready. And when our Father requires us to redeem our suffering by entering into the suffering of another – which He will – we’ll most gladly tell of His good deeds, gracious intentions, expert wisdom and unfailing love – without words, if we have to; with simply being present; with silent sobbing; with resurrection hope; with His authority, because of a new degree added to our schooling.

On the night before Graham’s funeral I wrestled with my responsibility to share something. The people need to hear from us. I didn’t want my silence to be translated into depression or hopeless grief. The pastor in me wanted to explain, expound, exposit and exhort. The encourager in me wanted to encourage the many who came with question marks. It turns out, my pastor friend handled it with all the eloquence and grace I pined for. He was magnificent. I, on the other hand, listened to my wife who said, “it’s okay for us to grieve, Scott. Just for today, would you be a Dad instead of a minister?”

Yes, my love. Yes, a million times over! I like Dad mode. Who says it’s supposed to be over?

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