I come now to the brass tacks of fact and fiction regarding Paisley’s miracle, which will be the final post in this series. The ranging anecdotes I have recounted thus far may have left the reader with somewhat mixed signals. Had God answered prayer, or was He absent at the darkest hour? Was Paisley saved by a miracle, or by Pasteurian-Darwinian science? Was the experience a glory to God, or a reason to question His existence?
The force of such opposing arrows teaches a parable all its own, underscoring the deficiency of personal experience for navigating the waters surrounding miracles. Within the compass of a single individual (myself), one could distill nearly any moral to the story.
Nevertheless, real answers do exist. We need not wander in the mist between anecdotes. Malleable personal experience must be displaced by the stone of hard fact. To find it requires that we lift our gaze to a broader view. The cure for flat earth viewpoints hovers at high altitude.
So friends, this final post will present facts to make sense of it all. My question to you is whether you are interested in fact and truth, or whether you wish to preserve a favorite but somewhat fictional anecdote. We sadly cannot have both. [Read more…]
How gentle the rise, I thought, as they lifted me on that gurney. Two teams of paramedics had swept noiselessly into my kitchen, to find me collapsed on the floor. Chest pains had dragged me to the earth, coupled with strained breathing and the distinct sound of blood rushing through my ears. Crumpled to my knees, and then pulled further down, I had finally been flattened out on the stained concrete. I felt myself on the brink of losing consciousness, coupled with the sense that I would stop breathing if I did. The color had entirely drained from my face, and my frightened wife called for aid. A great hand had reached down and simply flipped the switch, or opened the valve, and the vital force had bled out of me. So they shuttled me by ambulance to the hospital, leaving my tearfully anxious wife alone with her fears until someone could come to relieve her. Paisley had not yet been born, or even conceived, but our three other children had remained fast asleep in their rooms. #mediaviewer/File:The_Wreck_of_the_Birkenhead.jpg)
My friends, I come now to the turn in the story which will, no doubt, lead to a good deal of seat shifting among you. However, before rounding that bend, I hope to briefly lay to rest two standing questions that have been put to us. 
Lyrical Turn
It would undersell the truth to say that our Paisley had survived. She had passed through fire and death, to borrow Tolkien’s words, and without a scratch. She was perfect and whole in every way. Joy suffused us, and we felt a permeating thankfulness to God and to her doctors. She was an example both of Providence and of advanced Western medicine. She was our little miracle. But miracles are curious things, tumbling together the oil and water of the improbable and the impossible. 
You start already tired, as my wife puts it. You have already lost sleep and struggled with anxiety before ever arriving at the hospital. Exhaustion compounds downward from this depleted outset. Crisis-born adrenaline wires you briefly, while borrowing heavily on energy reserves, for which you must soon pay. The shear pressure of decisions, grappling with consequences, and the demands to stay somehow calm – these accruals run all accounts into the red. Long hours of silence chew down fingernails, but they are ever punctuated by medical interruptions, cheering visits from friends, phone calls from concerned family, and sobering consultations from the doctors. The brain must learn a new language: that of meningitis, of bacterial strains, of antibiotic treatments, of dosing intervals, and of prognoses. Night brings the red eyes of unsleep, equipment alarms, and nursing break-ins. By 36 hours into the ordeal, reserves are fully spent. You realize that you haven’t changed clothes or showered.
Night had fallen while we had been in the windowless ER, somewhere in the belly of the medical behemoth. From there, they transferred us to the intensive care unit.
Paisley was only twelve days old, and no bigger than two upturned palms. She had that scent that belongs only to infants. Pink skin, with tiny newborn speckles on the bridge of her nose.
Paisley arrived in late January, during that time of year when the Texas air feels most out of character. She completed our quartet of children, a collated symmetry of boy, girl, boy, and girl. Being indifferent to sports but fond of cultural idiom, I dubbed her, “the final four.” She did seem to complete us as a family. But owing to events that transpired not long after her birth, she came to occupy a special place in our hearts and memories.
The near brush of death leaves upon us an indelible mark. So much more the case, when the noose of jeopardy closes upon a child. Our daughter Paisley hazarded that scaffold just twelve days after being born. This was three and a half years ago.
Jericho Brisance 