When Miracles Happen

Children’s Hospital

Philadelphia

October 2006

I know a miracle when I see one;

No explanation needed,

Not the one where the surgeon,

Added an extra ventricle,

For a heart the size of a walnut.

But rather the miracle,

of trust when the mother gave 

her baby to the surgeon and said

good-bye.  

Some friends had wanted a baby in the worst way.  Finally, the magic numbers lined up and we all shouted for joy when the baby was born.  All of us were numb when we learned shortly after the birth that she was lacking a ventricle. A physician described it for me this way: "These were the kinds of babies we sent home for nature to take its course."   On the surgery day, I was there when the mother slowly, carefully placed the baby in the surgeon's arms and said goodbye. Through 7 hours of anxious surgery...mother and and father and God sat there in that waiting room.  This was about the 500th time of doing this surgery--total! Two surgeons flew from England to observe. Every half hour somebody updated us.  Six years later, I look back to the real miracle--the miracle of trust when mother gave baby over into the surgeon's arms.  Isn't that something we do we every life--including our own?  We hand our lives over to somebody else in the most profound act of trust.