The Air We Breathe

i saw her face drop as she made the call….the disadvantage of learning creole is that i also understood her when she said he needed oxygen…

belle anse does not have oxygen.

not an hour before we had been eating lunch together and i gave him my uneaten fish…because i didn’t like the way it tasted…

if only i hadn’t done that…if only we had stayed home…if only…

damn fish!!

we hardly made it home before we were both on the ground with…what we thought was an allergic reaction…but we are now told was mercury poisoning.

i was laying on a concrete floor…i think there was a nurse putting an iv in my arm…maybe injections…

through my own blurred vision all i could see was my husband.

he was seizing.

something happened to me in that moment…i was not going to lose this man…we had not accomplished what we had been sent to do.

satan. would. not. win.

i knew that jason was not going to get the oxygen that he needed….but i had something better…more powerful and more life-giving…

“holy spirit come…be the air he breathes…breathe new life into his lungs and open his airway.”

as our yard began to fill with people…(typical in haiti when it is believed someone is near death)… i slammed my fist down on jason’s chest and i kept praying….

“in the name of jesus…i claim life for my husband.”

and then it happened.

slowly, jason’s color began to return to normal…his pulse and bp began to slowly come back down and his airway….his airway was opened.

the most beautiful words i have ever heard came out of the doctor’s mouth….

“yes! erika…its ok, he is going to be ok.”

the more we learn about what went on that day, the more i am amazed by god’s goodness, provision and his love for us…

jason and i were the only ones that ate the fish, therefore the only ones to get sick.

….the clinic had the exact amount of medication needed to treat the two of us…had anyone else eaten it or if i had eaten more, there would not have been enough.

our children love fish! but we had not eaten with them that day and for some reason…and they will only eat fish for us.

if  they had eaten the amount of fish they normally eat, it would have killed them.

we could not find our epipens. at first we thought we were having an allergic reaction…

given the severity and symptoms of jason’s initial reaction, we would have given him an epinephrine shot…had the pen been in its normal place.

his pulse ended up going over 160…epinephrine also could have killed him.

so many people were so concerned and at our home…that our kids were occupied the entire time…they saw none of what happened.

we are so thankful that they were protected from seeing us in the conditions we were in.

what is amazing to me, is that all of those things….

uncertain schedules…my kids not eating enough protein…stuff being some-place other-than-where-it-should-be…tons of people in my yard…

all these things are things that i struggle with…i get anxious over…that i pray will be different.

but this day…all of those things that i am convinced “should change….” saved us.

ordained chaos.

what if  i am the one that needs to change? what if my typical “breathe and count to 10” method is crap?

what if i truly cannot do anything…anything on my own??

holy spirit come….be the air that i breathe.