Waiting on the Lord: Our Journey to Heart Transplantation

Prologue: Heart, Interrupted

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrowmee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new

“Dad, something is wrong with Eddie!”

Our teenage son was the first to notice three year-old Eddie lying motionless on the kitchen floor and instinctively picked up his lifeless body. As I then took him in my arms and moved him onto the floor in the family room, I remember thinking that he seemed oddly heavy, and the term deadweight felt sickeningly appropriate. My wife dialed 911, I began CPR, and in an instant, our lives were turned upside down.

That was Sunday night, January 8, 2012. My wife and I, along with our five children, just sat down to discuss our vacation plans for the new year, when Eddie, our youngest, experienced what we later learned was an aborted sudden cardiac death, most likely triggered by a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia. He was lucky. He collapsed in front of us and we reacted quickly. CPR probably saved his life. The paramedics arrived in less than four minutes and stabilized him before rushing him to the emergency room.

The ER doctors thought it was a neurological event, perhaps an epileptic seizure. No one believed that his heart had actually stopped, that just doesn’t happen to a three year-old. Our pediatrician, a bit less skeptical, thought it would be good to meet with a cardiologist, just in case.

So on Tuesday, January 24, we made the trek across Lake Washington to Seattle Children’s Hospital for what we thought would be a routine appointment. Ninety minutes later, we had a diagnosis and only one treatment option. “There is no doubt,” said the three Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation specialiststhat were suddenly in our exam room, “that Eddie will need a heart transplant. We’re sorry. We know this must be a lot to take in.”

Officially, Eddie’s diagnosis was restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM), an extremely rare heart condition in which the walls of theleft ventricle become rigid and consequently fail to relax and fill properly with blood. As a result, blood backs up into the left atrium and, ultimately, into the pulmonary arteries leading to pulmonary hypertension and heart failure. There is no long-term treatment other than transplantation. Without transplantation, average life expectancy after diagnosis is one to two years.

The following week saw Eddie admitted to the hospital for a cardiac catheterization procedure and to implant a defibrillator which would protect him from arrhythmia at home while we waited for a new heart. Looking back now, it all seems so simple and straightforward. The plan was that we’d get a call from the transplant team telling us a heart was available and we’d drive Eddie to the hospital for surgery. Another three weeks for post-operative recovery and we’d head home again. Of course, that would have been too easy . . . we never could have anticipated what was coming next.

Two weeks after leaving the hospital, Eddie’s name was officially added to the National Organ Transplant waiting list with the highest possible priority. We were told, on average, the wait for a heart for a three year-old in Eddie’s condition would be between two and six months. That didn’t sound so bad since Eddie seemed to be relatively healthy otherwise and we thought we could take advantage of these few months to enjoy him as he was. While difficult, we felt strong enough to lead our family through this new trial.

Two short weeks later, on Tuesday, March 6, we woke up to find an unexpected blanket of snow on the ground. Schools were on two-hour delay and, as a result, all of us were at home when Eddie suddenly told us he felt sick. He was struggling to breathe and his skin had instantaneously turned gray. Without hesitation, we called 911 and worked to keep Eddie conscious until the paramedics could arrive.

Not again. Not like this. Please save our boy.

My wife went with Eddie in the ambulance and she called shortly before they arrived at the hospital. “He threw up, but he seems to be doing better.” Did we overreact? Was this an immediate answer to our earnest, if hurried prayers? Brief hope. She called back ten minutes later. “You need to get here quickly . . . something is wrong.” Horribly wrong it turns out . . . Eddie went into cardiac arrest five minutes after the ambulance reached the emergency room.

The supplicant in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV sought spiritual strength through adversity, trial, and chastisement rather than through quiet supplication and reflection alone. Like Lehi in the Book of Mormon, he understood that there “must needs be . . . an opposition in all things” [1]and he subsequently pleaded for God to “o’erthrow” his defenses and “breake, blowe, [and] burn” him. Renewal and forgiveness, he believed, only come after being “chosen . . . in the furnace of affliction.”

Two hundred years later, and shortly after the miraculous events that took place at the Kirtland Temple dedication, Joseph Smith told the spiritually inexperienced members of the Quorum of the Twelve that “[y]ou will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and . . .God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God.”[2]

I believe in overcoming adversity, of course. We are stronger, more humble, and more empathetic toward others and their trials when we do. However, while I may bang my head against the wall from time to time because it feels good to stop, I don’t make a habit of praying for trials and heartbreak. I have pondered the sacrifice required of Abraham, offering up his miraculous son, Isaac, in spite of the fact that it was to be through Isaac that God’s covenant with Abraham was to be fulfilled. Would I be strong enough to endure similar trials? And what would I learn from them?

Now Eddie was slipping away from us . . . a Code Blue was called from the ER. His heart stopped and we needed a miracle.

Tender Mercies: A God of Miracles

O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need.Doubt not, but be believing . . . and come until the Lord with all your heart.

Before December 2011, the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington carried roughly 170,000 cars per day and was horrendously congested during rush hour. Two months after tolling began on the bridge, traffic flows were down 40-60% and the ambulance carrying Eddie screamed across the water at the height of the morning rush hour, encountering virtually no obstacles en route to the emergency room. Say what they will about the exorbitant bridge tolls, there is no way Eddie would have made it to the hospital without them.

"It's like losing a wing at 35,000 feet, landing the airplane, and then calling it a great flight."That was the analogy given to us by the Director of Cardiac ICU after the second of Eddie’s three exploratory heart surgeries. He was referring specifically to the release of a large blood clot in his right ventricle on the operating table and the resulting pulmonary embolism (PE). The clot had dislodged during the procedure and, with its significant size, should have been fatal. In fact, the same doctor told us he'd never seen anything like it . . . the PE should have been "game, set, and match" for Eddie. Instead, it simply disappeared.

Sometimes I wonder if we don’t overuse the term “miracle.” For many of us in the Pacific Northwest, seeing the sun is a miracle. It still seems miraculous that we can fly from New York to London in roughly seven hours, and it certainly would have been impossible to comprehend 100 years ago. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks has stated: “[T]hese wonders are explainable by physical laws understood by some mortals. I call them miracles because I do not personally understand them and therefore cannot duplicate them at will.”

Over the past three months, however, I believe we have witnessed a variety of more impressive and “authentic”miracles; miracles worked through the power of faith rather than of intellect. I am thankful to live in an age where reason has supplanted superstition, and where healthy skepticism has replaced blind obedience to traditional hierarchies of power. However, I firmly believe that God can and does work miracles in our lives according to our faith and His will. “To deny the reality of miracles,” said President Howard W. Hunter, “on the ground that the results and manifestations must be fictitious simply because we cannot comprehend the means by which they have happened is arrogant on the face of it.”

In addition to Eddie’s many medical miracles, we have been touched by the remarkable sacrifices made by so many friends and family members as they have watched us struggle. We have been hugged and held, fed and encouraged, blessed and healed. Complete strangers reached out with kind words, co-workersgenerously donated time and money as well working extra hours to ensure key deliverables were met, and neighbors and family members took care of our children as if they were their own. At the risk of overusing the term, these are miracles . . . every one.

En Media Res: Waiting on the Lord

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord

So here we are nearly three months, five surgeries, and numerous miracles later. Eddie is still in the ICU, but improving steadily. With several days of strong momentum, we are even beginning to think about transferring him to the general surgical floor for recovery. While we have grown to love and trust the Cardiac ICU staff, moving to the floor would be a tremendous step forward for Eddie.

In reality, I’m not sure “recovery” is the appropriate word to use yet since we still have a long road ahead of us. The constant parade of emergencies has kept us rooted in the present and it has been easy to forget we still have to make it through the transplantation stage and associated rehabilitation. A heart transplant is a life-saving procedure, but we are in essence trading one disease (heart failure) for another (immunodeficiency), and he will need to fight every day of his life to protect his new heart from his own body’s natural defenses.

We are constantly reminded that Eddie's battle is no skirmish, but rather a drawn out campaign. As we look back over the past three months and add up the number of events, surgeries, and procedures, not to mention the difficult conversations, we are humbled by how little that is happening is within our control.

We know that we are at our strongest when we respond to these challenges with hope and optimism rather than questioning, complaining, or giving into despair. As Montaigne puts it: "Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." And we also know that we aren't alone in this trial . . . each kind friend, family member, classmate, and co-worker that has taken a share of our burden has strengthened our testimony of selfless service and love.

I appreciate the psalmist for emphasizing the importance of courage as we wait for the Lord’s will to be accomplished. We encounter new challenges each day and without courage, hope, and humility, I imagine we would quickly find ourselves unable to provide the strength and support Eddie needs from us. I love the line from Albert Camus’ essay Return to Tipasa. On a dreary December day during the Second World War, after a wrenching and disheartening return to his native Algiers, he experienced a moment of renewed hope as he observed a sunbreak across the Bay of Tipasa:

I discovered once more at Tipasa that one must keep intact in oneself a freshness, a cool wellspring of joy, love the day that escapes injustice, and return to combat having won that light. . . . O light! . . . In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

That “invincible summer” is, for me, an abiding faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Whatever is in store for our family in the grinding weeks, months, and years ahead, I know that we have access to a pure and inexhaustible fountain of hope and comfort through prayer, scripture study, and selfless service. Like Nephi, we declare:

Press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.[3]

We know our family is in our Heavenly Father’s hands. We do not seek to escape adversity, but rather seek to grow, learn, and be strengthened by it. And as is totally appropriate for a Father that loves his children dearly, it is by means of devoted brothers and sisters, carrying us through many dark days and nights that His works are made manifest.Our families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and classmates, along with dedicated doctors and nurses, serve as God’s hands, “[strengthening our] weak hands .. . and [confirming our] feeble knees” so that we may “obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

John Harper graduated from Brigham Young University with degrees in Comparative Literature and International Finance. He currently works for Microsoft Corporation and spends his free time with family exploring the many natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest. John, his wife, and five children live in the Snoqualmie River Valley near Seattle, Washington. You can read more of Eddie’s story at the Harper Family blog here 

Prologue: Heart, Interrupted

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrowmee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new

“Dad, something is wrong with Eddie!”

Our teenage son was the first to notice three year-old Eddie lying motionless on the kitchen floor and instinctively picked up his lifeless body. As I then took him in my arms and moved him onto the floor in the family room, I remember thinking that he seemed oddly heavy, and the term deadweight felt sickeningly appropriate. My wife dialed 911, I began CPR, and in an instant, our lives were turned upside down.

That was Sunday night, January 8, 2012. My wife and I, along with our five children, just sat down to discuss our vacation plans for the new year, when Eddie, our youngest, experienced what we later learned was an aborted sudden cardiac death, most likely triggered by a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia. He was lucky. He collapsed in front of us and we reacted quickly. CPR probably saved his life. The paramedics arrived in less than four minutes and stabilized him before rushing him to the emergency room.

The ER doctors thought it was a neurological event, perhaps an epileptic seizure. No one believed that his heart had actually stopped, that just doesn’t happen to a three year-old. Our pediatrician, a bit less skeptical, thought it would be good to meet with a cardiologist, just in case.

So on Tuesday, January 24, we made the trek across Lake Washington to Seattle Children’s Hospital for what we thought would be a routine appointment. Ninety minutes later, we had a diagnosis and only one treatment option. “There is no doubt,” said the three Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation specialiststhat were suddenly in our exam room, “that Eddie will need a heart transplant. We’re sorry. We know this must be a lot to take in.”

Officially, Eddie’s diagnosis was restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM), an extremely rare heart condition in which the walls of theleft ventricle become rigid and consequently fail to relax and fill properly with blood. As a result, blood backs up into the left atrium and, ultimately, into the pulmonary arteries leading to pulmonary hypertension and heart failure. There is no long-term treatment other than transplantation. Without transplantation, average life expectancy after diagnosis is one to two years.

The following week saw Eddie admitted to the hospital for a cardiac catheterization procedure and to implant a defibrillator which would protect him from arrhythmia at home while we waited for a new heart. Looking back now, it all seems so simple and straightforward. The plan was that we’d get a call from the transplant team telling us a heart was available and we’d drive Eddie to the hospital for surgery. Another three weeks for post-operative recovery and we’d head home again. Of course, that would have been too easy . . . we never could have anticipated what was coming next.

Two weeks after leaving the hospital, Eddie’s name was officially added to the National Organ Transplant waiting list with the highest possible priority. We were told, on average, the wait for a heart for a three year-old in Eddie’s condition would be between two and six months. That didn’t sound so bad since Eddie seemed to be relatively healthy otherwise and we thought we could take advantage of these few months to enjoy him as he was. While difficult, we felt strong enough to lead our family through this new trial.

Two short weeks later, on Tuesday, March 6, we woke up to find an unexpected blanket of snow on the ground. Schools were on two-hour delay and, as a result, all of us were at home when Eddie suddenly told us he felt sick. He was struggling to breathe and his skin had instantaneously turned gray. Without hesitation, we called 911 and worked to keep Eddie conscious until the paramedics could arrive.

Not again. Not like this. Please save our boy.

My wife went with Eddie in the ambulance and she called shortly before they arrived at the hospital. “He threw up, but he seems to be doing better.” Did we overreact? Was this an immediate answer to our earnest, if hurried prayers? Brief hope. She called back ten minutes later. “You need to get here quickly . . . something is wrong.” Horribly wrong it turns out . . . Eddie went into cardiac arrest five minutes after the ambulance reached the emergency room.

The supplicant in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV sought spiritual strength through adversity, trial, and chastisement rather than through quiet supplication and reflection alone. Like Lehi in the Book of Mormon, he understood that there “must needs be . . . an opposition in all things” [1]and he subsequently pleaded for God to “o’erthrow” his defenses and “breake, blowe, [and] burn” him. Renewal and forgiveness, he believed, only come after being “chosen . . . in the furnace of affliction.”

Two hundred years later, and shortly after the miraculous events that took place at the Kirtland Temple dedication, Joseph Smith told the spiritually inexperienced members of the Quorum of the Twelve that “[y]ou will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and . . .God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God.”[2]

I believe in overcoming adversity, of course. We are stronger, more humble, and more empathetic toward others and their trials when we do. However, while I may bang my head against the wall from time to time because it feels good to stop, I don’t make a habit of praying for trials and heartbreak. I have pondered the sacrifice required of Abraham, offering up his miraculous son, Isaac, in spite of the fact that it was to be through Isaac that God’s covenant with Abraham was to be fulfilled. Would I be strong enough to endure similar trials? And what would I learn from them?

Now Eddie was slipping away from us . . . a Code Blue was called from the ER. His heart stopped and we needed a miracle.

Tender Mercies: A God of Miracles

O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need.Doubt not, but be believing . . . and come until the Lord with all your heart.

Before December 2011, the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington carried roughly 170,000 cars per day and was horrendously congested during rush hour. Two months after tolling began on the bridge, traffic flows were down 40-60% and the ambulance carrying Eddie screamed across the water at the height of the morning rush hour, encountering virtually no obstacles en route to the emergency room. Say what they will about the exorbitant bridge tolls, there is no way Eddie would have made it to the hospital without them.

"It's like losing a wing at 35,000 feet, landing the airplane, and then calling it a great flight."That was the analogy given to us by the Director of Cardiac ICU after the second of Eddie’s three exploratory heart surgeries. He was referring specifically to the release of a large blood clot in his right ventricle on the operating table and the resulting pulmonary embolism (PE). The clot had dislodged during the procedure and, with its significant size, should have been fatal. In fact, the same doctor told us he'd never seen anything like it . . . the PE should have been "game, set, and match" for Eddie. Instead, it simply disappeared.

Sometimes I wonder if we don’t overuse the term “miracle.” For many of us in the Pacific Northwest, seeing the sun is a miracle. It still seems miraculous that we can fly from New York to London in roughly seven hours, and it certainly would have been impossible to comprehend 100 years ago. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks has stated: “[T]hese wonders are explainable by physical laws understood by some mortals. I call them miracles because I do not personally understand them and therefore cannot duplicate them at will.”

Over the past three months, however, I believe we have witnessed a variety of more impressive and “authentic”miracles; miracles worked through the power of faith rather than of intellect. I am thankful to live in an age where reason has supplanted superstition, and where healthy skepticism has replaced blind obedience to traditional hierarchies of power. However, I firmly believe that God can and does work miracles in our lives according to our faith and His will. “To deny the reality of miracles,” said President Howard W. Hunter, “on the ground that the results and manifestations must be fictitious simply because we cannot comprehend the means by which they have happened is arrogant on the face of it.”

In addition to Eddie’s many medical miracles, we have been touched by the remarkable sacrifices made by so many friends and family members as they have watched us struggle. We have been hugged and held, fed and encouraged, blessed and healed. Complete strangers reached out with kind words, co-workersgenerously donated time and money as well working extra hours to ensure key deliverables were met, and neighbors and family members took care of our children as if they were their own. At the risk of overusing the term, these are miracles . . . every one.

En Media Res: Waiting on the Lord

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord

So here we are nearly three months, five surgeries, and numerous miracles later. Eddie is still in the ICU, but improving steadily. With several days of strong momentum, we are even beginning to think about transferring him to the general surgical floor for recovery. While we have grown to love and trust the Cardiac ICU staff, moving to the floor would be a tremendous step forward for Eddie.

In reality, I’m not sure “recovery” is the appropriate word to use yet since we still have a long road ahead of us. The constant parade of emergencies has kept us rooted in the present and it has been easy to forget we still have to make it through the transplantation stage and associated rehabilitation. A heart transplant is a life-saving procedure, but we are in essence trading one disease (heart failure) for another (immunodeficiency), and he will need to fight every day of his life to protect his new heart from his own body’s natural defenses.

We are constantly reminded that Eddie's battle is no skirmish, but rather a drawn out campaign. As we look back over the past three months and add up the number of events, surgeries, and procedures, not to mention the difficult conversations, we are humbled by how little that is happening is within our control.

We know that we are at our strongest when we respond to these challenges with hope and optimism rather than questioning, complaining, or giving into despair. As Montaigne puts it: "Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." And we also know that we aren't alone in this trial . . . each kind friend, family member, classmate, and co-worker that has taken a share of our burden has strengthened our testimony of selfless service and love.

I appreciate the psalmist for emphasizing the importance of courage as we wait for the Lord’s will to be accomplished. We encounter new challenges each day and without courage, hope, and humility, I imagine we would quickly find ourselves unable to provide the strength and support Eddie needs from us. I love the line from Albert Camus’ essay Return to Tipasa. On a dreary December day during the Second World War, after a wrenching and disheartening return to his native Algiers, he experienced a moment of renewed hope as he observed a sunbreak across the Bay of Tipasa:

I discovered once more at Tipasa that one must keep intact in oneself a freshness, a cool wellspring of joy, love the day that escapes injustice, and return to combat having won that light. . . . O light! . . . In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

That “invincible summer” is, for me, an abiding faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Whatever is in store for our family in the grinding weeks, months, and years ahead, I know that we have access to a pure and inexhaustible fountain of hope and comfort through prayer, scripture study, and selfless service. Like Nephi, we declare:

Press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.[3]

We know our family is in our Heavenly Father’s hands. We do not seek to escape adversity, but rather seek to grow, learn, and be strengthened by it. And as is totally appropriate for a Father that loves his children dearly, it is by means of devoted brothers and sisters, carrying us through many dark days and nights that His works are made manifest.Our families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and classmates, along with dedicated doctors and nurses, serve as God’s hands, “[strengthening our] weak hands .. . and [confirming our] feeble knees” so that we may “obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

John Harper graduated from Brigham Young University with degrees in Comparative Literature and International Finance. He currently works for Microsoft Corporation and spends his free time with family exploring the many natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest. John, his wife, and five children live in the Snoqualmie River Valley near Seattle, Washington. You can read more of Eddie’s story at the Harper Family blog here 

Prologue: Heart, Interrupted

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrowmee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new

“Dad, something is wrong with Eddie!”

Our teenage son was the first to notice three year-old Eddie lying motionless on the kitchen floor and instinctively picked up his lifeless body. As I then took him in my arms and moved him onto the floor in the family room, I remember thinking that he seemed oddly heavy, and the term deadweight felt sickeningly appropriate. My wife dialed 911, I began CPR, and in an instant, our lives were turned upside down.

That was Sunday night, January 8, 2012. My wife and I, along with our five children, just sat down to discuss our vacation plans for the new year, when Eddie, our youngest, experienced what we later learned was an aborted sudden cardiac death, most likely triggered by a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia. He was lucky. He collapsed in front of us and we reacted quickly. CPR probably saved his life. The paramedics arrived in less than four minutes and stabilized him before rushing him to the emergency room.

The ER doctors thought it was a neurological event, perhaps an epileptic seizure. No one believed that his heart had actually stopped, that just doesn’t happen to a three year-old. Our pediatrician, a bit less skeptical, thought it would be good to meet with a cardiologist, just in case.

So on Tuesday, January 24, we made the trek across Lake Washington to Seattle Children’s Hospital for what we thought would be a routine appointment. Ninety minutes later, we had a diagnosis and only one treatment option. “There is no doubt,” said the three Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation specialiststhat were suddenly in our exam room, “that Eddie will need a heart transplant. We’re sorry. We know this must be a lot to take in.”

Officially, Eddie’s diagnosis was restrictive cardiomyopathy (RCM), an extremely rare heart condition in which the walls of theleft ventricle become rigid and consequently fail to relax and fill properly with blood. As a result, blood backs up into the left atrium and, ultimately, into the pulmonary arteries leading to pulmonary hypertension and heart failure. There is no long-term treatment other than transplantation. Without transplantation, average life expectancy after diagnosis is one to two years.

The following week saw Eddie admitted to the hospital for a cardiac catheterization procedure and to implant a defibrillator which would protect him from arrhythmia at home while we waited for a new heart. Looking back now, it all seems so simple and straightforward. The plan was that we’d get a call from the transplant team telling us a heart was available and we’d drive Eddie to the hospital for surgery. Another three weeks for post-operative recovery and we’d head home again. Of course, that would have been too easy . . . we never could have anticipated what was coming next.

Two weeks after leaving the hospital, Eddie’s name was officially added to the National Organ Transplant waiting list with the highest possible priority. We were told, on average, the wait for a heart for a three year-old in Eddie’s condition would be between two and six months. That didn’t sound so bad since Eddie seemed to be relatively healthy otherwise and we thought we could take advantage of these few months to enjoy him as he was. While difficult, we felt strong enough to lead our family through this new trial.

Two short weeks later, on Tuesday, March 6, we woke up to find an unexpected blanket of snow on the ground. Schools were on two-hour delay and, as a result, all of us were at home when Eddie suddenly told us he felt sick. He was struggling to breathe and his skin had instantaneously turned gray. Without hesitation, we called 911 and worked to keep Eddie conscious until the paramedics could arrive.

Not again. Not like this. Please save our boy.

My wife went with Eddie in the ambulance and she called shortly before they arrived at the hospital. “He threw up, but he seems to be doing better.” Did we overreact? Was this an immediate answer to our earnest, if hurried prayers? Brief hope. She called back ten minutes later. “You need to get here quickly . . . something is wrong.” Horribly wrong it turns out . . . Eddie went into cardiac arrest five minutes after the ambulance reached the emergency room.

The supplicant in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV sought spiritual strength through adversity, trial, and chastisement rather than through quiet supplication and reflection alone. Like Lehi in the Book of Mormon, he understood that there “must needs be . . . an opposition in all things” [1]and he subsequently pleaded for God to “o’erthrow” his defenses and “breake, blowe, [and] burn” him. Renewal and forgiveness, he believed, only come after being “chosen . . . in the furnace of affliction.”

Two hundred years later, and shortly after the miraculous events that took place at the Kirtland Temple dedication, Joseph Smith told the spiritually inexperienced members of the Quorum of the Twelve that “[y]ou will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and . . .God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God.”[2]

I believe in overcoming adversity, of course. We are stronger, more humble, and more empathetic toward others and their trials when we do. However, while I may bang my head against the wall from time to time because it feels good to stop, I don’t make a habit of praying for trials and heartbreak. I have pondered the sacrifice required of Abraham, offering up his miraculous son, Isaac, in spite of the fact that it was to be through Isaac that God’s covenant with Abraham was to be fulfilled. Would I be strong enough to endure similar trials? And what would I learn from them?

Now Eddie was slipping away from us . . . a Code Blue was called from the ER. His heart stopped and we needed a miracle.

Tender Mercies: A God of Miracles

O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need.