“When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.”

Samuel Rutherford

When this year began, I asked God for two things and two things only. I didn’t know how he intended to answer that prayer.

About 5 days ago, I had (another) longest day of my life. I was in Antigua, Guatemala with my family of 6 for the wedding of my wife’s brother. For about 24 hours, we simply enjoyed the city. The night we arrived, we ate at a local upscale pub and got gelato for our walk home from the marketplace. We slept with the windows open and the quiet mildness of Antiqua kept us cool until the sun came over the mountains the following day.

Sometime on Friday mid-morning, we noticed that my two year old (Dottie) was having difficulty breathing. She had coughed some on the airplane, and—because she is asthmatic—we paid attention to this, hoping the albuterol in her diaper bag would help us weather the moment as a minor inconvenience. Then came the fever. Admittedly, this was harder to ignore, but not atypical for her; she occasionally gets little colds (sometimes with mild fever) that pass quickly after 24 hours or so. We weren’t worried. She would be okay.

As the day went on, her breathing got worse. Using her inhaler as prescribed by her doctor, we treated our daughter. As we did, she seemed to improve and napped peacefully that afternoon. Convinced she was okay, we attended the rehearsal dinner. We celebrated and toasted the happy couple and were reminded of the providence and faithfulness of God in bringing two people to one another through such winding roads as only the Lord can do. Dottie coughed through dinner and refused to eat much, but seemed mostly to just be tired and irritated that the live music was louder than Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on her mother’s phone.

We heard Dottie crying as we slept. It must have been 2 in the morning. If the fever had returned it was mild enough not to be the first thing on my mind. I pulled Dottie into bed with us and she quickly resumed an uncomfortable, interrupted sleep. Over the next hour, we tossed and turned, trying to make a full-sized bed work with a toddler in between us. Soon, I found myself in bed with just Dottie—my wife had found somewhere else to chase some desperately needed shuteye (the previous few days of packing + travel had been harder on mom than dad, if you can imagine).

About this time, I began to feel uncomfortable with Dottie’s breathing. I checked for all the signs I’ve been conditioned to look at: Are her ribs retracting? Do I see her skin suck in above the collar bones? Is she “belly-breathing?” Are her lips pink or blue/pale? What does she sound like? All of the pointed to a nearly two-year-old baby who was clearly having some issues, but nothing that warranted a chopper come and air lift her to the nearest Children’s Hospital.

I consulted an expert—Chat GPT. It told me what to check for, asked me about her history and I answered all its questions. It gave me a “you might want to get her checked if you’re feeling nervous, but she sounds like she’ll be okay” kind of an answer.

I wanted another opinion. Waking my wife, I asked her to check on our girl and see what she thought. She, like me, believed Dottie was worsening, but not necessarily in such a way that we needed to seek urgent medical intervention. Convinced her maternal instinct was right (as it always is), I planned to go back to sleep. And I would have slept, except I couldn’t. With a feeling words can’t really describe, I just couldn’t let it go. Something deep within me compelled me to find my daughter a second (third, if you count ChatGPT) opinion.

We saddled up. I put clothes on and made sure the diaper bag was ready to go. I pulled on the straps and picked up my daughter. As I held her, I was convinced I was being stupid—that the morning would arrive and my family would tease me about how overprotective or alarmist I had been the night before. With these things in mind, I stepped onto the early morning streets of Antigua and headed toward the closest 24-hour clinic.

Immediately new fears took over. I was in a foreign (and dimly lit) place. I was passing what looked like vacant lots, warehouses, hotels, bus depots and passersby as I trudged the cobblestone streets. I remember praying something like, “Oh, good shepherd. This is my valley of the shadow of death. Be near me and protect me, I pray. And save my daughter. Amen”

Finally, I arrived at the doctor’s office, buzzed the doorbell and eventually found myself in the examination room of his clinic. The pulse oximeter read 83 (dangerously low) and he only shook his head as he listened to her lungs through his stethoscope. “I can’t help her,” he said, “She needs to get to a hospital right now.” I gestured toward her albuterol inhaler, and he informed me the problem wasn’t with her airway; it was with her lungs. My daughter was troublesomely sick with pneumonia and an ambulance was on the way.

When we arrived at the hospital, my head was spinning (and not just from the ambulance ride). We were quickly thrown into triage, and nurses asked me all kinds of questions, mostly in Spanish, as they tried to diagnose what was wrong. If there’s a part of this story I’ll never forget, it’s watching my daughter struggle in this room. At this point, there was no hiding it: We had arrived just in time, if we had arrived in time at all. A team of a half-dozen men and women began working on my daughter—supplying her with a literal lifeline of oxygen, beating on her chest and back to loosen mucus in her lungs, and digging desperately to find narrow veins in her chubby arms and legs to supply antibiotics. My happy, chubby baby now completely unrecognizable nearly swooned from the exhaustion of it all.

I don’t remember at what point we found our little ritual, but this is the room where it became most important. Frantic and despaired, I asked my daughter four questions over and over again. First: “Are you my girl?” Weakly, my daughter replied: yes. Second: “Are you strong?” Again: yes. Third: “Are you okay?” And thankfully, she’d tell me that, yes, she was. Fourth: “High five?” And when I tell you those high fives saved my life, I don’t think I’m exaggerating in the least bit.

Every time we did this (and we must have dozens of times), I found myself almost rushing through the other questions—eager to ask her for a high five, as it was the only positive affirmation I knew of that communicated to me that somewhere deep underneath the beeping machines, the IV line, the wires and hoses and chaos of every moment we limped through was my little girl, and she was okay.

After about an hour in that room, we were transferred to the ICU. Whatever image you have of intensive care, check it at the door. Like much of the hospital, this room was in critical need of an upgrade (this was my first experience with true, third-world, socialized healthcare, and it’s everything people warn against). But this room also stabilized my daughter’s health. And over the next 12 hours or so in this room, I watched my daughter transform—not at all to her usual self, but from some shadow of herself into a girl I, at least, thought I recognized. She was finally improving.

Eventually, Carolyn came and swapped places with me. After a brief appearance at her brother’s wedding reception (the wedding was over), she took an Uber to the hospital. There’s a longer story here that would speak volumes to her bravery and maternal “mama bear” instincts that helped rescue my daughter from the hospital staff who tried to refuse her transfer to a private hospital, but that’s her story to tell and not the main point I’m trying to make in this story. Allow me to shift gears here for a second.

For 30 years, Dr. Guillermo Godoy worked as a neonatologist at the same hospital as Dr. Harvey Edwards III. Dr. Edwards just so happens to be my pastor’s dad, and someone I’m fortunate to call my friend. He saw our prayer request on our church’s GroupMe and called me, asking if he could help. He introduced me to Dr. Godoy, who introduced me to Dr. Edgar Belteton, who just recently opened a private children’s hospital in Guatemala. Not only that, he specializes in pediatric intensive care and is an expert in pediatric pulmonology. This man arranged an ambulance staffed with a pediatrician and a respiratory therapist to transfer my daughter to his hospital where she is now receiving excellent, specialized care.

Why does God do things the way he does? Humbly, I say, I have no earthly idea. If you had asked me about our trip to Guatemala before we left the states, I would have told you I was only truly worried about one thing: Dottie getting sick and having poor access to care. I even voiced that fear multiple times out loud to different people. Needless to say, this is not a path I would have chosen for myself to walk, but it’s exactly the path my good shepherd led me into.

When I consider the reality of divine providence, I’m always reminded of something I heard a pastor say years ago: “God doesn’t drive an ambulance. He never shows up after the accident to do triage work.” No, instead God is acutely aware of each and every bit of suffering he will lovingly introduce into our lives, in his goodness, to draw us nearer to him.

In God’s grace toward me (and Dottie), he had long ago already planned out the path that would to her safety and well being. He did that by giving me a feeling in my gut I couldn’t shake off the night we set out towards the hospital. He gave the first doctor the good sense to immediately call for her transfer to a major hospital. He supplied nurses and doctors with training (in the years far preceding Dottie’s birth) that equipped them to treat her in her direst hour. He brought Dr. Godoy to Dr. Edward’s mind, and Dr. Belteton to Dr. Godoy’s mind. And he helped us make those connections just in time to get my daughter the care she’s currently receiving as I write this post¹ (yes, she stayed behind in Guatemala with her mother because she is too sick to fly home). It’s awe-inspiring and breathtaking just how in control of, how intimately familiar with, and how compassionately intentional God is with his creation.

When this year began, I asked God for two things and two things only. I asked God that he would grant me a increased sense of intimacy with him and that he would work in my heart to grant me a greater assurance of my salvation.² Prayer requests aren’t automatic; they communicate a need we (think) we have to our heavenly Father, and then fills that need as he sees fit. After some dust had settled, and I had some short time to reflect, I considered exactly what God *may* have been as he chose to make this a part of my story. I can’t help but think the Lord sovereignly ordained this trial for Dottie, for my family, and for me as a kind of prescription needed to beckon me nearer. Truly it is love that compels a good father to actively discipline his children, and despite my frustration with the circumstances, this has only drawn me nearer to the throne.

I asked God for deeper intimacy with him this year. I had no idea that this would be a way he worked it into my life, nor would I have chosen it. But I can’t deny that he’s answering my prayer. Glory be to God.

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification…”(1 Thessalonians 4:3A, ESV)

“For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”  (Hebrews 12:6, ESV)

1. Dr. Edwards also helped me to see these connections, that God was working providentially behind the scenes to graciously provide all these things. ↩︎
2. Note: It is not that I doubt my salvation at all. It is that I want my assurance of salvation to be so real to me that I trust God in bolder and deeper ways than I ever have before. It want an assurance that silences my fears, doubts, hesitations and anxieties so that I may better serve him. ↩︎