Zack is 17

God gave me four beautiful children. The youngest, Zachary, turned 17 on Tuesday.

Birthdays may mean cake and presents to a kid, but for the mom, a birthday means memories.

We think about carrying that child, and delivering that child, and bringing that child home. We think about the milestones, the things they said we’ll never forget, and all those things that make that child wonderfully unique and precious to us.

This past Tuesday, as I thought about my youngest and his 17 plus years on this earth, three moments stuck out. The times we almost lost him.

Zack’s first brush with death happened when he was about 15 months old. He came down with a bad case of croup, and our doctor said he needed to be hospitalized.

“Why?” I asked.

“So he can get nebulizer treatments every four hours.”

“I can do that.”

Dr. Galvin shook his head, and tried to tell me otherwise, but I wouldn’t budge. There was no way I was going to leave my baby there to be cared for by people he didn’t know. He’d be terrified. He’d already been through enough.

“You’ll be sorry,” Dr. Galvin told me as he wrote out Zack’s prescription.

I spent the next several days doing all I could to nurse Zack back to health. I gave him his meds as directed, the humidifier had to be run continually, and most important of all, those nebulizer treatments had to be administered every four hours. I also prayed, a lot! And every day Zack got a little bit better. By the third day he was his own happy self once again.

What a relief! And I never had to hear Dr. Galvin say, “I told you so.”

(Although I was tempted to call him up and tell him that!)

It may sound like I’m proud of how I stood up to our doctor and nursed Zack back to health on my own, but trust me, I know it could have easily gone the other way. I still thank God for pulling Zack through that.

Our second scare came when Zack was 3. My oldest two were at school, and I was home alone with the younger two. I was making lunch and they came in to bother me so I gave Danica an apple slice, and I gave Zack a nickel. Then I told them to go watch TV and that I would call them when lunch was ready.

Zack took his nickel, laid down on the floor in front of the TV, and balanced the smooth cool coin on his tongue. You can guess what happened next. The nickel slid down his throat, and became lodged in his esophagus. He tried his best to cough it up, but it soon became clear, he’d need medical attention, and fast. I called Jeff at work, he rushed home, and we took him to the clinic. Due to the tender and important veins and arteries in that area of the neck, Dr. Ecker felt the best thing to do was to airlift him to the cities. Unfortunately, it was a rainy, cold, icy, winter day, and therefore a helicopter ride was out of the question. The next thing we heard was that a doctor in Mankato was willing to have a go at getting the nickel out, so Zack was transferred by ambulance to Mankato. I rode with him.

As I sat on the bench looking down at my little boy, a strange calm came over me. I prayed that God would be with us, and that he would help Zack. But I also told God that if it was His will to take my baby from me, that that was okay too, because I knew he would be with Jesus. Even as I prayed those words and thought those thoughts, I wondered, What sort of mother would think such a thing? But somehow I knew, everything would be okay, and it brought me incredible peace.

About half way to Mankato, Zack coughed and sputtered, as he was doing this whole time, and then he sort of threw up. A short time after that, he fell asleep. When we got to Mankato, he was brought into the ER on a stretcher, wheeled into an exam room, and changed into a hospital gown. But this time, he’d woken up and noticed the hospital gown had little bears on it. “I have bears at my house,” he told the nurses. Then he went on to tell them all about his stuffed animals at home, and I knew he was out of danger. Sure enough, the X-ray confirmed it. Zack had swallowed the nickel. Five days later it reappeared and his adventure came to an end, leaving him with a new teddy bear, (a gift from the Mankato nurses which he named Nickel) and left me feeling very grateful to God once again for sparing him from what could have been a very tragic story.

Later, I was telling a friend about my experience in the ambulance. I asked her if she thought it was wrong for me to feel the way I did. She said I trusted in God, and that’s what a Christian does in times of trouble.

“Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you, and you will honor me.” Psalm 50:15

Zack had asthma pretty bad as a little kid. Several times we had to rush him to the ER. If you’ve ever been around anyone who’s having an asthma attack, you know how scary they can be. One of Zack’s worst attacks came when he was 5. He was gasping for breath like never before. Through all the wheezing and coughing, he said, “I can’t breathe. I‘m dying.”

It’s awfully hard to comfort a child when he says he’s going to die. But I tried to remain calm, and I told him over and over, "You'll be okay." We got him in to the ER as fast as we could and soon the attack had passed. An hour or two later we were all back home, safe and sound.

Like most asthma attacks, this all happened in the middle of the night, so before I put him back to bed we went through our bedtime routine all over again. After we read a few books and said our prayers I said to him, “That was pretty scary, wasn’t it, when you couldn’t breathe? But you know, Zack, if you had died, you would have gone to heaven to be with Jesus. And heaven is a really wonderful place, so it would have been okay.”

Then, almost out of the blue it seemed, Zack asked me, “Was I baptized?”

I often wonder what spurred him to ask about his baptism. I suppose it was something they had talked about at school recently. But somehow he knew, baptism is important. “Yes,” I told him. “You were baptized a few days after you were born, and that’s when God made you his child.”

I’m so glad God made Zack His child. And I’m glad He made him my child too, for 17 years and counting!

Happy Birthday, Zack. May you have many, many more!