Have you ever been to a hospital or other public establishment & suddenly you hear over the intercom “code red” to a certain area? Most often, someone is in medical danger or some sort of unexpected worrisome even is taking place. At the clinic where I work, when a code is called, people start coming from all directions to help. Some random person just casually goes in for a doctor’s appointment and within seconds finds themselves on the floor with a slew of doctors and medical professionals coming out of the wood works to assist in any way, whether it be minor or major. While this happens about 100 onlookers and nosy people like myself are inquiring about the situation or watching from afar. At the clinic, I can’t help but think to myself “well thank goodness this happened here where there is instant help. What happens when we are strolling about life, and suddenly a “code” gets called on us? Ha! Thank goodness we are ALWAYS in the presence of help no matter where we are! But I didn’t always think of it like that….
As a born again Christian, I cannot help but view my life as an almost constant daily battle where a super natural resuscitation has been performed.
Just after graduating High School at barely 18 in the year 2000, my father, my life long hero, was diagnosed with stage 3 Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer, much like Leukemia. At this point is now where I view myself as getting put on “life support.” Although I was not living for the Lord, God started working on strengthening, shaping, and preparing me. My Dad was sick, very sick, I was so very scared and worried for him, and though I was the youngest of myself and two brothers, I was there right along with him through his fight, and boy was it a fight. I have never seen a human being get so ill in all my life, much less continue to work through it all. To say that he inspired me would be a gross understatement.
The following summer of 2001, on the night of July 20th at about 9:50PM, my best friend casually handed me a phone call that would change me forever. My two brothers and a friend of theirs were in a car accident, and my oldest brother Jeff, had died on the scene. The shock and physical anguish I felt that night I will never be able to describe, but I can tell you this, I do recall saying “my heart hurts so bad I feel like I might die.” Yet somehow, I arranged a funeral, picked out clothes for my brothers burial, held my Mothers hand as her heart broke before my eyes, and helped my father as he was battling pneumonia in the heat of summer along with fighting for his own life while burying his first born child.
Then, in October 2002, after a valiant fight, I crawled up next to my Daddy and told him to go on and be with Jesus, I’d be just fine. I held his hand as he took his last breath. In approximately 15 months my life and world had been rocked beyond belief.
Then came the next big hurdle, the inability for my husband and I to have a child. Years passed, I went certifiably nuts…Why God? Why??! Still not living for the Lord, pretty certain that God had some sorta problem with me, I remember someone once told me “Haley, God never puts more on your plate than you can handle” and my response to that was “well then I don’t have a plate, I have a platter and right now it’s cracking down the middle.” In the years of trying for a baby, my heart and soul felt such pain and emptiness. They say the emotional grief, stress, and depression people who struggle with infertility feel is comparable to that of a cancer patient. I’d have to say I agree with that statement. I’d see pregnant women just casually walking around and I would catch myself with my jaw basically dropped in awe of the miracle that woman had been given. There were times I’d sit down in the baby aisles at stores and just sob and cry. It had even gotten to the point where I considered taking my own life, I just felt like I couldn’t take anymore. At that particular point a woman named Angi Sutton came into my life, started speaking God’s word into my life and praying for me/us without ceasing. I was all about hearing her uplifting words, however I did tell her “I will NEVER go to your church.”
In Novemeber 2008 after 6 years of trying, 75 months to be exact ;), I found out I was pregnant. And almost immediately I felt as though I would be having a little boy. God was going to give me back a little boy to love after I lost my two heroes. I just knew it. I was right. July 18, 2009 we welcomed Lawson Crue Isaac Bordeaux to the world! What most people don’t know, is that towards the end of this miraculous pregnancy, my marriage was horrible. Bad. Really bad. We had been given a miracle, but Darryl and I were in turmoil. I hated him, he hated me, and if words could kill he and I would have been dead a million times over, our relationship was pure hell.
So to wrap this all up and get to the point, when Christ died for me/us, he hooked me up to an infallible life support. I visualize myself as a broken lost soul “just getting by.” And then life started to happen. Hey Haley, your dad has cancer, punch to the gut. Hey guess what? Your brother is dead. Double punch.. Oh yeah, you get to watch your Dad die now too.. Oh by the way, you can’t have kids… Still Standing!! Then finally the perils of life delivered a blow that finally brought this fighter to her knees. Literally. I had talked about it before, but I was dead set on getting a divorce from my husband. After a huge fight one morning on a Sunday in July 2011, I decided Lawson and I had nowhere else to go, so we’d just go to church. Full Circle Church. Yes, the one I told Angi I would NEVER go to. I’m sitting there feeling about as hateful and numb as one can feel in a church as I hear these words sang: “I need you Jesus to come to my rescue, where else can I go? There’s no other name by which I am saved, capture me with grace.” It was literally like the paddles were placed on my chest and my heart was restarted. I have not missed a Sunday since, and from that first day it took only a matter of weeks for my marriage to start coming back to life. And now every time my husband and I walk hand in hand through the church doors that I said we’d never go to, carrying the little boy I thought we’d never have, I cant help but lift my hands, sing and dance His praises, and with every tear that rolls down my cheek, what was once empty is now so full of joy, and I am thankful that God gave me a platter instead of a plate.
Praise God I WILL use every thing in my life, even what I thought was surely going to kill me to help others find the ultimate resuscitation. Amen.
My Pastor's wife said this word reminded her of me one day. I am seeing the truth of it more everyday:
1 John 2:27
As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
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