"Jesus Loves Me"
When My youngest daughter was born, she was born with a heart defect, ventricular septal defect. While this is a quite common birth defect that sometimes corrects itself, hers was very large and there was little hope for this to happen. She was maintained with medications until she was about four years old but because of her growth it was necessary to have surgery to correct the defect. The surgeon came in the night before the operation and was not very encouraging about the success of the operation. She had developed occlusions in the ventricle and the septal defect was in a very difficult place near the mitral valve. It would be a very long operation and at the time this meant brain injury and possibly a chance that the heart could not be revived. She would be put into a hypothermia state to reduce brain injury and her heart would be removed for the repairs.I remember her very clearly that morning. When the nurse came to take her out of our arms my daughter comforted us by gently patting us with her hands. As the nurse carried her away she sang as loud as she could "Jesus loves Me" and smiled more brightly than I had ever seen her, waved and threw us a kiss as she disappeared around a corner.
The operation was long as promised by the surgeon and her time was long in intensive care after the operation as she had developed pneumonia during the operation. She was on a ventilator for four days. On the seventh day she was put in a regular room and for the first day could not talk because of the abrasion from the breathing tube. the next afternoon she told us the following story....
She told us that she had seen Jesus. We asked her what she meant and she shared with us that she had climbed a ladder towards a bright light and had been led by someone that reminded her of her older brother. When she got to Jesus he said to her, "It is not your time yet, you must go back." She said that she wanted to stay as she felt at home there but that she was led back by the young man. Today she is 24 years old and has a daughter of her own. She still recalls that event exactly as she shared it with us and still testifies that the memory is as clear as if it happened yesterday.
In Christ, F.J.
