“Let’s have another baby,” I told her.
“Are you sure we’re ready for that?” she said.
“Hey, we can handle it,” I said.
Almost a year later, we were excited to learn that Missy was expecting. Unfortunately, due to complications, Missy had a miscarriage. It was a real low point in our lives. A few months later, Missy became pregnant again, and we were cautiously optimistic about our chances for a third child. Her pregnancy had problems from the start. There were concerns about Missy’s blood work, and her doctors feared her body might begin to reject the baby. Unless our baby had Rh-negative blood—and her doctors gave us a 1 percent chance of that being the case—Missy would probably suffer a second miscarriage. Doctors told us the goal was for Missy to carry the baby to twenty-six weeks, and then they would remove our child by cesarean section. Missy and I prayed a lot about our baby, and miraculously her blood work gradually improved. (After our daughter was born, doctors confirmed she did indeed have Rh-negative blood. In a lot of ways, she was a one-in-one-hundred miracle.)
Missy and I started to prepare to welcome a third child into our home. We found out at twenty weeks that our baby was a girl, and we decided to name her Mia. I could sense Missy was very excited about having a daughter. She loved our boys, but Missy really wanted to experience the joys of having a daughter too. When Mia was thirty-one weeks along, Missy had a four-dimensional ultrasound, which was fairly new technology at the time. She wanted to see an up-close view of our baby in the womb. Reed, Cole, Miss Kay, and our sisters-in-law Jessica and Lisa accompanied her to the doctor’s office to see the baby.
As soon as the ultrasound started, Missy noticed that something was different about Mia’s face.
The technician looked more closely at the monitor and then hesitated before saying, “I need to go get the doctor.”
Miss Kay took Reed and Cole out of the room, and then the doctor confirmed what the technician feared: our baby had at least a cleft lip. It was too early to determine whether Mia also had issues with her palate, but the doctor warned Missy that there are several potential problems that are typically associated with having cleft lip and palate. My mom called me and told me to come to the doctor’s office right away.
When Missy told me what she’d learned, I said, “Well, we’ll just have to teach her that beauty is on the inside.”
It wasn’t what Missy wanted to hear. As I reflect back on what I said to her, I realize it was actually a dumb thing to say, even though it was true. Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Outward beauty is so subjective and is ultimately very temporary. My dad once gave me some advice when considering beauty. He said, “When it comes to women, do not put a lot of stock in outward beauty, because at some point everything heads south.” It was a humorous way of saying everyone gets old, but it also reveals the fact that everyone ages and gravity always wins.
Some people spend their entire lives trying to grasp outward beauty, only to chase in vain. I do think it is only natural for potential parents to wish for a perfect-looking child, but to make a big deal of it is foolishness. Romans 9:20 says, “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” Since Missy and I believe God knits each human in his or her mother’s womb, we were not overly concerned about Mia’s outward appearance. Our biggest concerns were about our daughter having to endure multiple procedures and surgeries to correct her health problems. We didn’t want our baby suffering in any way, emotionally or physically.
For the next three or four months, we did what most people do when they’re faced with adversity. We asked, “Why is this happening to us?” It was three or four months of misery. With each passing day, we became more and more anxious about the birth. But after the initial shock, we began to say, “You know what? We are not going to ask, ‘Why us?’ We are going to ask, ‘Why not us?’ ” We decided to change our outlook because we knew our baby would need us to be strong. Our trust in God allows us the ability to overcome any obstacles that come our way.
One passage from the Bible that really helped me handle the situation spiritually was John 9:1–3, which says, “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’ ” After I thought about that scripture for a while, I thought about my daughter. If she was born alive and found her spiritual relationship with her Maker, in the end we would all win. It took me a while to reach that conclusion because my family is notorious for assessing blame. It’s a Robertson trait. But when doctors told us about Mia’s condition, I had to quit playing the blame game. I had to say, “We’re going to embrace it and manage it.” Romans 8:31 says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Fortunately, Missy accepted the situation and ran with it. After we found out about Mia’s condition from the ultrasound, we shared our story with our church family the next Sunday and asked them to pray for us. After the service, a couple approached us and told us they had a client whose grandchild was born with a cleft palate. They wanted to have the parents reach out to us for support. The couple told us they’d been working with a craniofacial surgeon in Dallas, Dr. Kenneth Salyer, who had famously separated a pair of conjoined twins from Egypt in 2003. The boys, Mohamed and Ahmed Ibrahim, were given only a 10 percent chance of survival but both made it through their surgeries and are now thriving. Missy e-mailed Dr. Salyer’s office, and he agreed to accept Mia as a patient. We viewed it as an answer to our prayers.
When Mia was born on September 12, 2003—she was born about three weeks premature because Missy had high blood pressure—we learned that her palate was also severely affected. She had tissue from the top of her mouth to her nose, but it wasn’t fused together. She weighed six pounds, nine ounces, which wasn’t abnormally small, but she was suffering from what doctors described as wet lungs. The doctors weren’t very familiar with cleft babies, so they rushed her away, believing she couldn’t breathe on her own. I heard the doctors and nurses whispering to one another, and then they rushed me out of the room. Boy, I lost it. I went out to tell our family and friends the bad news. I’m not normally an emotional guy, but I couldn’t even talk. All I could say was, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it’s bad.” It was the only time in my life that I was at a loss for words. In my mind I was thinking one thought: Please, God, let my little girl live.
Fortunately, Mia only had fluid in her lungs, which is a normal condition with a cleft lip and soft palate, and she was actually breathing on her own. She had to remain in the neonatal intensive care unit until she was able to drink one ounce of formula. It took her six days to pass that threshold, and then we were able to bring her home. The next eleven days were agonizing. It seemed Missy and I spent every minute watching Mia choking, coughing, or gagging with each attempt at taking a normal breath or being fed. We couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes without awakening in a panic to check on her condition. When Mia was seventeen days old, Missy and I took her to see Dr. Salyer in Dallas. My mom, Missy’s parents, and Missy’s aunt Bonny went with us. Her first appointment lasted all day, and it was one of the most grueling experiences of my life. Because Mia was born without a palate, doctors wanted to mold her a temporary one so she could drink and breathe normally until she was old enough and strong enough to have surgery.
I wasn’t prepared for what the doctors had to do when they molded a palate for her. They shoved a fistful of material into Mia’s mouth. She couldn’t breathe, and I bet she had to hold her breath for sixty seconds. The doctors warned us Mia would kick and scream bloody murder, which she did while Missy held her in her lap. It was painful to watch. Then the doctors came back and said the mold didn’t work. They were going to have to do it again! I was enraged! I was ready
to punch the guy because I didn’t think he was being gentle enough with her. Mia was gagging, and I thought she was going to choke to death. I told Missy I couldn’t handle watching my baby girl suffer, so I walked out of the room. It was a situation out of my control, and I felt like I was about to hurt somebody. It was then that I realized God was in control of the situation. For some reason, my wife really flourished in this difficult moment. I couldn’t deal with it, but Missy was able to handle it. She showed incredible strength and patience, and her motherly instinct took over. She was there to comfort Mia through what had to be excruciating pain and fear.
One thing we quickly learned is that Mia’s condition couldn’t be fixed but would be managed through multiple surgeries over several years. Mia underwent her first surgery when she was only three months old to repair her outer cleft. She had a second surgery when she was seven and a half months old to correct her palate. She had a third surgery when she was five to do more work on her lip and nose. She’s ten now and had her fourth major surgery to graft bone from her hip to her jaw. Because Mia is still growing, the way her bones grow will affect what happens in the future.
I know the surgeries and recoveries are very painful, but Mia has been a trouper and has incredible strength and perseverance. We’ve actually been blessed because she has undergone the minimum number of surgeries for a child with a cleft lip and soft palate, and she doesn’t have any of the other serious medical problems that are sometimes associated with the condition. One thing I’ve realized through Mia is that kids who go through a lot of suffering have really strong character, and people are drawn to them as a result. As it says in Romans 5:3–4, “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Of course, Mia has lived through some rough days where kids have made fun of her, but it makes for good conversations about good things. Her classmates from Ouachita Christian School have been very accepting of her and don’t treat her any differently. She has had to wear headgear twelve to fourteen hours every day. It is designed to help her top jaw align with her bottom jaw. Doctors told Mia she couldn’t wear it while she is doing physical activity. Since she sleeps about nine or ten hours every night, she had to wear it for three to five hours during the day. Instead of wearing it while she was home, Mia decided she wanted to wear it to school. She didn’t want it cutting into her playtime with her brothers and cousins, when she likes to jump on the trampoline or ride her bike. Mia didn’t care what the other kids at school thought about the headgear. When Mia told her doctors in Dallas that she was wearing the headgear at school, they didn’t believe her at first. They said they’d never had a child choose to wear it at school. I think it says a lot about her self-confidence and strength.
Our families have been a great support system as we’ve dealt with Mia’s surgeries and health issues. Her cousins adore her and want to be around her as much as possible. Over the years, I’ve been asked why God allows bad things to happen to good people. I think that’s the number one excuse for why some people don’t believe in God. But my answer is that God is 100 percent fair. The problem is that some people believe certain things that happen in life aren’t fair. It’s why I think the Gospel trumps everything else. If God rewards us with forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus, nothing else really matters. If my daughter gets to spend eternity with her family, friends, and God, she’ll look back at her life on earth and realize none of her struggles was that big of a deal.
Mia has already persevered through so much. One of our biggest fears when she was born was that she wouldn’t be able to talk or sing. My wife loves to sing, and she’s a world-class singer. Through speech therapy, Mia talks well and can hold a normal conversation with anyone. There isn’t an ounce of shyness in her bones! When Mia was four years old, she sang “God Bless America” on one of our Duckmen hunting DVDs. I’m sure most people who watched it thought, Hey, isn’t that cute? They’ve got a little girl singing on the DVD. But when she did it, there wasn’t a dry eye in my family. We knew that Mia was born without the ability to sing, and we realized the pain and suffering she endured to be able to sing. It was a huge moment for our family.
I’ve taken Mia hunting twice and she was like most little girls—she was afraid of the spiders and whatever else was crawling in the blind! The first time, it was only Mia and I, and it was a special day. I gave her a BB gun, and she shot the ducks after I’d already knocked them into the water. I think it took her about fifty BBs before she finally connected, but she had a blast. I didn’t know some friends of mine were hunting close by. Later, they told me they heard us shooting and kept hearing a strange sound like a BB gun. They said when she finally connected, they heard us screaming and hollering.
Missy and I haven’t spent a lot of time asking God why Mia was born with her difficulties. We have accepted that it’s yet another opportunity to glorify Him. A couple of years after Mia was born, one of the nurses at St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe called Missy. The nurse told her that there was a couple at the hospital, and they had just given birth to a baby with a cleft lip and soft palate. The couple was really struggling with the shock, and the nurse told Missy she remembered how we handled it. Missy and I went to the hospital and talked to the parents. Missy told the nurses to call us whenever a similar situation occurred.
A few months later, Missy and Mia were in Dallas for a checkup. The nurse from St. Francis called Missy and told her there was another baby born with the same condition. Since Missy was out of town, she called me.
“Jason, you have to go up there,” she said.
“I can’t do this,” I said.
“The parents are devastated,” she said. “You have to go.”
“I can’t,” I said.
After I hung up the phone, I thought about the situation for several minutes. I remembered how Missy and I felt when Mia was born, and I knew the parents at the hospital needed all the support in the world. I called Missy back and told her I was going. When I walked into the hospital room, the parents were there with some family members. Everybody was crying, and it seemed like the normal joy of a child being born was missing. They looked at me like, “Who is this guy?” It was so quiet I could have heard a pin drop. Their new son was with the other babies in the nursery, and I could see him through the glass wall that separated the waiting room and the nursery.
I’d brought along before-and-after photos of Mia. I took them out of my pocket and held them up.
“I have a girl named Mia, and when she was born she looked a lot like him,” I said. “All I can tell you is that you can make it through this. It is going to be okay.”
Over the past few years, Missy and I have helped counsel about a dozen families who have children who were born with a cleft lip and palate. We became especially close with four or five families, and a few years ago they came to our house for Christmas. The doctors came to our home from Dallas, and my brother Willie dressed up like Santa Claus. I figured out that God was using us to help others who were dealing with the same things we went through.
I think the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in the book of Matthew explains a lot about our journey with Mia. Matthew 20:1–16 says:
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, “You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.” So they went.
He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?”
“Because no one has hired us,” they answered.
He said to them, “You also go and work in my vineyard.”
When evening came, the owner of the
vineyard said to his foreman, “Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.”
The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. “These men who were hired last worked only one hour,” they said, “and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.”
But he answered one of them, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
So the last will be first, and the first will be last.
I doubt you could find anyone on earth who would view the situation in the vineyard as fair. If it happened today, I’m pretty sure there would be lawsuits and perhaps riots in the streets. Life will never seem fair from a human perspective. Jesus told the parable as his disciples were arguing about who was going to heaven. Jesus used the parable to explain that salvation and eternal life come from God alone and are not based on human effort or circumstances. It’s a hard truth to embrace, because humans are tempted to take the role of God in declaring fairness. God’s rewards and blessings are available to everyone without exception. Second Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
God has blessed us with a beautiful daughter who is completely healthy, though she has suffered a lot. Her situation might have been a lot worse, and she’s going to lead a productive and full life. The bottom line is, Mia was born with some problems because she was born with a perishable body. We live in a broken world and not until the next world will all be made complete.
Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl Page 13
