From Surgery to Serenity by Mackenzie Nielson

My son was born with only half a heart – a single pumping chamber – that required a series of surgeries in his first months of life. While the doctors are pleased with my son’s progress during the two-year lull between rounds of surgeries, my husband and I face the unseen horrors of the aftermath, often in the dark of night. Even after he had fully recovered from his latest surgery, for ten consecutive months my son woke up every fifteen minutes in the grip of night terrors, screaming and inconsolable though no longer in physical pain. It was these moments –  exhausted beyond reason, emotionally spent, and each night hopeful, even desperate, for relief that did not come – that brought me abruptly to the limits of my faith.