Happy 10th Birthday!

today is an amazing day. today LANE BRYSON WILSON turns 10 years old. so, instead of a blog, this is a letter to Lane...

Dear Lane,

What can we say? We never thought you would live to be 10 minutes old but 10 years was never even a thought. The years have flown by, and we cherish every thought we have of you and every time we think about you and your gigantic smile, we have to laugh ourselves!

We remember the first time that we had the chance to see you. You were so small! You could have fit in the palm of someone’s hand or in the pocket of a pair of pants. It was tempting so many times to shove you deep into one of our pockets and just run out the door. We could take you away from the hospital and take you into our world…and into the pain and reality that we were helpless. The only thing that kept us from grabbing you and running was the staff. We knew that the people who were there at the hospital watching you each day were there because they loved you and wanted to see you get better.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t make you well. That’s the hardest part about being a parent…looking at you and realizing that we could have grabbed you and run away with you, but you were where you needed to be. You were at a place where you were cared for, loved, and most importantly taken care of…by people who knew a whole lot more than us. That is probably what it is supposed to be like though. We should have handed you over to God immediately and trusted Him to take care of you, but that was really difficult. We live in a world that teaches us to fix things, and if we can’t fix them, find someone else who CAN. The horrid reality however was that we couldn’t find anyone else to fix you. Even the doctors and the nurses who loved you, cried for you, and found batteries for your tape player when your music stopped, couldn’t fix you. We found that out the hard way. We realized that you were out of our hands when you were about 2 months old. When you lost your IV’s we were out of hope. We couldn’t trust a doctor to fix you…he didn’t have any more doctor tricks. We couldn’t trust the staff, the friends, or the family either…we were ALL helpless. Then God reminded us that you were on loan to us. You were NEVER supposed to be ours, but you are HIS on loan to us for however long he deems necessary.

You helped us realize that our lives were so out of control. We honestly thought we had control of some of those things. We thought that we could overcome your “problems” and things would eventually be ok. God knew we couldn’t handle it on our own and allowed us to struggle just long enough to throw up our hands and completely remove “US” from “YOU”. Guess what? You’re alive today because God had so much bigger plans than we could have dreamed up.

If we had it to choose, we would never have chosen it this way. We would have NEVER chosen to have a “special” child. We wanted normal. We wanted routine. We wanted what everyone else had. Then we realized that God was giving us a gift in you. We get to see you grow up. We get to see you defy the odds. We get to see you on your best and worst days, but we still realize that each of those days are on loan from God, and when we get to be too possessive, we have to take our hands off again. God’s been really great at allowing us to remove our hands multiple times. He has been there the whole time, watching over you and giving you enough breaths to survive exactly how HE wants. He didn’t call us and ask if it was ok, and we’re glad He didn’t. We would have missed out on so much.

We would have missed:
 Mom coming to ask Jesus into her heart in 1998 because she was sick of playing the game. She wanted REAL life change, not a new paint job on the old life.
 Realizing that the doctors and nurses in the NICU have weird lives. They don’t go home at the end of the day and “deprogram” from it all. Many of them stop by late at night because they continue to think about the babies that are trusted to them.
 Getting to know that EVERYONE has problems in their lives. Our “problem” turned out to be the greatest gift ever…you!
 Your brothers getting a chance to see God at work. You have overcome every obstacle in front of you. They know that God is in control.
 Dyllan having the biggest heart for others…because he would NEVER let anyone hurt you.
 Eli letting you grab, push, hit, and roll all over him. How awesome to know that he sees you as his brother…nothing else. He really loves you!
 You patting your chest when you answer the question, “Where does Jesus live?” You know He’s in your heart…I don’t know how, but I want to make sure I live everyday knowing that one day…you’re going to walk, talk, and see…better than anyone ever did here on earth. One day, you’ll be fixed!
 April 17, 2006…my LIFE speaks being born because we had come to the end of our road…and found that God wanted us to trust Him more and more…

We got to meet so many incredible people because you were born. We met incredible doctors, nurses, social workers, ambulance drivers, pilots, and other parents who were just like us.

As your Dad, I remember being so overwhelmed the first time 10 years ago that I walked into the NICU to see you lying there in your bed. You were covered in saran wrap. I didn’t know why. I knew there had to be a reason, but that reason escaped me. I couldn’t get past the fact that you had 10 fingers, 10 toes, and you were perfect. You were a little small, but you were still perfect.

When Mom finally got to see you, she immediately went into Mom mode. She began talking to you, singing to you, and praying for you. How ironic, that the person that carried you inside of her for 23 weeks was now trusting someone else to get you to our house.

Lane, Happy 10th Birthday. Thanks for letting us learn so much about God because of you. Thanks for not hating us because we brought you into this world, but please know, God had to be in charge, because we would have messed it up for you. We would have chosen “normal” and missed out on you being who God created you to be!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy!