Our eldest daughter was born one week prior to spring examinations when I was in teacher’s college. That was a while ago. Lozanne stayed in hospital for the usual three or four days following a long and difficult birth. As I look back, I realize from a much more seasoned viewpoint that medical incompetence was a factor in the difficult birth and its aftermath. Within a few days of settling into our new lives as parents, Lozanne began to haemorrhage due to a collapsed uterus. The memory of my mother physically prying our infant daughter out of Lozanne’s hands will always be with me. Lozanne felt that if she left the baby, she would never see her again. The feeling was a valid one. But for the grace of God, that is exactly what could have happened.
I rushed her to the emergency ward in the same hospital we had just left. Although it was very inappropriate, we were treated like the kids that we were. I was twenty and Lozanne was eighteen. I had to reassert several times that I was her husband and not her adolescent boyfriend. A nurse, who was slightly older than I was and who had actually travelled on the same school bus as I had, referred to me several times as “the boy”. Lozanne continued to haemorrhage. Our family physician, who had, in retrospect, caused the emergency was more concerned about delaying his vacation a few hours than treating my very ill wife. A blood transfusion was ordered and started. I have no idea how many pints of blood she was given throughout that night. I was given little information except that the situation was dire. Sometime after midnight, a Roman Catholic priest showed up in Lozanne’s hospital room to give her Last Rites. She unceremoniously threw him out of the room with the admonition that she had no intention of dying. I was beginning to catch on how serious the situation had become. At about two o’clock in the morning, a very competent gynaecologist miraculously appeared and replaced our general practitioner as the doctor in charge of the case. He made some rapid changes to treatment and called for more units of blood. By the next morning, it was evident to all that Lozanne would survive. She remained in hospital for the week. Our daughter endeared herself to my parents during that very difficult week in 1969. I have often wondered how my and my daughter’s life would have been irrevocably changed had Lozanne not survived that night. I have learned that the wife of your youth is your greatest comfort as you age and your body starts to fail.
I am, after so much time has passed, entertained with the fact that, when Lozanne was so severely ill, I was exempted from writing my teacher’s college spring exams. The irony is that I was exempted from final exams because I had been successful in the term work as well as practice teaching, not to mention the fact that one professor realized that my time would be better spent making a living for my young family than writing examinations. Although I wrote countless exams as my career unfolded, I gained my basic qualifications as a teacher without writing one examination.
I have in recent years become very much aware of the Hand of the Lord being on both Lozanne and myself long before we professed our belief and our need for a Saviour. It is not such a leap to realize that the God of the universe would of course know that well into the future we would become saved. His hand was on us much before that blessed event in time. The words of Psalm 91: 11-16 are resonating in my heart this morning.
11 For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.
12 In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
13 You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.
14 "Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation."
“Because he has set his love upon Me,…” (verse 14) could easily be read by me as “Because THEY WILL set their love upon Me”.
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