We had been sitting in the emergency room waiting area for over an hour. It looked like many more hours would pass before we would be seen. The cases before ours were more pressing and needed immediate attention. A man was having a heart attack as they carried him in. The room was full of strangers, but like us, they were certain their situation was the most urgent. My daughter excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she came back, a woman asked, “Is your daughter all right? Because her eyes look like . . .”

“Mom, I think I am going to black out!” I bolted to the triage nurse and told her my daughter was about to faint. They rushed us into one of the small, curtained areas inside the locked door. We were now in the urgent category. We waited into the early hours of the morning for the diagnosis. There are times in life that can define our relationship to God, drawing us closer or pulling us further away. This was one of those times.

Our daughter had been tired for over a week, but we thought it was due to a lack of sleep. We later learned her fatigue was brought on by internal bleeding. She had major surgery to address the immediate symptoms, but we would wrestle with the underlying problem for years. Our daughter was essentially asymptomatic. Then something would tip the imbalance into tangible symptoms and she needed emergency room care. This happened three times in a period of four years. Would life ever become normal again? Each time the symptoms were slightly different and we spent months afterward trying to figure out the root cause and how to avoid future mishaps.

After tests and confirmation, the specialists agreed she had a chronic digestive disorder unknown to us until that day. Like many auto-immune diseases, there was no cause and no cure. Our lives became a juggling act of schedules as we visited specialists, naturopathic doctors, and primary care physicians. For years she heard the same confident assurance, “I can make you better.” Unfortunately, there was no relief, and we wondered when the next incident would occur. I knew all her symptoms were related but could not get the doctors to bring the big picture together.

We sought all kinds of answers—traditional and alternative treatments. We followed various restrictive diets for months on end hoping to heal her body. We changed our own diets to follow hers so she wouldn’t feel so badly and to make it easier to provide meals. Having such restrictions ostracized us socially as special restrictive diets are not easily supported by others. Our teenager sometimes sat with friends at restaurants drinking a beverage, unable to eat anything on the menu.

One doctor told us that her digestive system was damaged. While very young, her treatment for constant ear infections was a low dosage of antibiotics over a period of years. The doctor assured us there would be no harmful effects since the dosage was so low. At that time, little was known about how antibiotics killed both the good and bad bacteria in your system. Now we understand how taking antibiotics over several years could have harmed her digestive system. When I thought about her constant use of these prescription drugs, Satan would accuse me of being a horrible mother. It was my fault she was sick and I could not undo the past to make her better.

Thankfully, God helped us find comfort in passages like John 9:1-3 (New American Standard):