Last week Isabel & I got up early to make it up to the Kaiser Sunset hospital for an upper GI x-ray, also known as a swallowing test. The aim of the test was to ascertain how well Isa’s body works in the whole swallowing process from throat to intestines. Often for victims of a stroke, and for children with cerebral palsy, the whole eating & digestion process can be fraught with difficulties & challenges.

Anyway, the test consists of Isa needing to drink a bottle of some special liquid - one that will show up on the x-ray machine - while lying on her side with the machine over her. The she is supposed to lie on her back for x-rays, and then turn onto her stomach in order to finish up the series of pictures of her the liquid traveling through her insides.

Despite the challenges of completing this test due to her motor skill delays & the high muscle tone in her arms, she was one tough cookie. Even though she was crying for most of the test, I could see her trying to contain her anxiety about the machine pressing against her head, or the tension in her arms that prevents her from relaxing or turning around easily in all of these positions. And I could see her trying to hold it together, just a little longer. Though she had no idea what this crazy test was for, she did all that she could to calm herself down, to trust my voice saying, “It’s going to be OK” or “I love you, just a little more.”

But after about 30 minutes of trying to make it work, I could see that Is was reaching her limit. Up to that point, even with her discomfort, she hadn’t lost it. Twice we had stopped to calm her down and she would catch her breath, burp (’cause the gas from crying was what inhibited the liquid from passing all of the way through), and then we’d try again. But I could see that she was reaching the point of “no return” that would take her a long time to calm down. I told the technician “You’ve got about 10 more seconds and then I’m going to pull her out.”

And it was just about that and I yanked her out of the machine, bumping my head on the machine’s camera boom, and almost falling over the technician. It took Isa about 10 minutes to stop crying and to catch her breath. The technician wanted to try again to get a few more frames, but I knew that she couldn’t handle anymore, and just said, “No, she’s done.”

As I sat in the room calming Isabel down & then taking some time to feed her (since she was hungry for real milk), I was reminded of Paul’s words:

“God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

I was thinking about it on two levels. First, that the circumstances that test us - whether we understand what they are for or not - are critical for diagnosis our current faith health. Isabel needed this test even though she had no idea what it was for or why she needed to go through it. But as her father, I knew that she needed this test, and her efforts to endure it were mostly based on trying to trust or respond to my voice and my firm hand.

But secondly, I could also see her limits, how much she could endure. It wasn’t a scientific discovery - “She’s endure 4.3 units of hardship, which is her limit.” No, I knew her limit because I know her, and I could see that she was being pushed beyond what she could handle on her own. Similarly, I sensed God speaking this to me. That God knows our limits, and like any good Father, will bump his head and trip over whoever in order to pull us out when he sees that we’re being pushed to far.

What struck me as significant in that x-ray room with my daughter calming down in my arms, was how both the test and the guarding against our limits reflect God’s love & commitment to us. We need tests - sometimes we don’t even know why, especially in the moment of testing - and we need to trust God’s voice & firm grasp on us in those moments that test us, but we also need God’s intimate knowledge of our limits and God’s personal care and commitment to see that we don’t “lose it” by being pushed to far.

As Jesus said,

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

In this way, my daughter continues to be my teacher as I learn from being her papi more about my Heavenly Father who loves me and knows how to give what is good.

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