Growing into Bravery After a Child's Life-Altering Medical Diagnosis

By Jodie Pine

God's Brave Women - Jodie's Story

I find myself living in the before and after within the framework of diagnosis.

But I've also pitched my tent in between: the what is and the what could be, the reality and the never will be, the unanswered question of What are you doing God? and the nowhere-else-to-go kneeling before Him in surrender.

There's the everyday kind of brave we grow into.

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"There's the everyday kind of brave we grow into."

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Before we received the news that our not-yet-adopted son Daniel had awoken from a 6-day coma, he lay mostly still, unresponsive in the hospital four bus stops away from where our family of five was living in China.

We had been rejoicing for all of two days because our 6 ½ year adoption wait had come to a celebratory end. We “battled” to be matched with the two boys we had been offered after we were told it would be impossible to adopt them together. When the mail carrier brought us the long-awaited-for documentation that we were officially matched with both of them, we praised God with friends and family around the world. Clearly, God had done the miraculous. But then He brought us to a very unexpected turn in the path with news of Daniel's severe brain infection.