# When God’s Way Works
SISTER TO SISTER
Language: en
Author: Anna L\. Martin
Poteau, OK
Original issue: The Heartbeat of The Remnant, Summer 2020, Number 2
Source pages: 22–27
Read article:
Original PDF: Summer\-2020\-Remnant\.pdf
[The Heartbeat of The Remnant, Summer 2020]()
![A newborn baby’s hand holding an adult’s finger]()
We asked the Lord for him, our third child, third son\. He came with the springtime, the crowning creation of new life, bewailing his shuffled surroundings\. Folks commented on his wail: they thought it was adorable\. We thought so, too\. We loved him, we snuggled him, and we called him Judson\.
Sterling and I had committed, prior to Judson’s birth, to take our youth group on a mission trip to Mexico\. The date to leave for this trip fell five weeks after Judson came\. As the leader’s wife, I was responsible to take food along to feed our group for the entire time\. Making lists and shopping for it consumed me with preparation\.
Judson did his own preparing\. He developed bowel trouble\. He went seven days without a messy pamper\. I asked my midwife about it, but she was unruffled by the occurrence\. When it went another seven days until the next full diaper, I asked his pediatrician\. She, too, was unconcerned\. So, we headed for Mexico: Sterling and I, our five\-week\-old baby, and two vanloads of youth\.
Although the preparation had been taxing for me, the time in Mexico was like vacation\. My only requirements while there were to take care of my baby and oversee mealtimes\. But Judson didn’t like the trip at all\. I cuddled him for hours, sitting under a tarp on a dramatic hillside, overlooking the construction site where our group was laboring\. Judson acted restless and uncomfortable with me\. He cried if anyone else held him\. I felt something was amiss, but I had no definite signs of what, except that day after day passed without a dirty diaper\.
On our sixth night in Mexico, I laid Judson on his cot\. But the Lord drew me back, prompting me to pull him into bed beside me\. I felt this nudge distinctly and obeyed, although I had let Judson sleep in the cot the other nights\. We slept\. Somewhere in the night, Judson awoke, refusing to be pacified\. I tried this and that, half asleep myself\. Suddenly he screamed out, only to choke mid\-scream and then go limp\.
“Sterling\!” I yelped\. “Turn on the flashlight\! He’s not breathing\!” I sat up in bed, examining my baby in the flashlight’s beam\. His little face worked desperately, but no breath or sound came forth\. Within seconds, his breath returned, and he screamed again\. Then he choked\. As surely as an invisible hand clutching his fragile neck, his breath ceased, and his eyes bulged in terror\. I swiped my finger through his mouth, checking for something lodged in his airway, finding nothing\. Shuddering, Judson gasped and cried\. Tears forced themselves out of his eyes\. “Oh, pray,” I begged\. Sterling prayed, jumbling pleas together in a heavenward heap as our baby ceased breathing again\. The episode repeated itself several more times: seconds of terrified screaming, then seconds of tortured silence\. Sweat popped out on Judson’s face\. It was agonizing to watch\. Thoughts flew through my head: Our baby’s going to die\. Just like that\. No warning\. Out here with no medical aid\. Oh God\! Help us, help us, help us\! How does one just watch their baby die?
“I’m getting the missionary’s wife,” Sterling decided\. I stammered dangling prayers while supporting Judson\. When the missionary’s wife appeared, I handed him to her, grateful for the presence of a woman older than I\. We prayed together, begging God to intervene\. Judson began to cry and breath normally while she examined him\. She handed him back to me as he calmed down\.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said, after we told her the story\. We thanked her for rousing in the night, then returned to our room\. I cried while Judson peacefully slept in my arms\.
“I sense it was a demoniac display,” Sterling stated\. “If the devil can get us scared over what could happen to our baby while we are out in the boondocks, then he can get us to pack up our whole group and leave\. The devil knows there are good things happening here, spiritually; this is not the time to flee\. We can’t let him fill us with fear\.”
I agreed\. The unusual way Judson’s breath came and went looked as if an evil hand was gripping his neck\. There seemed to be no natural explanation otherwise for the horrifying event\. Sterling laid his hand on Judson and prayed, specifically rebuking the devil, and seeking the protection of God\. We laid us down in peace and safety and slept\.
In the morning, Judson seemed untroubled by the episode, although his restlessness increased\. Eight, nine, and then ten days passed with no bowel movement\. He cried, his soft, adorable cry agitating my heart\. As we traveled back to the States, I fretted over the way he drew back from nursing, squirming and fussing until he fell asleep instead\.
Then he began spitting up\. When he finally spit up bright yellow liquid, I was alarmed\. On the eleventh day, we visited a nurse practitioner in a Mennonite colony in Mexico\. She examined Judson, listened to my report, and calmly replied, “And this is your first child?”
“No,” I responded, matching calm with calm\. “This is my third\.” She met my eyes then, silently, and reexamined Judson\. She gave him a suppository, suggesting all babies are different\. And so, they are\. This one certainly was\! With the topical relief of the suppository, Judson seemed to feel better\.
He was seven weeks old when we came home\. From the time he was three weeks until he was seven months, he struggled with his bowels\.
On Sundays, people fingered his tiny face, commenting on his sweet little cry\. Other days, I huddled in the rocker, hearing but not hearing his sweet little cry\. Some days it seemed it never stopped\. I held him except while he napped\. I became familiar with his cycle: a span of days with no mess in which he gradually grew grumpier, a slacking off nursing, and finally, outright crying until I gave him the temporary relief of a suppository\. Contrary to regular suspicion, he was not constipated\. It appeared to my mother\-sense that something within him did not naturally trigger his bowels to move\.
“Grain free,” prompted one book\. “It could be Hirschsprung’s, which can be naturally treated by going grain\-free\.” So, I ate grain\-free\. Five weeks dragged by on my altered diet\. Judson didn’t seem to notice my efforts\.
His pediatrician listened to my recital of his routine, then ordered a test for Hirschsprung’s\.
The test came back clear\. I gratefully resumed eating grains, only to meet with new advice the next Sunday\. An experienced mother sought me out in the nursery where I took refuge from the noisy fellowship hall, rocking my sonny, rocking, rocking, rocking\. “Have you considered dairy\-free?”
Well, no, I hadn’t\.
“I think you should try dairy\-free,” she decided\. Like a well\-thumbed medical manual, she recounted the reasons for this route\.
His pediatrician didn’t approve of the dairy\-free idea\. I visited her office after three weeks of it\. “You need the fats in dairy to keep up your milk supply,” she scolded\. “Besides, the first sign of a milk intolerance is blood in the stool, not lack of stool\.”
I didn’t mind stopping the dairy\-free diet\. We tried other things\. Judson held enemas in stubbornly\. A prescribed dosage of laxative didn’t produce results\. At one point, the doctor instructed me to just wait it out with Judson, convinced his bowels would move on their own\. Judson outwaited me\. By 17 days along, I resorted to suppositories to give my miserable baby relief\.
But it wasn’t only the digestive mystery that gave us heartache over my baby\. Even on a freshly emptied system, he was cantankerous\. Mealtimes became misery\. Judson fought when I sat down at the table to join the family for a meal\. I became used to pinning him over my shoulder while I quickly ate, one\-handed\. Except I didn’t become used to it\. I never became accustomed to his fussing\. I learned to do the housework while he napped, as anything other than tending him was impossible when he was awake\.
![An empty hospital room with a bed and seating]()
Church was also a sore spot\. Judson acted worse in any place of activity, but he became unreasonable at church\. I wrestled with him until he fell asleep, usually in time for me to hear the last part of the sermon\.
Fellowship meals were a disaster\. Judson screamed\. He would let no one touch him other than me, and even then, I couldn’t calm him down\. By the time we had fixed plates and fed our little family, I was exhausted and ready to go home\. It seemed like he was afraid of something\. What it was, I couldn’t figure out\.
Gradually I became aware he even acted afraid of Sterling\. Whereas our other boys by this age had learned to recognize Sterling as “more fun than Mommy”, Judson didn’t\. He pulled away from his daddy\. He resisted Sterling’s efforts to make up, clinging to me fiercely\.
And my mother\-instinct, grounded deep beneath the waves of weariness, responded\. In an oxymoron of emotions, I no sooner handed Judson to someone else than his obvious desperation for me tugged at my heart; and I would take him back, nestling him close, calming him down\. It seemed even as he ruled and berated and emptied me, his intense need fulfilled me\. I didn’t understand it\.
“I think you need to get him on a quality probiotic,” my mother\-in\-law suggested\. That sounded good, at least on Sunday evening\. Somehow the weeks passed, and I didn’t find time to locate a quality probiotic\.
“Try a good multivitamin,” another friend advised after observing us during prayer meeting\. “It really could be worms\. I knew this little girl who was totally unreasonable; she just screamed and screamed, and once they treated her for worms, it totally cleared up…”
That sounded good, too\. It also sounded huge\. I didn’t know where to begin research on “worms”, nor did I have the mental space\.
When he was about six months old, we had the worst stint with him: almost a week wherein he cried and cried, refusing to nurse or be comforted\. We requested an anointing by our ministry\. We waited expectantly after the anointing\. Within hours Judson was back to his restless fussing\. We waited a couple more days before updating his pediatrician\. Per her advice, Sterling & I took him to the hospital, where a specialist in pediatric gastroenterology could help us\. It frightened us to take our puzzling, vulnerable baby to the hospital\. “Pray for us,” we requested as we told our families and brotherhood about it\.
By the time we checked in to the hospital, Judson had perked up\. The nurse showed us to a room\. She laid Judson in the cold, caged hospital bed and dressed him in a coarse gown\. While we waited for the doctor to come in, Sterling and I marveled at the change in our son\. He lay in the bed quietly, fingering the rails and looking around\. Not for three minutes, not for 30, but for an hour, finally drifting off to sleep\. This was unheard\-of behavior for Judson\. We looked at each other sheepishly\.
“I feel pretty foolish,” I confessed to Sterling\. “What are the doctors going to think when they find this healthy little fellow? What about the huge hospital bill?” I covered my face with my hands\.
Sterling shrugged, as puzzled as I\. “I think people must have been praying\.”
That was the turning point in Judson’s physical wellbeing\. The hospital released us the next day, signing a bill of good health in Judson’s report\. They couldn’t find anything wrong with our child\. Soon thereafter, his bowel trouble cleared up\. He became regular as the sunrise, all too regular for the lady who hitherto had needed no extra diapers, wipes, or clothes\. We praised the Lord for answered prayer\.
But he still cried\. Months passed while we looked ahead to each accomplishment: maybe when this tooth comes in, maybe when he starts crawling, maybe when he starts walking\. Judson crawled at six months, walked at ten months, ate—or more accurately didn’t eat—table food, and still he fussed\. I walked around with a little “leech” on my skirt some days\. Other days I didn’t walk\. Sterling attempted to hold him while I ate supper, but Judson hated that worse than he hated sitting with me for meals, and I would soon relent to his pleading cries\. About the only time he was content was while he slept\. Most puzzling was his apparent fear of Sterling and his irrational behavior at church\.
“Are we just spoiling him?” I asked Sterling\. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to sit still in church like any other baby\.”
Sterling thought\. “If that was so, then why would he resist fellowship meals so fiercely? That should be a fun time\. Or if you were spoiling him, why wouldn’t he want to do fun things like come outside with me, or eat snacks?”
I didn’t know\. I didn’t think I was spoiling him, but I couldn’t tell\. I thought even a spoiled baby should enjoy being away from its mother occasionally\. Not Judson\. He rode around with me continually, one hand clutching my neckline, the other hand pushing himself away to see where we were headed\. If he didn’t like our direction, he often attempted to steer me by surprisingly strong lunging\. His anxious, overly alert actions puzzled me\. Perhaps something more was wrong, something relating to his nervous system\.
“You know, when we took in my niece, she had bonding issues,” one sister told me over fellowship meal\. Judson had his open mouth turned away from her, so we were actually visiting over the hubbub in the hall\. “She had never bonded with anyone due to her poor home situation\. I took to carrying her around with me everywhere I went until she bonded with me\. The way Judson acts insecure, even when he is with you, makes me think he hasn’t bonded\. Perhaps that’s why he panics whenever you put him down\.” Maybe\. But where and when would he have gotten bonding issues?
“Did he have a traumatic birth?” the lady inquired\.
I thought it over\. “Well, no…” I glanced back at the scary episode in Mexico\. Perhaps that had undone the natural bonding process\. Or maybe the time in the hospital\. Maybe his stint with whooping cough as an eight\-month\-old\. As these moments scrolled through my mind, I realized Judson’s babyhood really had been difficult\. Maybe there was good reason his emotional balance was off kilter\. He did seem insecure now\. Frightened\. On “survival mode” all the time, me being his dubious source of momentary safety\. If he did have bonding issues, then I would have been doing the wrong thing his entire baby life\. I repeatedly tried to let other people, like his grandmothers, hold him, hoping he would realize he was fine with them\. It didn’t work\. Talking with this lady caused me to look doubtfully at my tactics, worried I had hurt Judson worse by doing this\. At least carrying him around all the time would be free\.
I procured a baby carrier and took to wearing him as I worked\. He loved it, but my back did not\. I soon gave that practice up, too, after no hopeful signs of bonding occurred\. If my spirit was going to be worn down by caring for this child, at least my back didn’t need to be\.
We tried discipline\. After all, we were working on raising two other boys, and discipline was not a new thing in our home\. It didn’t seem we had done anything different with Judson than we did with the other boys, but the results were certainly different\. Judson responded with uncontrollable terror\. The soft infant cry was long gone\. We were unsure how to teach him to be happy in Sterling’s care, for discipline only seemed to heighten his distress\. And how does one teach a child to play away from his mother? After a few exhausting sessions at church, wherein he refused to respond, we began to feel a spanking wasn’t the tool to get through to him\. Indeed, it felt we never got through to him\. But if a spanking didn’t work, how else could we teach him? I recalled seeing other mothers clamp their hands over their toddler’s mouth to teach them that wailing didn’t bring the desired result\. Perhaps he needed to be taught how to stop crying\. I tried it for a while\.
Shortly after Judson turned one, his behavior reached a terrible climax\. He was big enough to refuse direction or pacification\. Discipline seemed to make him go crazy\. Finally, I reached for a book about child development\. One description on a condition called retained fear reflex described our child exactly\. With simple therapeutic practice, the book promised, we could correct this\. However, we would need an expert in this field to work with us, teaching us the therapy\.
“What do you think?” I asked Sterling after sharing the book’s information with him\.
His face looked unsure\. “I don’t know,” he pondered aloud\. “This isn’t what I would have been taught about raising a child\. I always thought love, prayer, and consistent discipline were the keys to normal childcare\. We have no proof other than fussiness that something is wrong with Judson\. I hesitate to label him\.”
I did, too\. While we both acknowledged the special needs of some children, and the gift of specially trained caregivers, we didn’t want to hastily tack an excusing name on Judson’s behavior\.
But the exhaustion of caring for him rolled back in like a fog the next day\. We talked about the retained fear reflex again\. We’d tried the love, definitely\. We’d tried prayer, at least in a measure\. The consistent discipline was another matter\. Unlike our other boys, it didn’t seem to work with Judson\. According to the text on retained fear reflexes, discipline could be accomplishing the opposite of its intention\.
“You may call and get an appointment with the therapist,” Sterling decided\. “It’s worth a try\. She’s a Christian, too, and isn’t suggesting anything beyond physical exercises to retrain the brain\.”
So I did\. The therapist lived eight hours away, which was nothing to brush aside\. But the promise of help seemed worth the drive to us\. In the meantime, I shared with a few people what we were thinking\. A few of them promised to pray for us\. My mother\-in\-law offered a children’s supplement for calming and focus\. I also made it to the health food store and procured a probiotic and multivitamin\. The time for the therapist appointment drew close\.
“I don’t see how we can go,” Sterling said a few days before\. “Our weeks have been super busy, and we are all tired\. I can’t see how we can fit in a two\-day road trip just for one short appointment\. But I guess we’ll have to\. If it helps Judson, that will be worth it\.”
Tension tugged at my neck, too, just thinking about the trip\. That week we made a concentrated effort on Judson’s training\. We worked with him firmly, attempting to bring his will into line with ours\. He despised it\. Any time Sterling took him, he reacted violently\. I set aside times each day to sit with him on the sofa, holding his hands and requiring silence, with middling results\.
The Sunday before we needed to head out to the appointment, we accepted a dinner invitation to a home we were not very familiar with\. I spent the time wrestling with my small son, swallowing mouthfuls of pride and comfort while doing so\. Meanwhile, Sterling talked with the men about our struggles with Judson, referencing the idea of his fearfulness and the route of therapy\.
“Have you ever thought about how Judson must feel when you discipline him in the way I observed your wife do earlier?” one of the men questioned gently\. “I noticed the expression in Judson’s eyes as she restrained him, covering his mouth\. He looked terrified\. If you really think he has this issue with fear, perhaps you should try looking at discipline from his point of view\. One of our children also responded unreasonably to our regular methods of training until I began to describe to them what I was about to do…” With discretion, this brother shared an experience with their child\.
Sterling was stunned and blessed by the gentle insight\. The men shared a little more\. It was as if we had been too close to the situation to fully see it, and the Lord had given us perspective from a wise onlooker\. We agreed to cancel the childhood development appointment and rethink our training methods\. We decided to try clearly explaining to Judson our expectations and the consequences of disobedience\. Instead of restraining him, demanding surrender to our desires, we agreed to use repeated small switches to reprimand his willfulness\.
“I’m going to take this week to completely focus on mealtimes,” Sterling decided\. “Of course, that means you will take the brunt of this, since you feed Judson two out of three meals\. But I will try to take the heavier load\. I’m also going to fast and pray for answers for this child\. We’ve tried to train him at mealtimes before but have never stuck it out more than a day or two\. There’s always ‘something going on’ and we slack off\. But this is important\. Too important to keep letting ‘life’ interfere\.”
I agreed with him\. My spirit rose with hope and rest in this decision\. Something about the therapy route had not seemed correct, yet we had been desperate for an answer\.
That week was tough\. The other boys ate alone while I spent extended time at the table with Judson\. He screamed at my clear expectation of sitting still and eating\. He writhed, he gagged, he cried\. I prayed and switched\. At supper time, Sterling took over\. Judson resisted this still more wildly\. The first evening it was three hours before our child obeyed and swallowed a small amount of food for his father\. Several more evenings passed with similar time frames\. Sterling worked with Judson gently and firmly, speaking to him, spanking, holding\. I tried to block out the sound\. My commitment to stand behind my husband in this all tussled with my emotions, but I didn’t give in this time when Judson looked at me with begging eyes\.
By the end of the first week, Judson showed steps of improvement\. He stopped crying at mealtimes\. He sat in his highchair, eating a few bites for us obediently\. With a comically pathetic expression, he would offer Sterling and I each one of his little paddies to hold while he ate, as if that gave him courage\. We continued with intentional training in this area alone\. By the end of the second week, his behavior all around had improved\. He began to let loose of me, seeking entertainment on his own, toddling around the house with happy babbling\. I watched in amazement while he did normal baby things: exploring the toy box, climbing on sofas, dabbling in toilets\. He ventured outside alone, soon learning to play with balls and trucks\. I stopped giving him the various supplements since he was doing so well\.
Then one gladsome day when the boys chorused “Daddy’s home\!”, Judson squealed in delight\. The next evening when Sterling arrived, he squealed again, this time happily heading for the door\. I opened it for him\. He toddled to the truck where Sterling was\. Sterling carried him into the house\. Judson looked at me triumphantly from his daddy’s arms with a burbling comment on the situation\. He made no move for me\. We knew then Sterling had won his heart\. From that time until now, he has been a different child\.
Now we watch him with delight\. His little countenance is bright and beaming, his eyes clear and content\. He is evidently secure\. He has become a joy to have around, charming our family with his toddling antics\. Not only has he bonded with Sterling, he has widened his circle of acceptance to others as well\. He interacts well with his brothers\. He responds reasonably to training in other areas\. We love him, this third little son of ours\.
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So what really was wrong with Judson? I think he had a physical abnormality in the first months of his life, causing him discomfort\. His was a rocky babyhood\. In retrospect, I see that spoiling him crept in unawares\.
Somewhere in the transition between need and demand, I began to cater to his little self\. It was sneakily gradual\. Incredibly early on, he obviously realized that crying controlled me\. I couldn’t see it\. We couldn’t see it\. We couldn’t see it until after we began to take back the parental control in his training\. We still don’t know when it happened or how\. But this we do know: God’s way works\.
Prayer works\. The rod of correction works\. A wife standing behind her husband as he disciplines his child in love works\. In a plan that defies human reasoning, let alone worldly teaching, the process of molding Judson’s will firmly bonded him to his father\. This created security in his small world\. Sterling is in charge\. Judson is at rest and safe in this\. It removed from him the burden of controlling his world\. He is free to relate to either of us, free from the tyrannical demands of his small selfish nature\. Something about the clarity of his daddy being the authority in his life has also established my authority over him\.
Over two years have passed since Sterling began turning Judson’s heart and will towards his own\. Today, Judson is a joyful, well\-adjusted boy\. He sits quietly in church and devotions; he enjoys fellowship meals and his friends; he eagerly spends time with either Daddy or Mommy\. Stubbornness, anxiety, and mealtimes are three areas that require daily diligence in training him—more diligence than our previous two children needed, combined\! But the good news is Judson responds well to discipline\. Some days it feels like we aren’t getting anywhere until we look back at how far our son has truly come\. We praise the Lord for His intervention in our lives by using a perceptive brother to speak into the situation\. God’s Word, God’s way, has the keys for raising a happy child\.
## Magazine citation
- [A newborn baby’s hand holding an adult’s finger](): Unsplash\.com
- [An empty hospital room with a bed and seating](): Unsplash\.com