I’m Ellen Grissom, and this is how God’s been enabling me to live deeply. 

“When our nine-year-old son, Ethan, was just minutes away from death, we felt God holding us close. We were stationed at Andrews Air Force Base and lived in a small house we loved, but the military decided we needed to move. I was resistant, arguing and digging my heels in, but they insisted. So we ended up in another base house 15 minutes away and right across the street from the base hospital’s emergency room. At that time, it seemed like a busy, noisy spot. Ethan even made a joke saying, ‘Oh, look, I can just drag my little wheezing body across the street to the emergency room and y’all don’t even have to come!’ We all laughed along with him. I didn’t realize that this move was really all part of God’s plan. Ethan had asthma, not just the occasional wheezing, but the kind that sometimes required emergency room visits. One night, we were asleep upstairs when I suddenly woke up with a jolt (completely unlike me) and hopped out of bed, flicked on the overhead light, and opened the door. Looking out, I saw Ethan trying to drag his body up the stairs. He gasped out, ‘I can’t breathe.’ He was experiencing the worst asthma exacerbation of his life. I woke my husband, Del. He threw on clothes, scooped up Ethan, got in the car, and we rushed across the street. It was as if God had placed us so close to the hospital and awakened me for this exact moment. When we got to the ER, they immediately took Ethan back. After a bit, he wasn’t improving, so they decided to Medivac him to Children’s Hospital. At one point, a Children’s nurse asked me how we remained so calm, which was good for the patient. I told her, ‘We’ve had ER visits before and we’ve had to come to terms with it all. We’ve decided if God gives us Ethan for nine years, we’ll be thankful for those nine years. He’s God’s child first, and we were blessed to be his parents.’ She looked at us with a stunned expression. That’s the truth that sustained us. I had emailed everyone in our homeschool loop to pray. I felt covered and we knew God was with us. Psalm 31:15 echoed in our heads: ‘Our times are in His hands.’

Ethan spent a week in intensive care. One morning, the doctor told us if we’d lived 10 minutes further from the hospital, Ethan would have died. That’s when I realized how God had been orchestrating every detail. Moving us closer to the ER? That wasn’t just a random order from the military; that was God’s protection over Ethan’s life. He was so close to death, but God kept him with us. As parents, it’s easy to feel like everything is on us, that we have to control every detail of our children’s lives and smooth out all the rough spots. But through Ethan’s struggles, I learned the most loving thing I could do was to let go- as James said once, ‘resign from being the CEO.’ We can’t control everything that happens to our children; they are in God’s hands. Even now, years later, I still remind myself of this truth. Ethan is 27 and doing well health-wise, but he isn’t walking with the Lord. That breaks my heart, and I pray for him every day. But I can’t let that rob me of my joy. You cannot make the happiness of your children critical to your happiness and joy in life. If you have Christ, then that truth supersedes everything else. You’re going to still feel that pain, you’re still going to feel that loss and that hurt, but something greater is there, and that is knowing Christ. That’s a deep joy. We have a very good relationship with Ethan. He comes over, prays, and has dinner with us. One time when he was here, I pointed out, ‘Ethan, God brought you back all those years ago. He kept you alive. When you went through this hard time, how can you doubt God?’ His reply just chilled me to the bone: ‘The doctors did that.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s fair, but who guides the hands of the doctors? Do you know how many prayers were going up for you then?’ It just doesn’t phase him. But we love Ethan so much and just have to speak into him gently. I guess that would be my advice for any other parent praying for an adult child to know the Lord. We do our best, and we trust God with the rest. He is always at work, even when we can’t see it. And no matter what happens, He is always good. Even when He takes us through hard times, it’s ultimately so we can grow closer to Him.”