Diagnosis: Type 1 Diabetes

Today Ann Voskamp tells us how her thirteen-year-old son reacted when the doctor told him “You have Type 1 Diabetes. And to live, you will need insulin 4-6 injections a day for the rest of your life.”

Malakai pushes himself up in the hospital bed and he tells us something I will never forget, sunken half moons under his eyes:

“Looks like God knew my story was going to be bit different…. and that’s sorta cool.”

He smiles quietly, nods like he’s telling places in me of forgotten things.

“And this hard thing’s going to make me rely on Him more —- and that’s even more cool.”

I nod. Yeah, Son — cool.
yeah —

Never fear the moments you imagine will freeze you: Unexpected blasts of cold can be what draws you nearer to the flame of His love.Unexpected blasts of cold can be what draws you nearer to the flame of His love.

Darn the cold. Thank God for the fire. Welcome to The Club of those braving the cold blasts in a thousand daily ways.

“He’s real —-“ the kid’s nodding his head, “I’ve never felt God so real.”

I wanna tell the kid — That’s what happens when you get pushed out of the shallow end. When you find yourself in the real deep end — that’s when you know He’s real. Adios playing and splashing in the shallow end. Live where you can’t touch bottom — swallow God.

“I can see that, Mom —“ He’s smiling. “The hardest things can be the greatest gift. I can see that.”

The kid’s seeing things. Things I forget, things that can feel like a mirage at times for me, the kid’s feeling solid… things that I’ve let slip through my rope-burned fingers, the kid’s holding on to like a lifeline in his brave hand.

Kai pulls up his shirt, aims the needle at his own skin, injects his belly with 21 units of insulin, dabs away the bit of blood: Stay in this moment: You’re safe in this moment because God is in the present — I AM.

Malakai grins over at me, needle still in hand: 

“I am glad — I am glad God gave me joy.”

The kid’s courage draws more attention that his complaining ever would. I want to write it down on my hand to remember: Brave joy is the magnet for everything you need. The boy knows things I’m learning.

I sit on the edge of his bed, trying to read the kid’s eyes, my heart trying to braille-read what his heart’s really saying by the way his eyes make my heart feel.

The kid’s got no idea that The New Normal means heading down to city’s Children Pediatric Hospital.

Where our farm boy will sit with his needles in the waiting room at paediatric oncology with rows of brave kids with bald gleaming heads sitting on their mamas laps like strings of courageous pearls and you’ll look into Mamas eyes and smile at their warrior babies and you’ll be loving The Club of the Broken with all your broken heart.

The New Normal means 42 injections in his stomach of insulin every week, 56 needle pricks in the fingers, then milking his finger for drops of blood for test strips that will tell him how much sugar runs through his willing veins.

The New Normal means a life of being vigilantes, of charting numbers, of thinking your heart might bust with loving all the suffering in The Club and it turns out every single one of us, in one tender, hurting way or other, are in The Club.

The kid doesn’t need to have any idea of this — because the kid knows he only needs this: this moment’s grace.

And I nod at his grinning brave.

The grace that’s in this moment is your mana.

Wish for the past and you drink poison.

Worry about the future and you eat fire.

Stay in this moment and you eat the mana needed for now.

When I stand out in the hallway while the Farmer helps Kai and his IV pole to the washroom, when I’m standing there reading through the kidney, heart, and nerve issues surrounding Type 1 Diabetes, reading about how someday, a mandatory year or so down the road, maybe doctors will let us think about an insulin pump and how maybe the road will smooth out a happy bit then — and how we’ll stir pots of chili with one hand and give insulin injections with the other and this new normal will be like old hat — when I’m standing there refusing to be sucked into into the worry burn of the future, I read:

“Type 1 diabetes, which is only 5% of those diagnosed with diabetes, may reduce the normal lifespan by 10-15 years. Approximately 1 in 20 younger people who have Type 1 Diabetes die in their sleep, what is generally referred to as death in bed syndrome.”

Oh — that can change — it doesn’t have to mean 10 less years.

Oh — that doesn’t have to define or mean much of anything — a 1 in 20 chance he won’t wake, death in bed syndrome.

I stay that night at the hospital, watch Kai sleep in a hospital bed, watch the snow fall outside his window during the middle of the night hours.

And I think of 10 full spins around the sun, 10 more puffs over birthday candles, 10 more first days of spring and how March sun feels on your face. I want him to wake, I want him to wake every morning, I want him to have those full 10.

I want all the hurting and brave in The Club That is All of Us, to beat back the odds, the dark, the fear, the pain, I want all the fighters in The Club That is All of Us who swing Hope at despair, who pummel worry with worship, who make every move with courage while everybody else moves on —-

Read more and view Ann's photos of her son here.










It falls like fresh snow in the middle of the night, like the steady beat of the heart, like the rhythm of our being:

This life of ours is not our own — He owns our life.
This life of ours is not our own — His life is our own.
This life of ours is not our own — We are His own.

And I turn from the night window and the falling snow, to our boy sleeping in a hospital bed the second day of the new year:

There’s The Club of the Broken who ask: So what if we suffer — here is not our home.

There’s The Club of the Broken who believe: Suffering is a gift He entrusts and He can be trusted to make this suffering into a gift.Suffering is a gift He entrusts and He can be trusted to make this suffering into a gift.

There’s the Club of the Broken who live it because there is no other way:

Just stay in the moment. The grace in this moment is your mana. Stay in this moment and you eat the mana needed for now.

I watch how the kid’s eyelashes tremble a bit in sleep. Even in dreams, we can’t deny that getting to live is holy ground.

Come morning, the snow gives way to the light, like the hope of a lifting shroud.





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Found in: Children | Doing Thanks | Eucharistic Living | Faith | Family | Gratitude | Hope | Peace | Restoring Wonder | Seeing God | trust | 01.20.2016



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