One day a mom was calling me crying from a hospital; the topic was tube feeding. Her child struggles with
swallowing, they were sent to the hospital, and tube feeding came up as an option. Vince spent the first year of his live eating like this. I stuck a little tube down his nose, through the pharynx and all the way to his stomach, and I injected the food into this tube. After we talked about the technical details (squirting food with a syringe into the mouth, treatment of the mouth with the Dévény Method, etc), I asked her if we could pray together. She said yes. In a second the Holy Spirit gave us a very powerful prayer, and with its help we found ourselves in the caring hands of God through my earlier hospital experiences. This mom in the hospital, me in my car in a parking lot, but there was neither time nor space between us.
Nourishment. Isn’t it important? If we don’t get it, our body signals right away. Our soul is the same way! It needs to be fed, but it matters what that nourishment is! In the hospital we can lose hope very easily, because we see
suffering in our own lives, and there are many others around us who are waiting to be healed. Our eyes can easily trap us, because the devil makes us see the difficulties. But we have a choice! We can decide to look at something else! I have already learned that when hardships come across in a hospital I should always put them into Jesus’ caring arms, who puts peace in my heart and then brings solutions into our physical reality as well.
„For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.͟ 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
I remember when we were coming home from Vince’s spinal surgery from Germany, Vince was unfortunately not strong enough, and he needed oxygen. So we took him straight to the hospital. At the ICU they gave him oxygen, and the next day they transferred us to the Department of Internal Medicine, so Vince could get stronger. At that time he needed steam inhalation, because the German doctors helped his breathing by having the air blown in go through a hot water vapor system. I knew that in this department they didn’t have a machine like that; there is a big contrast between the hospital conditions in Germany and in Hungary. At night I prayed to God to give us a solution, because Vince needed the warm steam. The devil of course was well prepared and was ready to use all he has to make my eyes only see the difficulties. For example: the oxygen reducer fell out of the crumbling wall when I tried to start it; the nurses could only give us a cold steam vaporizer; I could only shower by asking to be let into a neighboring room, because there was no shower in the hallway. The doctors started a course of antibiotics, which was a minimum of 10 days, and since it was already the middle of December, having Christmas at home became a question. I got food poisoning from the hospital food; I had a fever and diarrhea. By that time we had been through a 7.5-hour spinal surgery in Germany, stayed in the hospital for several days there, paid rent for a month, which was necessary to be close to the hospital in case anything happened after the surgery, but Vince was weak the whole time, so he was in bed there as well.
So there are plenty of difficulties, but I deliberately did not pay attention to what I saw, because I knew I would only get hopelessness and the feeling of death. So I prayed instead, and I asked my friends to do the same. 
Then one morning when I turned Vince over, I remembered that I could warm salty water, that way the inhaler would produce warm steam. I floundered to the microwave oven in the hallway in my pajamas, with disheveled hair, ready for action. On the way back a nurse stopped me, and I mentioned to her my plan. She told me that they had a machine they had received a week before that can produce warm steam, but no one had ever needed to use it, so it was not set up, and actually nobody understood why it was there. Around 2:30 in the morning we were ready to start the machine up together, but we didn’t succeed. In the morning a nurse came who attended the training for the machine, and a little bit later I was watching warm steam going through Vince’s trach with a heart filled with gratitude.
Can you image how exhausted I was? I sit on the chairbed, I pray, I have no strength at all, I think about God͛s word, and the machine I am asking for is on the other side of the wall. Heavenly Father, thank You for Your provision!
A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. John 16:21-24
I often pray with other moms, and I notice that we don’t have to be in a hospital to become this hopeless. Everyday life proves plenty of reasons! But it matters what I feed my soul with. It matters what words I allow in through my ears, words others tell me, what movies, videos or Facebook posts I look at, etc. It is crucial to guard the gates of our senses with a padlock and only open them when there is true nourishment for our souls, the kind that gives strength.
One day I prayed with my prayer partner, and we received a Bible verse that summarizes how easily we can
poison our souls. We don͛t need to go to the hospital, it is enough to be making lunch at home while our child is at the kindergarten and take only a moment to look at Facebook and look at others͛ happy photos. But the same thing can happen at work when we are having coffee with a colleague and all we hear is what a great vacation she͛s just had and she͛s come home with many wonderful experiences. These moments are carefully crafted attacks from the devil, and their purpose is to say one thing: I am supposed to have the kind of happiness that others encounter. At the hospital we get this in an even more condensed way. The only hopeful thought in my head is just to get out of here already so I can buy a balloon for my child for May 1st (Labor Day in Hungary; a family day with picnics, festivals, balloons and cotton candy). The devil can only think in schemes; he has got an exact plan for making a father͛s life difficult or the everyday of a single woman, etc. Moms, whose children are completely healthy and read my blogs, tell me about the same hardships I experience. Only the characters and the theatrical backdrop are different, but the feeling is the same! Why is this happening to me? Why can͛t I have a little bit of happiness?
The answer is simple: our souls need to be supplied with the right kind of nourishment. It is important to look in the direction that carries the complete truth! Even if we go through obstacles, let’s not allow our eyes to deceive us! There is life in God’s word, and through that we receive wisdom! We can clear our minds by reading a Bible verse and pondering about it during the day. If we don’t take this sustenance, then the desires of life take us which we will never be able to satisfy.
Here is the Bible verse we last received with my prayer partner. During reading my friend said the following:
Verocs, this verse is about the Internet, and God saw this more than two thousand years ago and wrote to us about it.͛ Of course I love the Internet as well, it makes our lives easier, and I am thankful for it! But it is important to sort through the topics, because our souls can only get nourished by life-giving contents, through our eyes…
͞But mark this:
There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy 3:1-7
