Lessons learnt from the Wiggles...

Ava's worried face!

Yesterday afternoon, after getting the girls up from their naps, we were sorting ourselves out in the bathroom when I began to sing a "Wiggles" song from a DVD Ava and I had seen somewhere. I have no idea where it came from, or what possessed me to start singing it, but the minute I did, Ava, who had been down on the floor giggling with her little sister, stopped in her tracks and looked up at me with worry lines written all over her face.

"Heidi ist krank?" she questioned.

Heidi is sick? I was suddenly the one stopped in my tracks... What on earth had made her say that? The light dawned... The Wiggles DVD, the one with the song I had been singing, had been leant to us by one of the play specialists at the hospital when we were admitted there. Ava had watched it once... She had been 21 months when she saw it... But that one song clearly took her back there. My heart broke a litte bit as I realised she had understood. She had been so little and yet she had understood what was happening. All those weeks of agony, of separation from her as i sat by the cotside of her baby sister, and I had clung to the fact that my girls would never remember it, and yet here was our two year old, her face covered in concern, reminded of her sister's illness by a Wiggles song.

Ava in visiting us in hospital in May

I jolted myself out of my thoughts as I realised she was still standing there, her little questioning face waiting for an answer.

An answer? What is the answer to that question?

Heidi is well. She looks fine. She is a rosy-cheeked bundle of giggles who is hitting all her milestones. She is bubbly and happy and full of beans. But her heart is sick... No, her arteries are sick... No, ONE artery is sick. Oh, how far we have come! And yet I ache at the reminder that all is not as it should be with her little body. The medication, our daily reminder. So how do you explain all that to a two-year-old?

"Heidi is much better now, Ava. She doesn't have to go to hospital, but yes, her heart is still sick."

"Ich bete für Heidi, Mama"

Our gorgeous bubba Heidi yesterday

And with that, she folded her little hands, and right there and then, in the dappled light of the bathroom, she prayed...

"Dear God. Thank you for Heidi's heart. Please help Heidi's heart. In Jesus name, Amen."

Wow. A theology lesson from a two year old.

I can be grateful for Heidi's heart. God has brought so much healing already, more than we could've hoped. Yesterday, I was reminded to be thankful by my two-year-old. It is possible to be thankful for the nightmare, thankful for the tears, thankful for the agony of those hospital weeks. Thankful for the journey he has decided to take our little family on.

So, God? Thankyou for Heidi's heart, dilated as that artery is. Help me to be grateful.

Oh, and thank you, Wiggles.

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