Astonishing

After Taylor sang the song, "Astonishing" at the high school musical auditions this summer, the director said, “Taylor, YOU are astonishing!” And truly he is so right . . . though he really had no idea just how astonishing Taylor is . . . for Taylor is a living miracle. Her entire life has been . . . astonishing!

Born at one pound and thirteen ounces, Taylor required a chest tube for a collapsed lung, full respirator, and 100% oxygen at birth. Her lungs were so fragile as an infant that we could hear her wheezing across the room. She received nebulizer treatments every two hours around the clock for the first year of her life. It was a scary time. We breathed prayers as desperately as she breathed air – and little by litte she got stronger. Astonishing!

Taylor’s breathing issues never seemed to stop her. Before she was one, she climbed everything. She ran almost before she could walk, and she was known for her joyous laughter that sounded like a lamb bleating as her breaths exhaled in short spurts. Astonishing!

As soon as she learned to form words, she sang, and by the time she was two, she was playing melodies on the piano by ear to accompany her tunes. We watched in amazement. God was still in the miracle business. Astonishing!

This week those lungs, once so fragile, will power the breath behind Taylor’s beautiful voice as she sings the words out across the high school auditorium, “I have to see if I can be . . . astonishing.” And I wonder . . . long ago . . . in the neon tal intensive care unit during those dark days when I was praying, “God, breathe, breathe, breathe healing into those lungs” . . . did God smile as he thought of how astonishing Taylor would be? How astonishing his miracle would be? Simply . . . astonishing!

So if you come to the show, forgive my tears, for every time Taylor sings that song I think of how grateful I am for the astonishing miracle of Taylor, and my heart is overjoyed with gratitude. Living life with the miracle of Taylor is truly . . . Astonishing.