By Melissa DeGroot
June 9, 2023, is a date seared into my soul.
My one and only son, Knox, had lost fifteen pounds in a span of two weeks. He was frail. He was going to the bathroom constantly. Then, he started telling me his eyesight was blurry and that he thought he needed new glasses—even though we had just been to the optometrist a few months earlier. He was sleepy and sluggish. His eyes looked glossy.
Something was clearly wrong. But I had no idea what.
Was he anemic? Was he going through a growth spurt? Was there some vitamin deficiency? Like any concerned mother with access to Google, I was running through every possibility I could think of.
Finally, and thanks be to God, my husband and I had enough sense to take him to urgent care.
The doctor took one look at the situation and immediately sent us to the emergency room. Then, he was taken by ambulance to the Pediatric ICU.
Knox was in full-blown diabetic ketoacidosis.
He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
The New Normal
I knew almost nothing about Type 1 diabetes. I had heard of it, of course, but I didn’t understand what it actually meant to live with it. No one in my immediate family had it. There was one relative on Adam’s side of the family who had it (and died from its complications more than 40 years ago), but Type 1 had never been something on our radar.
Suddenly, it was something we would think about every. single. day.
To say the diagnosis was traumatic is an understatement.
Knox spent a week in the hospital. I slept and held vigil on the little uncomfortable couch beside his bed while he was poked and prodded, hooked up to IVs, subjected to constant glucose checks, and given insulin as the doctors worked to stabilize his body.
And then we were sent home to begin what everyone calls a “new normal.”
Except it wasn’t.
Those of you who live with Type 1—or have a child who does—know the deal. From the moment of diagnosis, everything changes.
Food changes.
Sleep changes.
Sports. School. Travel changes.
Even the simple act of sending your child to bed changes.
For months, Adam and I woke up at 3:00am to check Knox’s blood sugar. Even now, more than three years later, a glucose monitor alarm in the middle of the night can still send one of us scrambling out of bed. A dangerous low isn’t something you can just ignore.
Current technology has given people with Type 1 diabetes exceptional tools to manage the disease and live incredibly full lives. I am profoundly grateful for them.
But the disease is still there.
And for a mother, that reality has been difficult to accept.
Unexpected Grief
After Knox’s diagnosis, all three of us grieved.
Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Eventually, some measure of acceptance.
Watching my son go through those emotions, too, broke my heart. I couldn’t take the injections for him. I couldn’t make his pancreas begin producing insulin again. I couldn’t guarantee that he would never experience a dangerous low.
I couldn’t fix it.
That helplessness nudged another wound I had carried for years.
Knox is my one and only child—not because we planned it that way. I spent years carrying the sadness and inadequacy that can accompany secondary infertility.
My body didn’t give me another child. And now I couldn’t fix the body of the only child I had.
We parents spend so much time trying to protect our children that we can almost convince ourselves that it is actually within our absolute power to do so. Then something happens that reminds us how little control we really have.
I could count carbohydrates, calculate insulin, advocate at school, educate coaches, pack emergency supplies, stay awake at night, pray, worry, research, prepare and watch.
But I could not heal my son.
Why Him?
Knox and I have talked about this. Why did God allow this? Why Type 1? Why him?
I don’t know.
And while it hits my pride at times, I have become more comfortable saying those three words.
I don’t know.
I don’t want to give my son some tidy, rose-colored answer God hasn’t given us. I don’t want to tell him that God gave him diabetes because He knew Knox was strong enough to handle it.
Because there have been days when Knox wasn’t strong enough. Neither was I.
And perhaps that is precisely where the faith we confess becomes all the more comforting.
God never promised we would be strong enough for everything that happens to us.
He has promised us Christ, who is the strongest.
In this fallen creation, bodies fail. Pancreases stop working. Women experience infertility. Children get sick. Parents discover there are things they simply cannot fix.
The one true faith doesn’t say that suffering itself is good.
Death is still an enemy. Disease is still part of a creation groaning under the consequences of sin.
And though suffering carries meaning of epic, spiritual proportions, it does not get the final word.
Jesus, who took it on the cross, died, and rose for us, does.
Not Mine to Save
This is the lesson I keep learning as a mother.
Knox was never ultimately mine to save.
God revealed that truth to me when I was young, even if I wasn’t fully prepared to accept it in every stage or context of my life.
On January 15, 2011, when Knox was just days old, God gave me something to cling to that would become infinitely more precious twelve years later.
Knox was baptized.
Water and God’s Word were poured over my tiny son, and the Lord placed His name upon him: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Long before I knew the words continuous glucose monitor, insulin-to-carb ratio, ketones, or diabetic ketoacidosis, God knew Knox.
Before I ever heard an alarm warning me that my son’s blood sugar was falling, God had already made a promise to him.
Before I discovered how helpless I was to keep my child safe, Christ had already done what I could never do.
He had died for him.
He had risen for him.
And in Baptism, He had claimed him.
My job was never to be Knox’s savior.
He already has One.
Now
Today, Knox manages much of his Type 1 himself. His teachers understand. His coaches understand. His teammates know. Whether he’s sitting in class or playing hockey, there are people around him who know what is happening and how to help.
God has provided people. He has provided medicine and technology.
He has provided other parents of children with Type 1 who understand the strange world we entered that June day.
And He has slowly given our family something resembling normalcy again.
Not the old normal. A different one.
I still wish I could take Type 1 diabetes away. I still wish I could have given him brothers and sisters.
But God is teaching me that motherhood was never about my ability to control the outcome. It was always about stewardship.
This child was entrusted to Adam and me for a time. We love him, feed him, teach him, protect him, advocate for him, laugh with him, worry about him, watch him play hockey, wake up when the glucose monitor screams, and do every ordinary thing parents do.
But ultimately, we entrust him to the One who loves him more than we ever could.
June 9, 2023, taught me how little control I have over my son’s life.
January 15, 2011, reminds me who does.
My one and only son belongs to Christ.
And when I cannot fix what is broken, when I cannot control what happens next, and when I cannot protect him from every suffering this fallen world may bring, our Lord returns me to that promise.
Knox is baptized.
Christ has claimed him.
I often parody-sing Stevie Wonder’s line, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered… He’s YOURS!” as a humorous, yet true reminder.
And that is a comfort no diagnosis can take away.
