Good Friday talk about God’s blessings

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Good Friday, among Christians, is a time of suffering, but also a time of coming redemption. Those themes were also prevalent when Stuart Wyatt spoke of his son Noah’s health problems over the past decade.

Wyatt, who is a loan officer for First Bank of Berne and also a pastor for Good Shepherd Church of the Nazarene, spoke of the early birth of Noah on July 14, 2002, and how it wasn’t long after his son’s birth that he and his wife realized that their son had problems. First of all, Noah didn’t cry after he was born. The lack of sound was explained by a hole in the baby’s windpipe, while he also had a hole in his back as well.

Shortly after his birth, Noah was on his way to Columbus Children’s Hospital for emergency treatment.

“And my wife and I in a room, in the maternity ward, with no baby,” Wyatt said.

Both Wyatts felt that Noah’s birth was a miracle to them, since Stuart came from a big family and they had been married for some time without any children.

So, even though Noah was facing considerable medical challenges, the Wyatts were happy that God had granted their wish for a child.

“They thought we were in denial,” Wyatt said of the doctors and nurses who were watching them rejoice over Noah’s birth. “In the midst of this, with no son, no hope, that in the midst of that, we were praising the Lord for His goodness and for delivering to us this boy for which we had prayed.”

A shunt placed in Noah’s brain relieved the pressure of fluid on his brain, but the problems had pinched off a nerve that controls the vocal chords.

Wyatt described the problems and surgeries Noah underwent to correct his challenging conditions, but the one problem that wouldn’t go away was the baby’s inability to make sound because of vocal chord paralysis.

Noah also couldn’t breathe on his own, which was a much more serious challenge to his survival. A tracheostomy was finally performed to allow him to breathe better, but he was still on a ventilating machine when he came home from the hospital more than a month later.

A trip to a specialist in February 2003 was to see how Noah’s vocal chord paralysis was coming.

“We had prayed that the Lord would open up and allow his vocal chords to move, so this ‘trach’ could be gone … that we could hear our son’s voice for the first time,” Wyatt said.

While things didn’t go exactly as planned during that doctor’s visit, their son did take his first breath on his own.

“I started crying, my wife started crying, the nurse started crying, the doctor started crying, the people in the waiting room started crying,” Wyatt said of the emotional moment.

Noah’s vocal chord recovery culminated in 2011 when the then-9-year-old boy underwent an operation that allowed his tracheostomy to be closed.

But a final challenge remained when Noah had to have an operation to replace the shunt implanted in his brain eight years before.

The bright-eyed 9-year-old came through that operation without a hitch and was present at the breakfast with his mother and two siblings.

Wyatt concluded his talk by speaking of Good Friday and what it means to Christians. He spoke of how Jesus prayed that he would not have to be crucified and suffer, but how he also said “Thy will be done.”

He also talked about his belief that Jesus also prayed for him and “each and every one of us” 2,000 years ago.

“The message of Good Friday is that the Lord had given Him his petition … His Heavenly Father’s will had been done … salvation has come … Easter morning will arrive and we, too, can have life everlasting,” Wyatt said.

A special community Good Friday service was also held later Friday at First United Methodist Church.