The Miracle of Brandon
I have never met Brandon. In fact I really didn’t know him. But Brandon has shown me a miracle in my life, and he has done the same for others.
Brandon
So who is Brandon, and what is his miracle? I first encountered Brandon on August 3rd of this year I met him in an email. My sister-in-law Tina from Colorado began sending out emails to all her friends to ask for prayers for this young boy by the name of Brandon Blakely. My wife got the email, and being the loving, caring an prayerful person that she is, she began to forward it on to all of her friends. Of course, I got the email, and here is what I learned:
Brandon was born with a bad heart and had a heart transplant when he was born five years ago. He is now having troubles with the heart as his body is trying to reject it. He is now in Denver at Children’s Hospital and the family has moved into the Ronald McDonald house. He has two siblings, Ella who is a toddler and Taylor who is Sophia’s (my neice) age.
This touched my heart, so I send it out to those in my youth ministry and asked for prayers. This is just the beginning of the story. Each day we would receive updates about Brandon’s trials. Somedays from My sister-in-law’s point of view, others seem to come directly from his mother.
Believe me I have counted my blessings almost hourly today. Brandon in now in ICU, his heart has gone from yesterday at 27% function to 17% function today.
Emails were passed around, prayers were said, and we all waited to hear next about Brandon. We all became a part of Brandon’s life. Just like Brandon’s medical coordinator
When Brandon received his heart he was given a coordinator. She has been through every heart situation, every sickness, she has known us since the day Brandon was put on the UNOS list to wait for his heart. … She is the first person we call if he is sick or needs any medicine. She is also the person any hospital or doctors office calls when they think something is going on. … To top it off over the years we consider her part of the family, someone we trust and someone that cares about us. Brandon even received his heart on her birthday and she came and sat through his surgery anyway.
What I’m getting at is she knows us, she knows brandons baseline she just knows him better than anyone. Today was the first time she saw him. When she walked in the room she took one look at him and went pale . She left to follow up on his reports and came back with tears in her eyes I knew right then my day was drastically going to change… So when she said it’s bad, his heart may stop I knew this was not easy for her to say but she wanted me to have the honest truth.
Prayers continued and we all were drawn into the life of this little boy. I know the list of people that were praying for him was growing each day. One day I even received an email from a friend of mine asking for prayers for this little boy. The boy was Brandon, and he was asking me to pray for someone that I was getting the first round updates on. The chain was coming full circle. A few days later we received this update.
Brandon slept through the night! No screaming nightmares, moaning, or crying! That is huge for me right now.. Just waiting on rounds for more of an update on where we are at, but his oxygen is back up and his heart function seems improved! Brandon is up and asking for presents, i think thats a good sign that he is getting back to normal!
My young niece actually said to her mom PRAY ROCKS!!!! We all breathed a sigh of relief. I think we all echoed the awesome words of Sophia. Brandon was getting better. What a miracle this young boy was. Praise God for loving us so much that he listened to all of our prayers. I sensed that everyone that was touched by Brandon was cautiously breathing a sigh of collective relief. The updates continued to get better.
As you can tell from this email everything is looking better! OMG the power of prayer! Thanks so much all of you for being the caring christians that you are! Please continue the prayers, Brandon is hopefully going back to step one real soon. This is where they will continue to shock his system to help stop the rejection.
My wife Deb sent out an email update with the following message to all of her friends, “quite an update here…WOW! and all i can say is thank YOU..all of YOU who have added this family to your prayers simply because you were asked to do it..how blessed i am to have you!”
Here we all were, praying hoping and sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to hear the continued good news of Brandon. All were cautious, but hopeful. A community of people that did not know each other were being brought together and connected by a young many that literally stole all of our hearts. Someone that we never met.
I really want to say PHEW! Things were fantastic yesterday. Brandon had pink cheeks instead of pale white with purple lips, he seemed comfortable, happy, was back to playing video games and cracking jokes with his doctors. He was awake most of the day, which is huge because he slept most of the last few days when things were horrible. He was alert and talking. Seemed almost back to normal.
Amazing how prayer works. Amazing how a young boy can renew our faith in God an prayer. Amazing how our God works.
Last night, August 27, 2009 on the way out the door to an open house at the High School, my wife received a call from her brother in Colorado informing us that Brandon had just passed away. I watched as my wife nearly collapsed in the door from shock. The ride to the High School was somber. At one point I heard Deb say under her breath, “Why does this have to happen to someone so young?” I had just thought the same thing. Why did we all just go through these weeks of faith in God and in prayer only to have all of our hopes dashed by the death of this young boy. As I pulled into the parking lot of the High School, I believe the Spirit answered my question. This is why I feel compelled to tell the story to everyone.
As you may have noticed, I titled this post “The Miracle of Brandon”. Brandon truly was a miracle. Not a miracle through healing, but a miracle of faith. Brandon’s story brought many people together. People that didn’t know each other, people that did not know Brandon. We all joined together in prayer. We all spread the story of Brandon, and spread to others our faith in a God that is always around to hear our every request. My guess is that there were some people that heard Brandon’s story and stopped and prayed. Maybe their faith was not where they wanted it to be, maybe they hardly ever spoke with a loving God. But they connect with God. Brandon brought us all together in prayer. United with God. Maybe that was God’s plan to begin with. What a gift this young boy was able to give us all.
Even though Brandon did not receive the miracle of healing through all of our prayers, we received the real miracle through him. Thank you Brandon.
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There has to be a reason why I stumbled upon your blog. How amazing is it that people are touched by a child who they have never met. I am better for knowing Brandon and I was with him when he died. Some things should just never happen. Thank you for being so wonderful, so supportive, so strong. The world is better with people like you sir in it. I will keep you in my thoughts!
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a Transplant Coordinator at Denver Children's.
Sorry I should have clarified when I posted last night. This was originally written by Joe Kern. He is the youth leader at our church. His wife Deb, who has been a huge support to Bill on this blog (and in real life as well) kept me updated on Brandon though out this month. We were sadden to hear about his passing. I was touched on how Joe was able to shed a different light on this and wanted to share. We were also touched on how brave this little boy was. I couldn't even begin to imagine what his parents and anyone who he has touch in his short life are going through. Something like this is just another reminder that our children our gifts from God. As we will, please keep Brandon's love ones in your prayers.
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