When Your Child’s Life Is in God’s Hands | Season 2 Favorites

Welcome back to another special episode of Orthodox Christian Parenting. Today we are revisiting a deeply personal and powerful conversation with Elias and Joy Hajjar on loving a child through a medical crisis. They share their journey of walking through the unimaginable with their daughter and how that experience transformed their faith and their family. You'll hear them talk about the sacred space of a hospital room, how to find God in the midst of fear and suffering, and the incredible importance of allowing your community to carry you when you simply cannot carry yourself. This is a conversation all about resilience, about the power of prayer, and the reality of God's presence even in our darkest hours.

Let's listen. You had just had the baby, and you're on Yeah. Your

And we were expecting a healthy you know, we had no anticipation of anything being wrong. So it was it was a it was a big shock to say the least. And, you know, just kept moving one foot in front of the other, but it was hard to really sink in. There's so much going on at that point. It's hard to sink in.

But the doctors, I mean, essentially, that first night sat us down and said, these are the, you know, the heart defects and your baby won't survive without surgery. And it was I felt very unprepared. You know, we like that you're about to have a baby and you do all the things to prepare for nine months. And then something kind of just hits you out of nowhere and you know, A, nothing about the anatomy of a heart or how to take care of it. And so trust what the doctors say and you just keep going.

And we ended up at Michigan with Rosie in her first heart surgery at, like, a week old.

God love her.

Yeah.

And you. That's a that's a big lift as a parent. Yeah.

Yeah. It was it was hard. I mean, you know, you see this baby and, you know, it's so small. And then you you've got this, you know, scar in the middle of her chest. And you're talking about, like, something the size of, like, a a a plum there that they're operating on.

And so

Oh my goodness.

And you look at these doctors with such awe and respect that this is the path that they've chosen as well as to have the ability to do these things you know, that are lifesaving. And so, you know, we we stayed in Ann Arbor for six weeks Yeah. Just trying to get well, the first operation that we did was the least intrusive. It was just a a band, essentially a rubber band around one of her arteries to help with some of the blood flow. So essentially, the the condition that Rosie had, the plumbing of her heart wasn't fully developed.

And they had created there were these this process. It was a three step process to correct the blood flow in her heart. And the first operation we did at one week. The second we did at nine months.

Yeah.

And then the third and final we did at eighteen months.

Yeah.

And, you know, though that process, you know, those couple years was a lot of in and out of hospitals. It was a lot of touch and go. Like, you know, she had a feeding tube because she didn't she didn't have the energy to, like, feed on her own. And in order for her to get to the weight that she needed to be healthy enough to actually perform these major surgeries.

Oh, we had to fatten her up with they told us to do the craziest things to try and get her to gain weight, which a lot of, you know, a lot of families who have premature babies or babies in the NICU when they're born have all these, you know, go through. It could be a very bumpy road when babies I are mean, think of the miracle that

Of life.

Of of of, you know, everything going right, it definitely opened our eyes. Ily and I grew up with so abundance of love and support and never experienced any real trauma or tragedy. And so this kind of hit us like a ton of bricks, and it took me a few days to stop crying. I I couldn't believe what was happening, and I couldn't believe that you know, like, to see a baby suffering. And I you know, feeling like, oh gosh.

What could I have done different? And why did this happen? This doesn't make any sense. This wasn't how what we planned. And I was like in shock.

I couldn't stop I could not stop crying for the first few days.

Also, you just had a baby.

Yeah. I Thank mean,

your body probably was going through so many things and the hormones alone, let alone having to deal with something so traumatic.

And so Eli looked at me and he said, we will get through this. You know we will get through this. And I was like, oh, he's pretty sure that we're gonna get through this. And he said, And then it's going to get hard again, because they explained to us that this would be a series of surgeries. And doctors, God bless them, they tell you everything that could go wrong.

So they prepare you. And they say there could be severe disability in this area, and there could be, you know, impact on these organs and all of that. So you could go to like the worst case scenario. And I'm grateful that Ely was so confident that it would be hard and then it would be okay. And then it might get hard again, but we would be okay.

That was huge. One of the things that I know is how has there been like a moment where you've seen God work Mhmm. Almost like a yeah. A miracle or how the church how a prayer has been answered. And we were in the ICU middle of the night.

Rosie's blood pressure is so low. We don't know. We're trying, waiting, trying, waiting. We're sleeping next to her. And father Escunder from Toronto had heard

because Father George Chalhoub had called him

That's right.

To tell him that we were in the hospital.

He shows up to the hospital, walks in like a ghost in the night. He was in his black robe, and it was very dark.

Neither one of us saw him

or talked to him. We We didn't even we didn't even like, I was, like, asleep. I got my eyes were still closed. He came in and he prayed over Rosie, And he left. And about an hour later, the nurse comes in to do her vitals and her blood pressure is slowly going up.

Her slowly going up. And that was the turning point for Rose in the worst episode she's ever had of her illness, was that priest coming in and praying over her. And like, I don't want I know I keep saying I'm not dramatic, and I keep saying the most dramatic things, but that happened. I believe it. I know it.

Absolutely. And

I also struggle a little bit because talking about this, and I'm about to tell you about the transplant, but talking about this, there are families who have lost children. The idea of like, our prayers were answered is hard for me because are some prayers answered and some prayers not answered? And I don't have a good answer. I'm sharing this just because it's on my heart. Like the fact that Rose went through what she did, got a heart transplant, and is where she is today is a miracle.

Having her gives us so much joy and happiness. None of us know what tomorrow will bring. I don't have any answers. I don't All I know is, like, we're just gonna keep doing the best we can. She started junior high, seventh grade, August, which was, you know, nine months later, and walked into the high school.

She'd grown a little bit. She walked into the high school with her backpack and purple running shoes, and I watched her walk into school. And Rosie had missed a lot of school in her youth. And I was overcome with this, like, intense gratitude. I could not believe that Rosie was walking into junior high like a normal kid.

And I felt compelled that this family has to know what they've just done, what they've given Rosie. Because I don't know that we would have been there without them. So I came home and I wrote a letter to the donor family.

Isn't it typical that you don't get to connect with donor families? Like, what's that look like? Or you can just choose to if

they choose to? Through like the donor, we have Life Connection of Ohio who works with the hospitals in and around this area. And then there's donor services of Tennessee, Gift of Life Michigan. So through these organizations, they connect. So I wrote a letter anonymous.

But it's all on the donor's

If the donor wants

to if the donor doesn't want to

want to know anything

then they have the right to to not know anything.

I all I can do is send this letter Yeah. Hope that it gets to them. And then if they want to reach back out, they can. Well, after a year, they had it. So I called Life Connection of Ohio.

Said, did you send it? Yes. We sent it on this day. Okay. And I go, oh, that's too bad.

But I respect everyone's story and privacy and whatever they wanted. A whole year after that so it's been two years since her transplant now. We wake up in the middle of the night.

Well, I I'm awake. Joy's sleeping.

Oh, yeah. And Ily Ily goes, you awake? I'm like, no. What's up? He was like, never mind.

We'll talk to him.

You're like, well, no. No.

No. I'm awake. Now I'm awake.

So I get a message. And

I'll tell you what they said. They said, hello. We are reaching out because we saw your Facebook page, and we know that your daughter is carrying our son's heart. We have confirmed this, but if you wanna go through the proper channels, we just wanna say we'd love to meet you. So I call the hospital and I say these people have reached out to us.

And we were, like, skeptical at

this. We were like We

weren't like, oh, sweet. Wow. It was like, who are these people and why are they reaching out to us on Facebook? You know, all this stuff on Facebook too. It's like, you don't know what's real or not real.

So we go through

the process. The proper channels and they say, yes. Well, it turns out that the father of this young man had started working for donor services of Tennessee and had been able to make the connection and had seen a story a newspaper article. Yeah. A newspaper article that he found.

That said, you know, 11 year old girl receives the life giving the lifesaving heart transplant at the University of Michigan. And they had known that their son's heart had gone to Michigan at the same time. And so they made the connection and then Google us, found the Facebook page, then reached out.

And then confirmed it. So we met Mike and Tammy Wells over Zoom. It was 2020, so we couldn't really meet in person right away. We met in Zoom. And first thing I said to them when we met on a call like this was, I am so sorry for your loss and for the pain you've endured.

And Mike said to us, We have felt so much joy since meeting, since Finding Rose. And December 14, we got the call for Rose. Rose was getting her heart transplant. And that day we were thinking about the donor family. And after we met Mike and Tammy, she sent me this card and she sent me a heart strip, Michael's heart strip.

And she said to me, I wanted to share one of Michael's heart strips that were given to me by his nurse. Looking at them, I knew that his heart was going to belong to someone else. At least I prayed that it would. I just had to trust God with the rest because only he knew how the story of one heart would continue. And I'm so glad it did.

Much love, Tammy. So while we were moving on to a hopeful, healthy future for Rose, she was saying goodbye to her son, Michael. They are now our family. They were surprised us for Rosie's sixteenth birthday. They were at Rosie's graduation.

We spend every Thanksgiving together. It's Michael's birthday, couple days before Thanksgiving, and we share that together. Rosie took her spring break trip to Knoxville to meet their new little grandbaby. We love them, and we now feel like we've always been family. And it makes no sense, and it makes all the sense in the world that this happened.

It's one of those things where, like, if there's ever an example how two things can happen at once, how the worst thing can be the best thing, like, this is it. So it's hard to articulate, and it's really hard to put words to. But Rosie was just in London, and, you know, she shared every moment of the trip. And every day is a blessing. It's a day to honor Michael's gift, and it's to keep his heart, you know, going and living.

And and I think the Wells feel that too. I

Michael was a special needs adult, and and he was nonverbal. And so and and Mike and Tammy had spent their whole life, like, caring for him. And and, you know, everybody they always would say he had a great personality. You know, he was very expressive.

Funny. He loved to eat.

And he but he couldn't he couldn't speak. And so now there's this almost like a sense of, like, life carrying forward with Michael. It threw Rosie, and it's it's a miracle. It's it's just it's and it's I know for them, it's almost you know, you can never I'm sure you can never replace, you know, a loss of a child, but this is the next best thing. And and this is it gives it also gives them a sense of of hope and and and love that they can still share that love with Rosie.

And Rosie feels it. I mean, Rosie considers them. Like, I mean, she probably tells them stuff that she doesn't tell us. You know? I mean, I think they have that relationship.

And and we we respect it, and and we are happy for her that she has it. And, you know, there's no feeling of and there's no other feeling other than just love and happiness.

It's a gift.

Yeah.

That's a did they get the letter? That's what I wanna know.

Oh, right? They moved.

Oh, So

the my letters never got to them. They wish they had known sooner. They kind of sought us out. They found us. The letter never got to them.

They sought after the fact.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. So but the timing is like it wasn't the right time. You know? It needed to be a little bit later. Maybe Rosie needed to be older.

I don't know. But I'll tell you what.

We trust. God provides in the if there's a mom or a dad in the hospital right now or sitting in a room or waiting for test results or any of the things that can be so hard for us as parents. Do you have any pearls of wisdom that you would offer them?

Yeah. I mean

You're you can

do it. You can do it. You're stronger than you think you

are. And

That's so cliche. But

and and know it and and, you know, just keep reminding yourself of that, you know, and that's the hardest part. You know, even to to today, like, I still have to tell myself, like, I'm literally in my head saying, you can do this. You got this. You can do this. You can do And and I think just knowing that and and believing it is is that's all you got, you know?

Yeah. That's all any of us have.

We drove Rose to the University of Michigan for her first day of college. That is the same drive we took because the university Hundreds of time. And the hospital are right next to each other. That's the same drive we took hundreds of times when Rose needed treatment, was sick, was in testing. That drive usually meant, we're headed for it.

Did we pack our bags? How long are we going to be gone? Is she going to be okay? What's the next step? We drove up there always with anxiety and unknown and fear.

And then in August, we drove up there to drop her off to start college, and we moved her into her dorm room and took her up to the 3rd Floor and looked out her window. And what did we see but C. S. Mott Children's Hospital right in front of us. And those same windows that she would now look out of as a university freshman with the windows she would look out of as a young lady, not knowing what the next day would bring as a sick child, you know, in the hospital.

And it was like, I don't know how we got there. I don't know. But we trusted. We did the next hard thing. We were supported by thousands of amazing people who carried us.

We had churches praying for us. And, I mean, when it comes down to it, that's all you can do is just kind of have trust that it's going to work out as it should even when it feels like the worst.