"The LORD will go before you..."

Six years ago, when we as a family were anxious about moving from our much-loved home in Baguio City to the heat and congestion of Metro Manila, Hannah and I were encouraged by Isaiah 52:12: "The LORD will go before you..." I have, over and over, been reminded of that passage as we have moved through the saga of Nathan's accident. It applied, not only to Nathan's transfer from the Salzburg hospital to rehab in Klosterneuburg, but equally to our move to Portland. The most remarkable part of our transfer to Portland was not the Lord's provision of housing (we are staying in my parents' home), but the way the Lord matched us with expert medical specialists.

As we were making plans to leave Klosterneuburg for Portland, I happened to receive email from Jan Naas, Hannah's roommate of 25 years ago (when Hannah was studying in Portland and we were dating). Jan has been working at Portland's highly-regarded Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) for more than 30 years. I told Jan that Nathan would be needing the care of an oral and maxillo-facial surgeon and a orthopedic surgeon as well as rehab. Jan immediately contacted her doctor friends and, even before we had left Austria, helped me arrange appointments with the head of OHSU's residency program in oral and maxillo-facial surgery, and with one of only two orthopedic surgeons in Portland who specialize in trauma cases. Both doctors are professors at OHSU. Within 24 hours of our arrival in Portland, Nathan was seeing those distinguished young doctors who squeezed him into their appointment calendars at the request of colleagues who are Jan's friends. That was remarkable.

But that the the LORD had "gone before" us was highlighted in a small but poignant way on our arrival at the lobby of the OHSU Physician's Pavilion. There, taped to a wheelchair at the front door, was a sign "Reserved for Nathan Haskell." Not only had Jan helped arrange appointments with some particularly expert doctors, but she had thought of everything--from reserving a wheelchair, to showing us around, and even treating us to Starbucks and to lunch. Her kindness in those "little things" served to remind me that we never drop off God's "radar."

Nathan is making progress every day. We will, later this morning, see the prosthodontist who is working with Nathan's oral and maxillo-facial surgeon to reconstruct his jaw and teeth. Nathan is less and less dependent on his crutches, and the orthopedic surgeon has begun removing the stainless steel pins from the external fixator that reinforces the bones in his left leg, now that the bone is growing steadily. We don't know if the nerve in that lower leg and foot will come back or not; time will tell. But it is enough to know, for now, that the LORD is going before us.

Perhaps Isaiah was echoing Moses' words as he urged God's people to move on into territory that was new to them, and daunting: "The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." (Deuteronomy 31:8, NIV)