Books |
Baptism by Fire
Heather Choate Davis
By
Published: Feb 18, 2014
Category:
Spirituality
Heather Choate was baptized at a font at a Los Angeles church so beautifully designed that it looked like a movie set. She went to Sunday school. She was confirmed. And then she forgot about church — for two decades.
Career, marriage to the dashing Lon Davis, accomplishment: Heather Choate Davis climbed the ladder of life, viewing her rise through the prism of self. The birth of her son Graham brought her back to church for a moment, but her next real encounter with religion came when it was time to baptism her daughter Remy. Reluctantly, she found herself telling the minister that she’d attend church once a month.
Then Remy got sick. Her body was twitching, she was cold and unresponsive; the Davises rushed her to the hospital. Diagnosis: a tumor in the brain. A tumor pressing right against the brain stem of a 9-month-old baby.
Heather Davis, an inveterate researcher, made sure her daughter had the best doctors in Los Angeles. Then she went to the top of the chain of command — she got right with God.
Here’s where, if you are like me, you reach for the remote to change the channel. And you murmur a silent prayer, “Dear Lord, save me from all those who kinda sorta believed in You but get majorly fervent when trouble strikes — like God is suddenly going to hear them and do their bidding.”
Well, here’s a newsflash: Heather Choate Davis is acutely aware of the presumption of those who want to cut to the head of God’s line. As she says:
Now, god, as a rule, is spelled with a capital G, but not by me. Not when it’s coupled with “damn it,” which, by the time I could drive, was the only way I used it. As an adult — if pressed — I would describe god as something along the lines of “ultimate goodness, loving and light,” but it wasn’t attached to any “him,” nor did it have any sons. I distrusted religion, both organized and otherwise. I owned up to no relationship with any higher power. I did not kneel or turn things over to “him,” yet despite all this, I knew. Deep in the heart of wherever these certainties lie, I knew: god was the truth. I knew it, yet I neither sought it out nor embraced it — no, any possibility of that had been destroyed by the rabid demagogues who called themselves “Christian.”
But, as I stood over Remy’s crib at midnight, I couldn’t say — nor did I much care — what other people believed or how they behaved. I just knew that there was nowhere else to go with pain and doubt this deep. So I clasped my hands and bowed my head and asked god to keep my beautiful daughter safe and cool through the night, to keep me coping and Lon strong and Graham resilient. And I hoped against hope that my tenuous little lower-case g would somehow be enough.
Reading Heather Davis, you start to get the feeling that God couldn’t let Remy die — He wouldn’t want to have to deal with Heather Davis ever after. Because Heather’s belief is that pure. She has examined the issue and then, in a catalytic and life-changing moment, decided to bet all her chips on God. Just like that. A complete convert. And not shy about it. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
One more passage from this book, from a meeting between Heather and the surgeon who will operate on Remy:
I studied Dr. Peacock’s hands. Then I heard words coming from my own mouth. “God has given you beautiful hands to save the babies with.” Dr. Peacock didn’t bat an eye. “And that is who deserves all the credit. He is the one that guides me. In fact, if you want to help, that’s what you can do. I need your prayers. Lots of them.” His tone was utterly devoid of drama, yet they were the most galvanizing words I’d ever heard.
That night I began to pray. Not just moments of passing thought couched in the notion of Ohgodohgodohgod, but specifically and with intention. I had no idea what I was doing but felt certain that a sincere effort was all that was required. I sat quietly and undisturbed. My concentration was sporadic, my attention span childlike. But it was a start.
All the next day, I thought about Dr. Peacock and his request. By dinnertime I was at the computer composing a letter. I thanked people for all they had done so far and all they might be called on to do in the future. But most of all I asked for their prayers, for Remy and for Dr. Peacock and for us as we awaited the surgery. That night I mailed the letter to twenty-five friends and relatives around the country. The next morning I printed and mailed another thirty. The letter was full of intimacy and pain, humility and hope, yet there were only two words that left my fingers on a dare; two words that struck me as a coming out. “God bless,” I wrote in closing. And then I signed off.
Decades later, Remy is fine. (Though, of course, trauma like that has a way of resurfacing. Read this.) And her mother? Heather Davis has served the First Lutheran Church of Venice, California in many ways over the past twenty years, including as congregation president. She now holds an MA in Theology. And she has a new book, Elijah & the SAT: Reflections on a hairy old desert prophet and the benchmarking of our children’s lives.
For all my hard-earned sophistication, I am an unabashed fan of books in which the worldly lose their cynicism, the pure in heart are heard, and the good don’t lose. Still, I read this book when all was right with my world, before I was a parent, when none of this applied to me. And yet I couldn’t put it down.
