On Fulton Sheen, the NICU, aspiration, and learning that trust is not the same thing as knowing the ending.

God took me literally when I asked for some of Ezra’s suffering.

He said, “bet.”

Yesterday I went in to finally have the tumor taken out of my knee. They put me under, I vomited, aspirated stomach acid into my lungs, and they stopped the whole surgery.

So now the tumor remains undefeated, I’m coughing up bloody mucus, and I’m walking around the house checking my oxygen and using that stupid blow blow thing they give you for your lungs.

(The official name is an incentive spirometer. You suck in slow and deep and try to raise a little marker. I will not be calling it that.)

Meanwhile, my twelve-day-old son is still in the NICU recovering from…

aspiration.

Apparently aspiration is the family theme this month.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This actually started a few weeks ago when I got on a plane carrying a suitcase full of Fulton Sheen icons and praying my very pregnant wife could manage to stay pregnant for another 48 hours.

She could not.

Well.

Sort of.

My wife Hortencia is an iconographer. She and her teacher had spent months on several icons of Fulton J. Sheen. There was no established pattern for Sheen they could copy, so it took prayer, research, practice, and nearly 150 hours of work. They vested him as an Eastern bishop, because he loved the Eastern Church.

One icon was for the Sheen Foundation and Museum in Peoria. Another was for Bonnie Engstrom and her family. Her son, James Fulton Engstrom, is connected to the miracle accepted in Sheen’s beatification cause.

I have absolutely zero artistic ability, but at least I could contribute as the delivery guy.

There was only one obvious flaw in this plan.

Hortencia was extremely pregnant.

The plan was fast. Fly to St. Louis. Drive to Peoria. Deliver the icons. Meet Bonnie. Meet Sister Lea Stefancova, the Vice Postulator of Sheen’s cause. Pray at Sheen’s tomb. Get back to Georgia before Ezra decided he was ready.

Before the trip, Sister Lea had written me:

“I hope all goes well re Hortencia’s due date! This is the primary concern, of course.”

Correct.

The morning after I got to Peoria, Hortencia called me first thing. She thought she might be going into labor.

So the pilgrimage turned into a handoff operation. Meet Bonnie. Get her the icon. Get the other one to Sister Lea. Get in the car. Find an earlier flight. Go.

I had traveled all the way to Peoria specifically wanting to pray at Fulton Sheen’s tomb.

I never even reached it.

So I told Sister Lea, “Go down to Fulton Sheen’s tomb and give him an earful for me.”

I made an earlier flight. I was going home because the baby was apparently coming.

Except he wasn’t.

Or maybe he was.

Sort of.

For most of the next week, Hortencia kept having stretches that looked like labor. It would start. We would time contractions. They would strengthen.

This is it.

Then they would slow down. Then start again. Then stop.

This was her sixth delivery. If anyone should recognize labor, it was her.

She chalked it up to false labor.

It wasn’t.

I can’t say those days caused what happened, and no doctor has told us they did. But looking back, it no longer feels like nothing was happening. Part of me thinks it wore on him.

An induction was scheduled for Monday, September 21.

And there was this strange cluster of dates.

September 16, James Fulton Engstrom’s birthday.

September 20, the anniversary of Sheen’s priestly ordination.

September 21, the induction.

September 24, Sheen’s beatification.

I remember thinking that stretch of the calendar seemed loaded.

I did not know how loaded.

On September 17, Hortencia went into Labor & Delivery. Even the real labor kept behaving like the fake-out labor, which was maddening. But eventually she got to six centimeters. Epidural. Water broke.

This time they were not sending us home.

Ezra Faustino was born at 12:55 AM on September 18.

8 pounds, 1 ounce.

21 inches long.

Hortencia was doing well.

Ezra was not.

When they took Ezra from Hortencia, the NICU team started working on him immediately. Nobody screamed. Nobody panicked. They were trying to stay positive. But I could tell from their faces, and from how hard they were working to get all that material out of his lungs, that there was seriousness in the room.

Time stood still.

There is a strange way a room changes when something is happening to your child. Everything becomes extremely fast and impossibly slow at the same time.

I didn’t fully understand how serious it was yet.

But I understood enough.

And in the middle of that, I heard what I can only describe as an interior voice. Very clearly:

“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be OK. Padre Pio and Saint Faustina are here.”

I didn’t see them. No one else heard anything. I’m not trying to make a grand claim about a private revelation. It was interior. But it was clear.

And because apparently I am me, my immediate response was basically:

“Is Fulton Sheen here?”

Nothing.

No answer.

Which honestly makes me laugh now. Padre Pio and Faustina apparently show up and I’m taking attendance.

What about my guy Sheen?

Silence.

Ezra had aspirated a lot of old meconium. We were told it was really, really thick. Really sticky in there. His lungs took a real hit.

Oxygen. Feeding tube. Blood gases. X-rays.

Instead of learning our newborn’s habits, we were learning his numbers.

A newborn became a series of numbers on a monitor.

There were encouraging signs. I kept asking if he was out of the woods, and nobody could tell me what “out of the woods” even meant.

What you actually want somebody to say is:

Your baby is fine. Pick him up. Go home.

Nobody was saying that.

Then he went backward.

His oxygen needs went back up near where they were when he was admitted. They stopped bottle feeding and put the feeding tube back in so he wouldn’t have to work as hard.

It felt like we had climbed several rungs and somebody kicked the ladder away.

That was when baptism stopped feeling like something to schedule conveniently.

I reached out to my pastor about coming to baptize him, and he told me to go ahead and do it myself.

So I did.

Right there in the NICU.

Water.

The Trinitarian formula.

Three pours.

I recorded it. And then, because I am simultaneously Catholic, anxious, and professionally wired for quality assurance, I immediately started wondering if I had done it right.

I wanted someone to watch the video and tell me I did everything correctly and the baptism was valid.

I baptized my sick newborn and then wanted sacramental QA.

Occupational hazard.

(It was valid.)

And then there was the timing.

It was September 20, the anniversary of Sheen’s ordination. Nine days earlier I had been in Peoria carrying his icons and left before reaching his tomb because Ezra seemed to be coming.

Now I was baptizing Ezra with a tiny second-class relic of Sheen, a piece of his mantelletta, sitting beside him.

Come on.

I noticed.

The next day I posted what I thought would be a small prayer request on Substack. Born September 18. Breathing and lung issues. Progress, then a step back.

And:

“Yesterday with my pastor’s permission, I got to baptize him myself, right there in the NICU. I’m still sitting with that one.”

I figured some of you would pray.

Instead the thing took off.

Thousands of people praying for my son.

I eventually had to turn notifications off. Not because I didn’t appreciate it. The opposite. I simply could not answer everyone.

I’m praying.

My family is praying.

Our parish is praying.

I had prayed constantly those first few days. By then I was running out of words.

And right about then, a crowd of people I will never meet picked the words up and kept going.

I kept wanting one particular saint to come through.

Meanwhile the whole Church seemed to be praying.

That evening I texted:

“His breathing has slowed down enough for us to feed him. This is the first time we’ve gotten to do it. Good sign.”

The first time we got to feed our own son.

NICU life does that.

A bottle becomes news.

Then pieces started coming off.

The IV.

The heated bed.

They changed his breathing setup because, medically speaking, he had a lot of boogers.

Every machine they took away felt like one less reason he couldn’t come home.

September 24 was Fulton Sheen’s beatification.

By then I had quietly built up an expectation in my own head.

Look at the setup.

I flew to Peoria because of Sheen.

The trip got cut short because Hortencia seemed to be in labor.

His relic was sitting beside Ezra.

I baptized Ezra on Sheen’s ordination anniversary.

Now Sheen was being beatified.

Surely this was the day.

I really believed Ezra was going home September 24.

Not hoped.

Believed.

Surely Fulton Sheen is going to come through for me today.

He didn’t come home.

I was hurt. A little frustrated.

Not some big theological rebellion. Not angry at God.

More like being disappointed with somebody you love.

Come on, Fulton. I gave you the setup here.

Looking back, there was some spiritual immaturity in it. Maybe even a little superstition hiding inside sincere devotion.

I had taken a string of beautiful coincidences and quietly turned them into a schedule for God and the saints.

September 20 means this.

September 24 must mean that.

I had already decided what their intercession ought to look like.

But I don’t entirely dislike the naivety underneath it.

There was something childlike and good there too.

I really believed the saints would move.

I really believed they were praying.

I really believed heaven was paying attention to a little boy in a NICU crib in Atlanta.

I still believe that.

The lesson wasn’t that the saints didn’t come through.

They did.

Just not how I told them to.

I had mistaken trust for knowing the ending. They are not the same thing.

Meanwhile, the icon that started this whole mess was part of the beatification celebration in Peoria.

And I was a zombie.

Everything was finally catching up to my body, and I crashed.

I’d like to tell you I spent those evenings peacefully contemplating the mystery of suffering beside a NICU crib.

Sometimes I was reflective.

Sometimes I was barely functional.

When a friend asked how I was holding up, I told him the truth.

It’s super stressful. So weird not to bring your baby home. I can’t sleep at night. Tried everything to knock me out. I can’t even pray. I’m not mad at God or anything.

Just weary in my soul.

My in-laws were here helping with the other kids, which was an enormous blessing. It also meant the house was louder and the kids were more wound up.

They could feel what they didn’t understand.

I was trying not to be short with everybody.

Trying to be a father at home while part of me lived at the hospital.

For years the Jesus Prayer has lived in my breathing.

Now I was mostly watching a monitor count somebody else’s.

I’m not in a crisis of faith.

I’m just tired in a place sleep doesn’t seem to reach.

I still have faith and hope and joy.

I still know where my hope is.

Faith stayed. Feelings left.

And right when I was too tired to pray well, thousands of strangers were praying for my kid.

At one week old, the feeding tube came out.

The caption we wrote for him:

“I’m a week old today. Still in the NICU, but smiling because I got my feeding tube out. Small victories are still victories.”

And yes, my DNA dug DEEP to produce that little blonde peach fuzz.

Victory is sweet, even deep in the cheap seats.

But the oxygen dips kept happening, usually after he ate and fell into a deep sleep.

Eat.

Sleep.

Dip.

Watch the monitor.

Wait.

There is something deeply unnatural about having a child and repeatedly leaving the hospital without him.

You go home to the house where the baby is supposed to be.

His siblings are there.

His things are there.

His crib is there.

He isn’t.

Meanwhile my knee surgery was coming up, scheduled long before any of this.

I seriously thought about cancelling.

I was praying he’d be out of the hospital by then, but it was on his timing.

It would just be more convenient.

But I never get convenient and that’s OK.

In the end I kept it. Ezra was improving, family was here to help, and I was already on leave.

This miserable window might be the only window.

Day 11 in the NICU.

Trusting but drained.

Then I went in for surgery.

They put me under.

I vomited.

And aspirated stomach acid into my lungs.

Of course I did.

The team stopped the knee procedure immediately.

The tumor was never touched.

My lungs became the priority.

Well, apparently I tried to copy Ezra.

With aspiration pneumonitis.

Apparently I was feeling left out.

My chest hurt. I was short of breath and coughing. At one point they were ready to send me by ambulance to another hospital for observation, but my numbers came back up pretty quickly, and I opted to go home.

My throat is sore down to my asshole.

I didn’t need to relate to my son this much this early, but I’m glad to share a little bit in his suffering.

Under the jokes, though, I was crushed.

I had scheduled it during leave. I had almost cancelled it. I finally went through with it.

And I woke up with the tumor still in my knee, injured lungs, a wrecked throat, and a brand new medical problem.

I’m so frustrated, defeated and done.

Hortencia, somehow, was of good cheer.

She just said God doesn’t want it today. Trust that He didn’t will it to happen.

Today’s update on Ezra: they’ve been weaning him off oxygen little by little. Sometimes he responds great. Sometimes he has a little setback and the process starts over.

They need 72 hours with no dips.

Maybe home by tomorrow, if he makes it one more day.

After almost two weeks, “maybe tomorrow” feels a little dangerous to say out loud.

As for me, my lungs are full of bloody mucus, and they’re doing a chest X-ray tomorrow to make sure the pneumonitis hasn’t turned into pneumonia.

So here we are.

My newborn is almost ready to leave the NICU after recovering from aspiration.

I’m home recovering from aspiration.

The tumor is still in my knee.

Everybody is exhausted.

In the delivery room I asked whether Fulton Sheen was there.

Maybe I was thinking too small.

I kept looking for one saint.

Meanwhile Padre Pio, Faustina, our parish, our family, our friends, and thousands of people whose names I’ll never know were all saying my son’s name to God.

As for Sheen, he never did answer my roll call.

Nothing is tied up neatly.

Which is probably appropriate.

This whole story has been almost, not yet, maybe tomorrow.

And after the last few weeks, maybe tomorrow feels like more than enough.