Pursuing Truth, Cultivating Virtue, Creating Beauty

“She threw up again?” I asked.

“Yeah, and now she’s passed out asleep again,” my wife said.

“This isn’t normal. We need to take her to the doctor.”

So began months of doctor’s visits and testing and waiting and praying to figure out our daughter’s health issues. It was early 2021, and Ruth was only five months old. In my memory, those months blur together in a dark fog of stress and anguish. Yet through this season of trial, God mercifully brought us to our knees and taught us to pray like beggars for daily bread (Matthew 6:11).

The year before, we had moved to Brigham City, UT, to help a church replant, so our closest relatives were half the country away. When our daughter began developing her health problems, my wife, Angie, was working full-time as an accountant during tax season, meaning that full-time was overtime.

On top of everything, Angie was—surprise!—pregnant with our second child. This was great, but her milk supply began to dry up. Even though Ruth was starting to eat solids, she wasn’t old enough to wean off milk, so we had to try formulas.

Every one of them made her sick. Every. One. We tried every brand of regular formula, goat’s milk formulas, hypoallergenic formulas. None of them worked. What was going on?

She also began reacting to certain solid foods, though differently—hives, swelling, itchiness, snotty sneezing. Her pediatrician confirmed that these were signs of a food allergy. Where had this come from? Neither my wife nor I had food allergies in our families.

We felt stuck in a conundrum, like we were lost in Daedalus’ maze. Ruth wasn’t old enough to wean off milk, but my wife’s milk was drying up. Every formula made her sick, and even some solid foods caused problems. How were we supposed to find food for our baby?

We began to pray earnestly, like we never had before, “God, give our daughter daily food. Let Angie have enough milk. Let Ruth eat enough solids. Help us find safe food for her.”

This became even more difficult as Ruth quickly connected food with pain, even at her young age. On the one hand, we were grateful because it meant she didn’t stick everything she saw in her mouth. On the other hand, it was terrible because she stopped wanting to eat.

I remember times when I would try to give her food or a bottle—crying, begging her to eat, praying for God to make her eat—and she would scream and shove it away with stubbornness that would shame a mule.

Eventually, we discovered that playing helped her eat. Make the food fun, and she forgot about the danger. Sure, kids shouldn’t play with their food, but playing with food saved my daughter’s life. Now we just needed to find a steady supply of safe food for her.

I don’t remember how, but at some point we got connected to a breastmilk bank in Salt Lake City. There was an application process, and it would be expensive, but what else could we do? It seemed like our only option. So we applied, and we prayed.

We were accepted by the milk bank, so every week I would make the two-hour round trip to Salt Lake and back to pick up containers of frozen breastmilk for Ruth. Because there was a limited supply of milk, and because there were children with more severe needs, each week came with the possibility that the milk bank wouldn’t have any for us. So we continued to pray, “Lord, give Ruth her daily milk.”

Thankfully, they always had milk for us, and Ruth never had trouble with it. Like the Ruth of the Bible, God used the kind generosity of others to provide for her needs. We’re forever grateful to the anonymous milk donors, the milk bank workers, and, above all, our faithful God.

We had also finally gotten scheduled with a pediatric allergist, but specialized pediatricians are often booked months out. As we waited, we researched. With solids, we quickly figured out that dairy, egg, and peanut were the culprits. The formulas were more of a mystery. Breastmilk never bothered Ruth, but why did she react to every single formula?

One day I sat down in our living room with three or four different cans of formula, a pencil, and paper. I read every ingredient on the labels, comparing them to see what they had in common. Finally the puzzle piece clicked into place: soy. They all had some form of soy, even the hypoallergenic ones.

Ruth’s first appointment with her allergist confirmed our suspicions. Skin tests showed that Ruth is severely allergic to dairy, egg, and peanut. Any ingestion of them causes anaphylaxis. The symptoms related to soy revealed that she had a rare condition called FPIES (Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome) that causes severe vomiting and dehydration.

I’ll never forget the doctor’s reaction after we told him everything that had been happening. “She should be dead,” he said. “I can’t believe she’s still alive.” I understand that God doesn’t always heal or rescue, but in this situation, God faithfully sustained Ruth and provided her daily food.

Since then, Ruth has outgrown her FPIES allergy (praise God!), but she retains her anaphylactic allergies. Apart from that, she’s a normal little girl—pretending to be Elsa with her friends, reading books, dancing in her ballet recital, coming into my office even as I write this to ask me to print a unicorn coloring page for her.

Our family has to navigate multiple complicated dietary restrictions. Sometimes planning a normal meal at home feels like playing master-level chess, and we’re still figuring out that whole “eating out” thing.

But we trust God. We continue to ask him for wisdom to know what we can and can’t eat, and wall art in our dining room reminds us to continually pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” God faithfully answers those prayers, and we give humble thanks to the God who provides the food we need each day.