Letter from Muna Hattar-Mendoza

Woman and child look across a field of yellow flowers and up to the mountains.

Photo by Kevin Schmid

Dear Sister,

Today we face a pandemic. We are faced with so much uncertainty and suffering. I don’t know how our family finances, or our children’s education will be affected, or who will live or die in the next month. I don’t even know if my daughter will get to have her first communion this spring. We do not know what God’s doing. It’s easy for me to doubt God’s goodness.

I have doubted God’s goodness. I have a beautiful, funny, and joyful 6-year-old who has a terminal illness called Sanfilippo Syndrome. An illness no one has ever survived. As part of an experimental treatment, she has to be sedated for tests about every six months. At one of these tests about a year ago, when we got to the procedure room, she knew what was coming. She yelled, and flailed. I picked her up, put her on the table. Six of us held her down. I looked her in the eye as I sang her favorite song that week, ‘Old McDonald.’ She looked me in the eye with disgust, anger, and betrayal. She has always been so expressive in her eyes. It was as if to say, “Mom, why are you letting them hurt me? Mom, why are you abandoning me in this place?”

By this point in the trial, I knew the treatment was not going to save her life. I hope it will give us a few more precious years. I hope the data will lead to treatment that saves other children’s lives. But in that moment, I knew that unless God grants us a miracle, I will also look into her eyes while she suffers seizures, suffers extreme pain, and while she breathes her last breath. I ask God, “Why would you create a child with faulty genes? Why would you make someone and watch them suffer? Why would you give me a strong drive to protect my child, while I watch her suffer? What are you doing God and why!?”

When my daughter was first diagnosed, I was talking with her Occupational Therapist about strategies to decrease my daughter hitting me during the tantrums caused by her disease, about scrambling for medical treatment and about the regression that would happen to her without such treatment. Her Occupation Therapist said, “I don’t know how you do it.” I answered without thinking, “Oh. God loves her more than I do, so there’s no chance He’d hurt her.” I knew that to be true and that thought allowed me to stay close to God even through invasive treatments, sleepless nights, and more distress than I thought a human could bear. Believe me, I was angry with God for this struggle He had allowed in our life, but I was also grateful for the grace to bring that anger to Him in prayer.

As it becomes clearer that the only options left are literally a divine miracle, or to watch my child suffer and die, I think about Abraham’s faith and the sacrifice of Isaac. I wondered how Isaac looked at Abraham as they set up a sacrifice with nothing to sacrifice. The faith of Abraham has been lauded over thousands of years. But I remember sitting in mass listening to this reading as a 9 or 10-year-old, wondering how it was good for Abraham to offer his child to be sacrificed. Eventually, I put this to the side, understanding that I didn’t understand.

I surrendered my own life to Jesus a long time ago. I pray all the time, “Let me be a living sacrifice,” and I mean it. I don’t always live it out, but by His grace I come back to this intention. I truly want to want what God wants for me. But surrendering my life was a lot easier than surrendering my child’s life. We are created with a drive to keep our kids alive. I know you’ve felt it when you’ve heard a baby cry. It’s visceral, my muscles tighten, my heart speeds up, and all my attention goes to caring. It’s part of the genius of parenthood. We all have it, someone we would die to protect. Yet, Abraham agreed to act against his strongest impulse at God’s request.

In the fullness of time, we see that Abraham’s sacrifice was not for no reason; it pointed to Jesus’s sacrifice. It points us to salvation. In this bizarre and distressing request, God was allowing Abraham to take part in God’s saving work. He doesn’t call us to go around the pain but through it. By his grace, He will pull us through this suffering to some unimaginable glory. Just like He loves my daughter, God loves the world more than we ever could. For love of my daughter, for love of the world, God the Father lived through hearing His Son in agony, calling out to Him, “Why have you abandoned me?” I cannot fathom the love by which God created and executed a plan for our salvation that involved, watching His Son suffer so.

We try to protect our children. I tried to protect my older daughter from the anxiety of this time, by making Easter as normal as possible. Of course, I couldn’t. I realized this when I saw that See’s Candy, a store where we usually get treats for Easter, was closed. In a minute, I went through a mini grief cycle, grieving what I had expected this time in my life to be. I cried. I started to think about worst case scenarios. What if my parents got sick? What if I had to pick between attending their funerals or risking infecting my medically fragile daughter. What if my daughter got sick? I imagined holding her in my arms as I watched her die.

After about 5 minutes, I realized that this was not useful. I put my younger daughter in her adaptive stroller and started to walk. Walking didn’t shake my sadness and anxiety. I realized I needed to confront the scary thoughts. I couldn’t tell myself they were untrue, because maybe they would be true. I asked God what’s truer than these scary possibilities. I looked at the beautiful flowers in my neighbor’s yard and I was flooded with a cacophony of scriptural truths. “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” (Ps34:8). He is giving me beauty even in the midst of a pandemic. Right now, God is in the time after coronavirus; He is the way through. Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God not life or death, not present things or future things (Rm 3:8) not isolation or home schooling, not Sanfilippo or Coronavirus because the victory has already been won. (1 Cr 15:57) Jesus has already overcome death and sin; He is risen indeed.

This reminded me of God’s promise and God’s almighty goodness. I can’t protect my older daughter from stress about Coronavirus. I can’t protect my younger daughter from Sanfilippo Syndrome. I can rely on God to protect them both. I can allow Him to guide me, one step at a time, to join with Him in creating goodness for my children. I felt joy in His presence. The faith of Abraham is a faith that can trust in God’s goodness always, especially in uncertain, confusing, and painful times. It is a faith that knows, deep down in our gut, that God is good all the time.

Holy Spirit, give me that faith of Abraham. Holy Spirit, give the world the faith of Abraham.

In Christ,

Muna

Photo of Muna

About the Writer: Muna Hattar-Mendoza is a wife and mother. She met her husband Henry when he played piano while she sang at their parish choir. She has two gorgeous daughters a neurotypical 8 year old and a 6 year old who has special needs and is medically fragile. Mother is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who provides mental health therapy in her private practice. Muna also gives talks on parenting in light of scripture.