Nathanael Logsdon
 Nathan Logsdon is my beloved son. He was born in October of 1983. He was a miracle, even beyond the miracle that all babies are. I was unable to produce eggs due to a condition I had called poly-cystic ovaries. Instead of fertile eggs, my ovaries produced cysts which would grow until they ruptured. As a young woman, I didn't know what was wrong. I only knew that my female cycle would only happen once or twice a year.
I married late in life and my husband and I wanted to start a family right away. I suspected my body was not fertile, so each month I prayed fervently for God to grant me a child. Like Hannah, I travailed in my supplication to God and requested a child, even if only one. But I beseeched the Lord that if it was to be only one, let it be a male. I promised I would give him back to the Lord as Hannah did and that I would raise him to serve the Lord.
I did conceive that very night. I knew it in my heart and the birth date confirmed it, later. I knew in that it was a miracle of God, as He granted me the desire of my heart. I knew he was a son, long before my doctor told me. I called him Nathanael, the biblical spelling, a gift from God. I told him of his calling as a servant of God, speaking to him in the womb. I knew in my heart, he would be some sort of special servant of God.
It wasn't until I was thirty that my Christian doctor, James Hyman, confirmed the miracle of Nathan's existence. I was in great pain and suffering internal bleeding. When Jim performed surgery, he discovered an orange-sized cyst had ruptured. He said that I had been producing these cysts instead of eggs. Years of cysts forming and popping, caused so much scar tissue that my ovaries had become hardened, like old dried up raisins. Jim was amazed that I had managed to conceive a child, ever. He told me that I had the ovaries of a ninety-year-old woman.
Nathan's life was in jeopardy on several occasions. In my sixth month of pregnancy, my gall bladder had to be removed. This was before the simpler, micro-surgery done for gall bladders, now. There was much risk as the anesthesia could bring on labor and the anti-labor drugs given could harm the baby. That evening, upon awakening after surgery, I began having contractions. Jim, who was usually at church on Wednesday nights, happened to still be on the hospital floor. He had just delivered a baby and rushed to my room to stop my labor.
Three months later, I went to the hospital to deliver my son. The contractions were two minutes apart all night and then stopped. The labor had been hard and the pain seared against my spine. Every contraction sent the graph clear off the chart. I never dilated and my heart rate increased, while my son's decreased to half its normal rate. I was wheeled in for an emergency c-section. My son entered this world, stressed, but beautiful. I kept my promise to raise him in the admonition of the Lord.
When my son first began to climb from his bed on his own, he was not yet two. One morning, a talkative, elderly woman had called me. I patiently listened to her, as I heard my son clamor out of his bed. I had been painting with an oil-based paint and had a small jar of mineral spirits on the kitchen table. Nathan had never climbed upon a chair to reach anything. He just toddled around the table's edge, trying to grab whatever he could reach. Telling the woman I needed to go, I shoved the jar and my paints to the center of the table where they would be out of the range of his groping hands. After hanging up the phone, I turned to my son and screamed. He was kneeling on a chair and drinking from the jar! My shriek frightened him and he dropped the jar. The remaining contents spilled to the floor, making it impossible for me to tell the poison control center how much he had ingested. I rushed him to the hospital where my husband joined me and we desperately prayed. A woman in my bible study had recently lost her 18 month old son because he swallowed a petroleum-based product. The staff took our son away to x-ray to see if any damage had occurred to his lungs. As we waited, a dear brother came to us and told us he had been praying for our son and the Holy Spirit told him our son would live and not die and that he would be a great man of God, speaking in truth and integrity, like the prophet, Nathan of old.
Nathan appeared to be fine, despite the fact that his next diaper revealed quite a strong presence of mineral spirits in his stool, burning his tiny bottom. We praised and thanked God for saving his life, yet again.
Nathan spent his childhood and early youth with his heart and focus on the Lord. As a very little guy, he often strolled up to the pastor of our Assembly of God church with a "word" or a song from the Lord for the body. I will never forget my tears as, at the age of three, he huskily sang, "Something beautiful, something good, all my confusion, He understood. All I had to offer Him, was broken-ness and strife, but He made something, beautiful of my life."
When he was four, I had an orange-sized ovarian cyst rupture, as I stated earlier. My ovaries had to be removed. I was in the hospital and Nathan was separated from me for the first time. My first night home, as I tucked him into bed, he told me he had seen an angel in the corner of his room, sitting on his toy box. The next morning, he came downstairs and said, "Mama, how do you get Jesus in your heart?" I explained he only had to ask and we prayed together, then and there. Later, when my husband and I kept foster children, he told them about Jesus and prayed with them to have Jesus come into their hearts.
At the age of eleven, his childhood was cut short with his father's illness. He had to bathe, feed and dress his daddy, at the onset of his depression and later went through even worse trials as the illness progressed to eventually claim his father's life in suicide.
As a teen, Nathan established a Christian band and wrote beautiful songs of faith and love for Jesus.
After his father's death, Nathan developed a deep interest in history and historical reenacting. He majored in history at a local college and hopes to eventually become a history professor. He found solace in the company of his grandfather, my dad, who was a history fanatic as well. Together they worked on a museum my dad developed and shared their love for history and antique cars. Two years later, dad passed from this earth, and Nathan was again crushed with grief. I am happy to say that Nathan recently married a lovely and delightful young woman, Andrea, and she shares his love for history and re-enacting. They enjoy sewing "period-correct" outfits for various eras and have a small historical outfitter's business.
While this does not yet appear to be the "calling" I have expected, I feel a confidence that, in time, that will come. God is faithful to carry out His plans for us.
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