Religion is one of those things that I probably shouldn’t talk about, and my own journey is probably best kept between me and whatever powers that may be, but recently, I’ve been thinking about a story that I’ve heard told as a joke, sermonized in church and written up as a meme.

The essence of the tale is that a man hears that a hurricane is approaching and he is advised by the weather service to evacuate to safer ground. The man says he will not evacuate, because God will save him. As the floodwaters start to rise, the emergency services come through, and again advise the man to leave while he still can. The man still refuses to leave, saying that God will save him. Finally, the waters rise, and he is forced onto his roof. A rescue helicopter comes and lowers a rope, and he refuses it, once again saying that God will save him. When the man finally drowns, he goes to heaven, and comes face to face with God, where he asks him why he failed to save him. God responds, “I sent the weather service, EMS and a helicopter. What more did you want?”

A’s diagnosis of a congenital heart defect was one of the defining moments of my life. While I was having an ongoing conversation with God about the unfairness of the situation, I was also busy making phone calls to every doctor I knew who might know something, Googling every possible treatment option, and fighting with insurance companies. Friends and family members had their own struggle with us, how to be supportive of our fragile emotional state and deal with our hurt, our anger, our outbursts. It wasn’t easy for any of us.

One day, a well-meaning person told me that they were praying for me, and A, and that I should stop driving myself crazy with all these appointments and doctors, and just turn everything over to God.

“If God wants your child to live, he will live,” this person said, “and if God wants your child to die, there is nothing you can do about it.”

I have to say, that was the single most horrible thing anyone has ever said to me. Even though I know the intent was not malicious, it was still just shocking. At that moment, all I could think to myself is that this would be the guy sitting on his roof, waving off the helicopter.

As we continued our journey, and we met the doctors who would be treating us, and we started to understand the path that they had taken and the history behind the treatment of children with congenital heart disease, it became very obvious that we were dealing with tremendously gifted people.

For all of my struggles with God, it was hard not to see some kind of divine intervention in how the brilliant minds who developed out-of-the-box treatments, and technologies like heart bypass machines, and the multidisciplinary team that worried not only about A’s heart, but his other organs and his cognitive and physical development all came together to execute a plan that not only helped our child to live, but helped him to thrive.

The moment when the surgeon walked into the waiting room with a smile on his face, and the good news that A had survived his first surgery was not only the answer to our prayers, but a moment when I just stared at the doctors hands, thinking that as he shook mine, only a few minutes earlier, he had been holding and fixing my son’s heart. It was an overwhelming moment to say the least.

Why are these thoughts running through my head these days? Well, measles are making headlines again, and once again, the “to vaccinate or not to vaccinate” question is running rampant.

As a biologist, as a mother of a child who may have a subpar immune system, as a human who relies on herd immunity to keep myself and my kids healthy, how people cannot vaccinate is a complete mystery to me.

But, as a mom who held her children’s chubby little thighs still so they could be stuck with needles, and who heard the doctor tell me that there was a one in a million chance that my child could have an adverse reaction to the vaccinations, I can maybe see why a person would rather not put a child through that. Of course, I’ve also sat by my child’s bedside as he was hooked up to many more needles and tubes and wires when he contracted pneumonia, even though he had been vaccinated against it.

The two-day hospital stay that he endured was precautionary because of his heart condition. Had he not been a heart kid, he would have been sent home from the doctor’s office on antibiotics. Even so, I railed at the doctor, because I had questioned his vaccination schedule, and I felt like I had put him through it for nothing. The doctor looked at me and simply said, “imagine how much worse it would have been if he had had no immunity at all.”

The thing about vaccinating is that when someone chooses not to vaccinate, they’re not sitting up on that roof alone. They’ve dragged everyone else in their community up there with them. Some of us are going to take that helicopter anyway, some of us are strong enough swimmers, but sadly, the most vulnerable members of our society: the sick, the young, the old, are going to be the ones who drown. Don’t wait for the helicopter. Listen to the early warning systems, and let’s not wait until we’re sitting on the roof to fix this mess.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.