Releasing

When Marvin and I were engaged we spent time answering a lot of thought provoking questions.  A friend of Marvin’s had given him a list of questions to answer before marriage and we had so much fun discussing what married life would be like.  Unfortunately somewhere along the way I lost the list, but it was similar to this list, just a lot more questions.  Some of them were surface stuff like where you imagine living: apartment, house, but there were a lot of deeper things about faith, raising children, and roles in marriage. 

Looking back, I see two naïve 20 year olds who thought we had it all figured out.  We answered all the questions so we were ready to get married, but what was it we were exactly ready for?  I know most of our friends have been married long enough to know that marriage is tough stuff and nothing like what we envisioned it would be when we first said I do.  But isn’t that the beauty of it?  It gets better as our hearts endure hardships, as we disagree, as we walk through life beside our spouse we understand more about whom he/she is and grow to love him/her more.

I remember discussing medical intervention.  We both agreed that modern medicine has its place in helping us fight for life here on earth and it was not our decision to end life.  We never imagined we’d be faced with the decision to end medical intervention with one of our own children. 

You see those two young kids didn’t quite understand how you could love a child yet, and I don’t think you can until you enter into the beautiful realm of parenthood.  When you see that little piece of you, or the one you’ve been asked to raise, your heart explodes with love.  The kind of love that you’d do anything for.

Through teary eyes we watched Seth fight for his life.  We watched his team of medical doctors surround his tiny body and work as hard as they could to find a solution to help him live.  But he was only tethered to this earth through breathing tubes and machines and we knew it. 

We are thankful for his cries we heard in the delivery room, for watching him move his little arms and legs around in his isolette, seeing him open his little eyes, and enjoying him as he sucked on his breathing tube like it was a pacifier, but in our hearts we knew that he was only ours for a short time.  This world that he was being tethered to was not the one he was chosen for.  So when his doctor asked us how to proceed, the decision came with peace.  We let him run to Jesus.

 

The decision to release him into the Lord’s hands, while the most heartbreaking decision of our lives, came with and indescribable peace.  Even though our hearts ache I rejoice in the fact that we choose a better life for him.  I can’t wait for the day when we can enjoy it with him.