Sane and moral people don't view their children as "burdens" or as "punishment." 1979. An Air Force enlisted couple had their second child, born in an Air Force Base hospital. That couple was my wife and me. We had a baby girl. Full term. What we never knew before birth was that the baby had developed hydrocephalus (water head). When she was born, her head was the size of a two-year old's. The birth was to be natural, but my wife could not push this baby out. She was stuck at the bottom of the birth canal. The doctor ended up having to do a horrendous amount of cutting at the bottom of the birth canal to get this child out. The baby was taken to Variety Children's Hospital an hour away. There, neurosurgeons didn't expect her to live. They said that if she lives to be four days old, they would install a shunt, and then go from there. Four days rolled by and the baby was alive. A shunt was installed. We placed a plaque over the baby's bed, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding." (Proverbs 3:5) We prayed, and many others came by to pray. Within a week, we took our daughter home. When she was three weeks old, the area around the shunt was leaking fluid. We took her to the neurosurgeon's office. Our doctor was out of town. The older associate took us in. The doctor took us in to a small examining room and turned off all lights. He asked us to allow our eyes to become adjusted to the dark. Then he took a common flashlight and sent a beam of light down through her huge soft spot. Her entire cranial section, down to her ears, lit up like a light bulb. "What do you see?" asked the doctor. "Only light," we answered. "That's right," the doctor said, "Except for a few small areas of seemingly loose and floating brain matter, there is nothing in their but fluid." These are the words of that neurosurgeon: "Your baby is USELESS . . . she can never be anything but a severely retarded invalid. Allow me to make some arrangements -- you sign some papers, and let the state take this baby. Go home, raise your son, and FORGET that this baby was ever born." Of course, we did not. We asked the doctor to fix the shunt. He did. We took our daughter home. We played with and stimulated our daughter, and we worked and prayed and worked and prayed. In this photo (2006)is our daughter at 27 years old, standing with her grandfather, her mother, and her elder brother's young son.
This young woman is a mathematics whiz. She is a musician who plays the piano and mandolin, and she has published two books on Christian poetry. She teaches in a Christian school in a southern state. She grew up with us in Asia and still handles a lot of Chinese language pretty well. We just bought her a new lap top computer for her 29th birthday to help her with her writing. We are ever grateful to our Lord Jesus Christ for His mercies, and for His watchcare over our daughter for now almost three fruitful decades. You may surmise what my opinion is of that Libertarian author.
Thank you for that stunningly beautiful testimony of your faith and your daughter's life. I've been here over a decade now and I can tell you with all sincerity, my FRiend, that is truly one of the greatest signature posts of moral clarity and love that I have ever seen. What a striking contrast it makes when light of the power and love of God overcomes the darkness of the culture of death! Thank you again for sharing your story.
Cordially,
A salute to you from a fellow vet of the USAF and of similar experience! For twenty six years, we, too, put up with the solemn condemnation of doctors who thought death was the answer. I hope you get a chance to peruse our Terri Dailies from time to time and you will find we are allied with you.
I don't waste much time on the librarians or liberalaryans or whatever they are called, when they shrug off "life" in favor of some "higher" goals.
Deo Gratias...
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