I’ve never really talked about him. I guess I wanted to forget and deep inside I hoped that the passing of time would fade his story. He was in my home a shorter time than most of our foster children. He did not reunify with family, he was not adopted, he was not moved to another home. He died.
He died, and when I signed up for foster care, that was definitely not something I felt capable of handling. I mean seriously, how many of us are capable or willing to bring home a dying child? Looking back, I’m not even sure why I said ‘yes’, when they called about the placement. Naiveté? I guess in my heart I thought he would be like all the other children. He would arrive broken and hurting, and love would fix things. We had experienced some of the most miraculous moments with some critically ill children and I thought this would be the biggest miracle story of them all. What I had not experienced yet, was that sometimes in foster care and adoption, there is no beautiful story of redemption or miracle moment of healing. Sometimes the ending is not happy, and you are sitting waiting faithfully for God to show up and rescue….and He doesn’t.
It was a warm, Spring night and I sat in my car in the dark hospital parking lot and sobbed ugly tears. In the seat behind me, I heard flared-nose grunting as the one year-old pulled in breath after breath. I didn’t need to turn around to know that blood mixed with saliva was tracing down his chin, or that his tiny, pearl white teeth were chewing through his bottom lip. In my minds eye, I saw his wide blue-eyed stare and thick blond curls. I knew his fists would be clenched and his body strung tight as a bow. A survivor of near-drowning, he had been a running, talking, happy toddler just months prior. Now he was called “vegetative” and labeled “DNR” (do not resucitate).
I heard a voice tauntingly whisper “you can’t save them all”. In fact, I had been told that by well meaning friends when I first agreed to foster him.
Now sitting in my car, I was angry and hurt and questioning why God had allowed this to happen. How did God sit by and watch a 1 year-old slip beneath the surface of the bathtub water and not fix it? There would be no miraculous healing. No spontaneous return of brain function. This was our third hospital stay in a month and I had been advised to take him home and stop feeding him. “He only has brain stem function, there’s no quality of life.” In my heart, I had believed in a different ending. I honestly believed that God would faithfully step in and heal him. Medically,…scientifically I knew this wasn’t possible; and being discharged by a nurse who tried to explain this to me in “comforting terms” made me angry.
Going into this, I thought I had the resources and the ability. I also thought I understood how this was all supposed to play out. I had signed up to rescue and save; certainly I wasn’t being asked to watch a child die because of abuse and neglect. Sitting in that car, I started to ask myself. “What if God didn’t step in and fix this.” My God, what if he dies?
The system had failed. His parents had failed. And I was scared that God had failed also.
I gagged on my sobs and started the car. Medically I knew he needed surgery and medication. He couldn’t keep his airway clear and kept aspirating vomit. Darren and I had not slept for months because we took turns suctioning his airway every time he refluxed and vomited. Nights were scary, because at night we held death at bay with a suction machine and pure determination.
I was told that he was not eligible for surgery or the medication, because he had been labeled DNR (do not resuscitate) and that was that. But ‘that was that’ looks scary and awful when dying in your home beside your bed. ‘That was that’ cannot be ignored when chewing through their bottom lip in distress. And my foster child that was just a ‘brain stem’ opened my eyes to a world that places value and worth on intellectual and physical capability. A world that would not allow an animal to die in this manner; yet would stand behind three little letters – DNR and call it justifiable. It had thrust me headlong into broken and heart-ache and gut-wrenching hurt. It was a moment that I felt DNR meant – Do Not Rescue.
This baby had opened my eyes to a little known secret. Most people turn don’t want to sit in this grief. Most people aren’t comfortable watching a baby die, so most people tell you to take them home and stop feeding them….because this is what is humane in their minds. Please take that blonde-haired, blue-eyed chubby baby home and keep that kind of grief to yourself. We sanitize death…we scrub clean the pain and the brokenness, because it reminds us of our frailty and human condition. We don’t want to get too close to; too personal with suffering. When suffering comes, when death comes, who will bear it with us? Who will see us through it?
Before He died, Jesus wrestled with what He knew was to come. Jesus said to his friends, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38). I take refuge in this. The God of the Universe, the Creator of all things (even those things we call “DNR”), is saying He is overwhelmed with sorrow, even to death….
Ravi Zacharias says it well, “Life after death, on its own, does not bring hope. Only grace brings hope. I know of no grace as extravagant as the grace of Jesus Christ. And as grace upon grace—because Jesus has already done everything necessary for us to be right with God—this greatest of all hopes.”
Death is not easy when you have a healthy one year-old body. There was no silent passing, it was sleepless nights and desperately whispered prayers. And God did not show up in the way that I had begged. Grace and healing did not come on my terms.
He died. But what I learned is that following God means that I am called to get personal with brokenness and suffering. It means accepting that “I can’t save them all”, in fact I can’t save any; redemption was never my job. My job is to sit in the sorrow, mixed with the blood and saliva of humanity, and desperately whisper my surrender to a throne called GRACE.