Category: Every Life Matters

Charlie Gard: The Conscience of a Nation

He lies in a hospital room, his little eyes mostly closed. Although he is nearly a year old, he seems so small. Like millions of others, I only know Charlie because his picture and story have been in the news recently.

The first thing that catches my eye in his pictures isn’t the tubes attached to the ventilator keeping him alive.

I’m used to ventilators. My son Kevin has been on one since a fall in 1997 paralyzed him from the neck down. He has since weaned off the ventilator during the days, and only goes back on to sleep at night. For our family, the ventilator is well-named: life support. We are grateful for life support because it has given Kevin a chance to live.

The first thing I notice about Charlie is his beautiful face. His long eyelashes brush his cheeks. His wisp of hair is carefully combed. Stuffed animals have been tucked around him. He is obviously well-loved.

Charlie Gard was born to Chris Gard and Connie Yates of London, England, on August 4, 2016. He began to decline shortly after birth, and eight weeks later his parents took him to the hospital. It was discovered that their son suffers from a rare and terminal disease called mitochondrial depletion syndrome. He is one of only sixteen known cases of the disease worldwide. It has left him with brain damage and progressive weakness. He now requires life support.

Through aggressive research, Charlie’s parents have discovered an experimental drug that has not yet been used to fight MDS, but has helped some children with a related syndrome called TK2. This treatment is not available in the United Kingdom but is available in the United States. A fundraising effort has raised more than a million dollars for his treatments, care, and travel.

But there’s a hitch in their hope.

The Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Charlie lies, wants control over when and how he should die. The doctors there have decided to turn off Charlie’s ventilator. They have denied the family’s right to either transfer him to a hospital in the United States willing to treat him or to take him home to die.

In June of this year, the case was appealed to the authority known as, ironically, The European Court of Human Rights. The high court ruled against Charlie’s parents and in favor of the hospital’s case to remove Charlie from life support and prevent his parents from seeking experimental treatment for their son outside the United Kingdom.

His parents have fought hard to help Charlie keep fighting for life.

“If he’s still fighting, we’re still fighting,” says his father, Chris Gard.

These words ignite my heart, because Charlie Gard could have been my son. Kevin did not have the rare disease with which Charlie was born. But we have faced some of the same crucial life issues that surround this little boy since Kevin’s fall in July of 1997, during a teen mission’s trip to Canada.

When Kevin broke his neck in Lethbridge, Alberta, he was airlifted to a larger hospital in Calgary that was better equipped to treat spinal cord injuries. When we learned that he had been injured, we made the twelve-hour-drive through the night from Idaho to Calgary to join him there.

Upon our arrival, we learned the awful news that Kevin was paralyzed from the neck down and on life support. The doctors at the initial consultations gave us little hope for his survival and virtually no hope for his recovery. One doctor was adamant that Kevin could not live. When I realized he was talking about euthanizing Kevin, I rebelled with all my strength.

No one had asked our son if he wanted to live. We would not make him die.

Through a series of events I can only describe as a miracle, Kevin not only came home to live after seven weeks in hospitals and rehab, he gained back more than the doctors could have guessed. He has lived at home with his family for twenty years and accomplished much in that time. We are thankful for every day we have had with him.

Through Kevin’s injury and recovery, we have learned several important lessons:

  • Doctors can be wrong.

Had we listened to the medical advice we were given, Kevin would be dead. The doctor who gave us no hope and tried to force his viewpoint on us was wrong. Kevin did improve and has lived a useful life.

  • It is not up to others to decide which lives should be saved.

We’ve had the joy of seeing God intervene in Kevin’s case and restore much to him. But we would have fought just as hard for him had he never regained any feeling or function.  Once society begins to set a standard for humans to fulfill to be allowed to live, we are no better than Nazis. Because organs and medical treatment are at a premium, life has become a commodity to be doled to the most deserving.

When medical personnel make decisions based on the profit margin and a person’s perceived worth to society, a nation has lost its soul.

  • The term “death with dignity” is subjective.

Who gets to decide what constitutes dying with dignity? As a matter of fact, what constitutes living with dignity? When my mother was disabled by a series of strokes, there came a time that she developed pneumonia. The doctor decided not to treat her because, in his words, “Her life is useless.” He was going to let her die crying in a bed because he had made a judgment call about her worth. How dignified was that?

We insisted that he treat her. She recovered from the pneumonia and died some time later, peacefully, at God’s timing and with her family present. Her death, when it happened without duress, was more dignified than being forced to die at the doctor’s convenience.

  •  Parents should have the right to fight for their children.

In most cases, no one is going to care more for a child than his parents. It is their God-given duty to protect their child. A truly caring health care professional considers the well-being of the entire family. What could it hurt to allow them to love their little boy for as long as possible, and let God take him home?

  • If we don’t fight for the life of others, we will all become Charlie Gard.

Once life becomes worthless, once we have allocated to others the power to give and take the life of another human being, we are all at risk. Who knows when the standard will change again, and your life no longer rises to the new level of worthiness?

Today there are protests in the streets over the G-20 summit. In ten years no one will remember the G-20 summit. But who will fight for the Charlie Gards of the world?

Who will fight for the soul of the nations?

 

UPDATE: In the face of mounting international pressure, the Great Ormond Street Hospital has postponed removing Charlie’s life support for now. The hospital and parents will return to the European court to seek permission allowing Charlie and his parents to travel to the United States for his treatment.

The Vatican hospital, Bambino Jesus pediatric hospital in Rome, and the New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center have offered to accept Charlie for treatment. New York Presbyterian Hospital has also offered to ship the experimental drug to the Great Ormond Street Hospital and provide advice on its administration if needed.

Both President Trump and Pope Francis have weighed in on the matter in Charlie’s favor.

 

 

The House That Grace Built

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In a day, our world changed forever.

It was nineteen years ago this month that our son Kevin broke his neck in a fall and sustained a devastating spinal cord injury. It’s one of those anniversaries that are bittersweet. So much is so good in our lives. And yet, the loss is there every day.

I nearly forgot the day this year – a testament, I guess, to the fact that we’ve moved on in many ways. Kevin is still mostly disabled, and yet he still continues to make new gains when we least expect it. We’re still mostly caregivers. And yet, I love and appreciate life more than ever.

It’s strange and wonderful how we need both darkness and light to grow.

The end of last year began a new season for us as a family. A series of events have unfolded in a phenomenon that has, in rapid succession, answered several of my most desperate and long-standing prayers for my children and grandchildren. You know, those “the stone will have to roll away from the tomb” prayers, breathed so often I feared that I might irritate God with their frequency. They were the prayers carried in the night with a heavy heart and many tears before heaven. The ones that spring automatically to mind. You know.

Those prayers.

I prayed them for years without answers.

Then, without warning, a door opened. Then another, and another.

In August of last year, our youngest daughter Grace began a good job locally. Prayer answered.

In November of last year, we received the news that our son Erik and daughter-in-law Rachel were expecting for the first time after being told that would probably never happen. We welcomed our first grandson into the world in May of this year. Prayer answered.

In May of this year, our youngest son Daniel announced his engagement to a wonderful woman named Jenna. Prayer answered.

In June of this year, our eldest granddaughter Rebekah graduated from homeschool and was immediately accepted into the university of her choice. Her parents, our eldest daughter Jennifer and husband Scott, had sacrificed for many years and throughout many trials to educate their daughters. Rebekah is the second-generation to graduate from homeschool in our family. Prayer answered.

Their youngest daughter, Vanessa, will begin her first year of college level work as she finishes her last years in homeschool. Prayer answered.

This August, our son-in-law finally begins to see his long-standing dream of teaching become a reality. Prayer answered.

This summer, Kevin has been able, for the first time, to sit unassisted for nearly an hour at the side of his bed. This, from a man who was never supposed to move again. Ever. This, from a man who was thought – by some in the medical profession – to be better off dead. This, after nearly two decades of disability. Prayer answered.

Aaron and I continue to have the health we need to be caregivers and walk Kevin’s journey with him. Nineteen years ago, we were told it would be impossible for us to care for him at home. We live the impossible every day with him.

Prayer answered.

Living in Graceland.

A friend once told me that her daughter, who liked to come to our place and see Grace, used to call our place “Graceland.” We chuckle at the ironic designation. It seems fitting, though, because we are the house that grace built. This anniversary of Kevin’s accident is our reminder that God is always at work. Prayer is crucial, and He is never irritated that we bring our heartaches and hopes to Him.

If you’re facing impossible odds today, if darkness is all around you, lift up your head. God still answers prayer. He loves you, and He is at work in your life.

You are the house that grace built.

The Gift of Existence

Kevin-and-Dad
Photo courtesy Grace Thorson/2016

It would have been so much easier to die.

Kevin Thorson lay paralyzed in the grass of a church lawn in Canada. Moments earlier, he was practicing backflips with a friend when he missed a rotation, fell on his head, and broke his neck nearly at his skull. As a friend ran for help, he lay there alone, not breathing, fading into blackness as he fell unconscious.

He told us later that it was at that moment, when he felt himself near death, that the presence of God came to him. The sense of the next world was intensely powerful, forever making this side of the veil seem the impostor. It would have been quick, even merciful, to have slipped quietly away to join God.

But God wasn’t there to take him to heaven.

Instead, He had a message for Kevin. A voice so real Kevin thought it was audible told him, “You’re going to be okay.”

He awakened not okay. He was in a desperate fight for his life. Emergency personnel worked feverishly to keep him alive until he could be put on life support. He endured a helicopter ride to a larger hospital in Calgary, a doctor’s push for euthanasia, surgeries, pneumonia, bronchoscopy, paralysis, loss of privacy, and much pain in the first weeks before he returned home.

Later he endured serious infections that landed him in intensive care. He had more surgeries for kidney stones. He spent two years on the ventilator before weaning off it on days, something that had been declared an impossibility by his doctors. He regained more than they expected, but not enough for a normal life.

The loss was profound. It came in layers as the reality of the depth of his disability struck home. Some days he grieved over the dreams he would never see realized. Other days he longed for just the feel of grass beneath his feet again.

But as victories came, like breathing on his own and taking his first steps and running a computer, there was a stirring in his soul. He began to truly appreciate being alive. Watching him struggle to live out his faith despite profound brokenness, I began to see how completely God had brought to pass what He promised Kevin: He would be okay.

Today I understand this: Existence, in all its facets, is a gift.

It is the man who has been told he would never breathe on his own who appreciates the feeling of air in his lungs.

It is the man who has endured great pain who appreciates a day when his body is at peace.

It is the man who once lost all feeling who takes joy in the warmth of the sun on his arms, the softness of a kitten’s fur beneath his fingers, and his legs under him again as he takes his first shaky steps.

It is the man who has had everything taken away who treasures anything given back.

It is in loss that we understand the gift.

To exist is to be. We are made in mirror image of our Creator, who calls Himself the great “I AM.” We were made to experience. We were made to feel, to love, to laugh, to hurt.

Those who say, “I would never want to live like that” must give room to those who do want to live, even if it is “like that.” The disabled and the vulnerable and the aged and the pre-born have no duty to die because their existence is inconvenient for others.

Yes, it would have been easier for Kevin to die that awful day in 1997. But what richness of life we would have missed in knowing him. The world is a better place because he exists.

Why I’m Not Fighting to Save Babies: Guest Post by Susanne Maynes

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I’m honored to have writer and counselor Susanne Maynes with us here at Every Life Matters. Susanne has worked at a pregnancy resource center for eight years. Her heart for God and her service to women in crisis uniquely equips her to speak with us today.

 

I enter the room quietly, take my seat across from the nervous teen, and gently ask how she is feeling. Her eyes pool.

“Not so good. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

Her story unfolds. Courtney (not her real name) hasn’t yet finished high school, let alone pursued her field of study and career of choice. Her dreams are at stake.

On top of that, her parents don’t approve of the boy. They will be disappointed and angry, she fears.

I’m facing a familiar scenario, one I’ve seen many times as a counselor at a pregnancy resource center. My job is to help this young woman understand her pregnancy options, offer her emotional and spiritual support, and help her take hold of hope for both herself and her baby.

Why do I do this?  Because I’m fighting to save babies, right?…or am I?

It’s true that the lives rescued by the pro-life movement are the lives of tiny unborn babies; it’s true that once those babies are born, we rejoice at their delightful, innocent, brand-new presence in the world.

But all cuteness and giggles and coos aside, I’m not really fighting to save the lives of babies. I’m fighting to save the lives of people.

Those infant boys and girls will grow into toddlers, grammar school kids, teens. They’ll be adults one day. We’ll see them on the job, in the grocery store, at church.

And when we see them, we might ask ourselves, When did the sacred value of their life begin?

From the first “stitch” that God knit together in the womb.

Psalm 139:13, 16 says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

From his sovereign perspective, God sees every life from beginning to end.

At no point in the continuum is a person less than a person in his eyes.

I saw a comic a few years ago depicting two teen girls talking. The pregnant one tells her friend, “I think it’s a puppy!”

Therein lays the problem with thinking of the pro-life objective as “saving babies.”  The issue isn’t just rescuing darling little infants from being sucked out of this world; the issue is fighting for the fulfillment of human destinies.

As Dr. Ravi Zacharias eloquently explained at a conference I attended, God’s answer to human dilemmas is always found in a person. The Israelites needed the right man to lead them out of slavery in Egypt – thank God Moses’ mother was courageous enough to save his life during a time of mandatory male infanticide.

Later, God’s people needed deliverance from various oppressors, and God raised up judges to rescue them.

Ultimately, God’s solution for the biggest human dilemma ever came through the person of his very own son.

Dr. Zacharias wonders how many times we have begged and pleaded for help from God – and become offended at his apparent unconcern — when in reality, he had already sent the answer, and we destroyed that answer in the womb.

This is why I sit across from troubled women to help them take hold of hope. This is why I pray, my heart breaking, while they wrestle with their decisions.

Not just to save babies. To save people. People who are the apple of God’s eye and his answer to our problems.

Courtney decided against abortion. Her little boy will be born in a few weeks.

Who knows what kind of an answer he will be?

 

10989255_566024660204946_6084923594370626820_nSusanne Maynes is the Counseling Director at Life Choices Clinic, a pregnancy resource center where she has worked for eight years. She is a Board Certified Biblical Counselor with the Board of Christian and Pastoral Counselors. Susanne blogs weekly at www.susannemaynes.com to help sincere but discouraged Christians find healing, gain insight and take heart so they can live out their faith with courageous compassion.

Crying in the Wilderness: Why Every Life Matters to Me

Erik Thorson 2015
Erik Thorson 2015

THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS,
‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.’ -Mark 1:3

Today my heart is broken.

I haven’t watched the video. But a description of its contents is enough to send me reeling. The revelation of a doctor’s extraction of the brain of an aborted fetus while its little heart still beat inside its dying body has pushed me over the edge.

Over the edge of every good reason I had to stay silent. Plunging down the chasm of my vanity, the worry over my image as an author and speaker. Past the safety net of positivism.

I spent the day grieving, just flat-out brokenhearted over what we have become as recent undercover videos of abortion practices and the sale of fetal body parts has revealed the seedy underbelly of the death industry.

Kill. Harvest. Clean up the blood. Dispose of the body.

Go to lunch and arrange another sale.

She eats, wipes her mouth, and says, “I haven’t done anything wrong!” -Proverbs 30:20 (God’s Word Translation)

Over twenty years ago, a doctor in an emergency room told me he didn’t plan to treat my disabled mother’s pneumonia because, in his words, “Her life is useless.” Eighteen years ago, a doctor in Canada wanted us to pull the plug on our paralyzed son because his life would be worthless.

I fought for my mother to live her final years in dignity. I have fought hard for my son to live well in his broken body. Along the way I’ve learned much about this fierce and glorious and fragile breath we call life.

The gift is so beautiful that I even have a hard time taking it from the critters that complicate our country living. I’d rather whisk a spider back outside than squish it. I used to designate all snakes as being either “one-rock” or “two-rock.” The big ones took two rocks to kill. Recently I walked past a little bull snake lying on our rock wall as it cooled off in the sprinkler.

I left it alone. It wasn’t a good morning for anything to die.

Though I have been destined to fight for the lives of those I love, I have long resisted God’s call to speak out against the culture of death publicly, out of fear of being seen as negative or political. No more. I no longer care what anyone thinks of me.

When Is Silence Evil?

A fierce national spirit and reluctance to actively protest the agenda of the Nazis kept the German church largely quiet against the genocide by their leaders. Few Christians had the courage of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who ultimately was killed by the Nazi regime for his participation in the resistance against Hitler.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today genocide is rampant across the globe. Some kill in the name of God. Others kill in the name of ethnic cleansing. In developed countries, we routinely kill the pre-born, the aged, the disabled in the name of compassion. Call it “women’s health” or “death with dignity.” Someone still dies, and someone profits.

Are we any better than Hitler? Or are we any better than a church that, for the most part, kept quiet as people were experimented on and gassed and skinned to make lampshades?

I have always been pro-life. But it became personal for me the day a doctor wanted to dispatch my mother because she was in the way. It became personal for me the day a doctor wanted to dispatch my son because his organs were more valuable to society than his life.

I realize my voice is a small one. It isn’t likely many will even read this post, much less feel compelled to act upon it. But I must add my voice to those rising to fight for compassion. I will fight with my last breath for the lives of those without a voice in this wilderness.

Why does every life matter to me?

It matters to God.

Will you stand with me? Will you educate yourself and speak out and support the families of the voiceless?

Next: Embrace the Pain.

 

 

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