Lucy Update Day 2: Our Cloud of Witnesses

(Update: On June 5, 2024 Lucy passed away and is in the arms of Jesus)

June 2

TDLR Version: If you don’t want to read the emotional ramblings of a guy who is working off 1 hour of sleep, Lucy’s prognosis hasn’t changed much. They removed the drain from her brain because the swelling was just too severe it rendered the drain useless. Our main battle is getting the swelling down to reduce brain tissue death, regulating vitals, and waiting. There was a few infinitesimal glimmers of hope with possible brain activity, but much has been explained away by spinal cord activity. It is hard to hope, but we know we’re not alone. We were visited by both our parents at 2am, both pastors and wives this afternoon, and Bethany’s brother and sister. Later at night we had a scare where her heart rate spiked and we’re still keeping an eye on that. She’s being sedated now to help with tachycardia.

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Long version: Last night we never slept. We dozed here and there holding each other in a hospital recliner. We knew what the morning brought. We needed to tell our other three children about the severity of the situation. Walking into the hospital room that the staff generously gave us were three little humans sleeping soundly. It hit us so hard at that moment that there were only three not four, and the incompleteness felt so profound as we watched them sleep. We broke the news as gently as we could, but that is a conversation you never want to have with a 4 year old, 8 year old, and 10 year old. Shiloh broke down immediately. She and Lucy are best friends being the middle girls. She couldn’t imagine sleeping alone in her room. AJ was slow to comprehend and just wanted to be held, then got into his typical 4 year old machine gun questioning style. Silas tried to hold it in as the tough guy, but then burst out crying “I don’t want to be a family of five”.

The pain this morning felt so deeply embodied. We woke up with chest pain. I felt grief grip my solar plexus as I groaned at her bedside. I truly felt like the Spirit was interceding for me changing my groaning to words before the throne of God. But my pitiful prayers were just one utterance among many thousands because today is Resurrection Day. The day the church of God gathers to corporately war against sin and the devil, and to proclaim that Jesus is not dead anymore but dealt death a death blow. We started today in such anguish, asking, “What about this ‘peace’ people talk about in suffering? Are we not spiritual enough? What in the world could peace be besides just the physical collapse that we feel?” But as Lucy’s story traveled among God’s people we noticed a shift in our hearts as well. Although the circumstances barely changed, we felt a bit of hope.

Hope is edgy. You have to open your heart to the possibility of something that’s often unachievable within your own power and control. You have to risk hoping that your will is aligned with God’s and faithfully ask for and hope for a desired result. Bethany often lovingly confronts me for my chronic hopelessness. Although I’m a pastor and counselor, on my best days I’m an honest realist, at worst I’m a hopeless skeptic.

It’s far easier to shut hope down than to be hurt in opening your heart (according to the enemy). However the gospel allows us, enables us, and calls us to hope. Our ultimate hope is the resurrection of Lucy’s body, but currently it is experienced in the grounding and embodied love of the church at large. As we stagger around in grief, we’re in the light being supported as we stagger. This has helped us more open handedly ask God for a miracle. Putting hope in brain and heart monitors is maddening. I see the squiggles on the back of my eyelids when I close my eyes. But at day’s end, after we finally got showers and I washed the beach sand and Lucy’s blood off of me I felt different. We have been bathed in your Christ-like love for us, and we were ready to go to war with all of you by raging against the darkness and not letting it overcome our fragile hearts by tapping into the Spirit’s strength we all share.

Thank you all for helping us hope. Thank you to our beautiful Green Pond church family and my co-laborers in the gospel who drove up here. Standing as one among millions is one of the many things helping us get through this calamity. 90% of the messages I get I have no idea who they are from. My first blog post has 50k hits, and no, that’s not normal for me because I’m not that cool! I will keep trying to update in the evening every day I can. Thank you all. You are amazing people used by God to bring comfort.

2 Corinthians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. ⁴ He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. ⁵ For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. ⁶ If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. ⁷ And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will also share in the comfort.