Nathan & Tricia Update

As of Nathan's latest blog post, Tricia is in surgery right now. Here is an update from yesterday explaining why, and asking for your continued prayers:

Tricia's medical team (all 30+ of them) met today at 1:30 and presented an alternate plan which we are going to go with. Tricia will be intubated and ventilated tomorrow morning at 10:30am. They will watch her for a few hours. If everything looks good, they'll give her a tracheotomy. They'll leave her on the ventilator for a few days, allowing her body to regain strength and her lungs to get cleaned out, and then will perform the c section on Friday.

If her body does not like the ventilator, they will perform an emergency c section then and there.

The following is a blog post written by Nathan's dad. It is a humbling and challenging look at facing the difficult issues of truly living out your pro-life convictions:

How "Pro-life" are you? Really.

I believe in the sanctity of human life, primarily because I believe life is sacred and God is all about giving and protecting life. But sometimes such beliefs contradict conventional wisdom.

Years ago I heard that abortion might be permissable in the cases of rape and to protect the life of the mother. OK. That sounded reasonable to me. But some would argue, "Come on. How often does a pregancy put the life of the mother at risk?"

It's easy to proclaim yourself to believe in something that never touches you; that you never experience up front and personal. And it's easy to work into positions compromises based on "logic". Until it dares you face to face.

When my son and daughter in law discovered they were expecting the day before she was to being prelimnary physical therapy in preparation for a double lung transplant they had to make a choice. Clearly such a pregnancy would compromise the window of opportunity for a transplant as well as her fragile health. Plainly put, carrying a baby to term would likely not happen, and the chances of her surviving such a pregnancy were slim.

So they were counseled by the medical community which cares for her to abort. The greatest medical minds said the risk is too high. Being pregnant now is the worst possible scenario. And from a human and scientific perspective they were right.

But they were wrong. So my son and daughter-in-law said "No" to the scientific rationale. Their reasoning? God is the Creator of life. They made a choice to be willing to risk her life, believing that God in His sovereignty had all this in His plan for them.

It defies logic. But sometimes that's exactly what faith does: stares finite human reasoning in the face and says "You're wrong because God is always right".

Convictions don't come without a price. But obedience never comes without reward. This story hasn't yet come to it's conclusion, althhough it's getting there rapidly. But regardless of the outcome, it's what God thinks and reveals that counts.

So for me, being "pro-life" has moved from being a political stance or even a theological tenet. It's become experience, and that makes it as real as real can get.