Stayin' Alive

Back when we were a small family of six,

and we were looking into educational options for Reuben who was three-and-a-half and going on two years into his epilepsy diagnosis, I was really impacted by the amount of resources our government, via the public school system, was willing to invest in "fixing" (or probably more accurately, helping Reuben overcome) his disabilities in order to succeed to the greatest degree possible. Part of what made me, as an already-home-schooling mother who was herself a home-school graduate willing to consider the public school as an option for Reuben was that one of the (many) reasons that we were interested in educating our children at home was that the student-teacher ratio was better than what any school could offer our kids! Realizing that Reuben, as a three year old, would be in a classroom with a teacher, para-professional support, and a speech therapist and occupational therapist...and only one other classmate...and would thus be getting a WAY better student-teacher ratio than I could provide at home (even with only four children!) was a big piece of helping me be willing to put my little non-verbal, vulnerable three year old Reuben onto a bus three mornings a week and send him away to school. And I still think it was a good decision in many ways, and that's not the major reason I'm actually writing a real, live blog post.

The real reason is something tangential to what that government-level investment made me think about. Already at that age, we could see a softness in Reuben toward the things of God, and a hardness in our oldest. As I looked at these two little boys, I realized that the question of who had everything and who needed help all depended on the perspective from which you were looking at the boys. If this life now is what's really important, then Owen was set - smart, friendly, athletic, motivated - and Reuben was not - non-verbal, physically awkward, developmentally delayed, a progressive, life-threatening medical condition. But if this life is just a little blip at the beginning of eternity, then exactly the opposite is true - all of Reuben's challenges will shortly be removed and all of Owen's advantages will accomplish nothing. The brokenness gets flipped on its head!

So now to today. Here in Minnesota, we've been carefully following the stay-at-home orders which started I-can't-remember-when and expire tomorrow [when I originally started the post! They've been over for a week now.] As we begin to make choices about who goes where and when and how and how much, one of the things we need to keep in mind is that the answers to those questions look different depending on what perspective you're looking at them from! It's easy to sound almost flippant, and I know this topic, especially as it relates to COVID is rather loaded these days, but one thing we've got to come to terms with is what our main goal is for our children. Is it merely "stayin' alive"? Or is it something other than that?

Much of that centers, in our family, around Mira. Way back when Krassimir first came home, two of the other children adopted from the Pleven orphanage died relatively soon after coming back to the States with their families. Since then, there have been more. It was and is really tough to lose those precious children. I'm not going to say that it was like losing my own child, but it felt like the next closest thing, as it felt like losing a sibling of my own child. I know Krassimir didn't know most of the other children he grew up with since they all lived mostly in their own cribs, but *I* still felt a connection was there because they had shared the same horrific history.

We went into Mira's adoption knowing that she was a very complicated child medically, and fully expecting to outlive her. As I mentioned in our update a few weeks ago, one of our desires in making her our daughter was that she would not have to die alone, but could die surrounded by a family - her family! - that loved her. So we've known from the start that the "success" of our adoption of Mira is not something that will be measured by whether she lives or dies. However, we never expected to be in a situation like this where the choices we make could have a large impact on when she dies.

It's one thing for a person to decide that they're not afraid of dying and are going to live their life during this time without "hiding" from exposure to the virus. It's another thing altogether if that person would go out to the grocery store without taking any precautions and then go to visit a friend who's going through chemo. Somewhere there a line has been crossed between living your convictions and being careless about the sanctity of life.

And therein lies the question. Do we protect Mira from exposure to COVID-19 at all costs? Or do we just go ahead and expose her and get it over with since death will set her free from the constraints of the broken body she lives deep within? Neither extreme is right. The right answer falls somewhere in the middle, and that's what makes it tough. Our job as her parents is to navigate - and not just for her, but for the whole crew that we're responsible for! - where in the middle is the right place to walk. I once heard a pastor say that the devil doesn't care which side of the narrow path you fall off, as long as you are no longer following the lead of your shepherd. (So that thought's been rolling through my head through all of this, and then our pastor said something similar during his sermon yesterday!)

The answer, then, I believe, falls in making our choices every day by submitting them first to God, asking him for his blessing and his guidance and praying as Jesus taught us: Your will be done.

~~~

Life is precious, and health and wholeness are things that when we work toward, we are in alignment with the heart of God. But, there is a difference between treasuring life, and avoiding death at all costs.

Here goes...