Choosing Life

"I need to know by Monday if you change your mind about termination."
"Okay. Well, thank you for calling and letting me know."
"Again, I'm sorry and expect to hear from a case manager next week. Have a good weekend."

I hung up the phone and turned around to face the man behind me, standing there with a concerned look. He had rushed our children to the dinner table when I stepped outside to take the call. I knew the call was coming. My doctor had left a voice mail earlier in the day saying she needed to talk to me about test results. I wasn't worried. I was 41, pregnant with baby #7. I figured my glucose or vitamin D levels were out of normal range. Been there. Done that. I was just going to need to work a trip to the pharmacy into a busy Friday then we could take a family trip to go buy our new little girl or boy his/her first outfit!

Now, looking at him I took a breath, struggling to hold back tears, I wondered how we had gotten to this place. Years of misplaced priorities, difficult ministry positions, deployments, children, and homeschooling had taken its toll. We were struggling to keep this 20 year marriage together.  This new baby was the result of marriage counseling. The irony was not lost on me!  Just a few weeks before our counselor had been trying to convince me that while this is not the way he would have suggested working on a marriage, God had given us this new baby partly to help us have a new beginning, and He was going to use him/her to help us -  to breathe new life into something that was dead. I wasn't so sure.

I looked at my husband, not too sure how he was going to respond. "That was my OB with the NIPT results. The baby tested positive for Down Syndrome - they are 98% certain.  I turned down termination and an amnio, but we have until Monday to decide. I will be going to Hawaii for a fetal echo-cardiogram. I will be scheduled to see maternal fetal medicine in the next week to start monitoring growth, heart, and intestines. I will probably have to deliver back in the states. The baby probably won't be able to go to your next duty station because more than likely he will need more interventions than what they have there."

He put an arm around me; pulled me in for a hug. "Its going to be okay. We can do this."

After a few minutes, and more than a few more tears, we walked into the dining room and our son asked, "Is it a boy?!"
I had forgotten to ask.

The following week we got our next blow. Our request for a change in orders was met with, "Your family does not have to go. You go with them, or without them."

It is National Right to Life Sunday. It hits very close to home this year. Pictures of marchers on the Mall in DC bring tears to my eyes as I rock my little boy and text my distant husband. They are marching for my son - for unborn children like him who deserve a chance to live despite their circumstances. For me - for women like me who are facing the darkest moments of their lives and feeling completely alone. For my husband - for men who need to know they are necessary, they are needed, they are important. They march for those who are not blessed with the support system we have - to create a culture that supports, that loves, that tells them they "can", and that there is beauty in the ashes. They march to create a society and government that assumes life, not death.

We chose life for a marriage that was dead. We chose life for our son whose future is unpredictable. Our choice for life put us right into the place we wanted to avoid - separated.  Our choice for life put an end to the life I wanted for myself.

I sit here writing this not knowing how this story is going to end. It has been a very long, dark, and difficult year. I don't know what the future holds for my baby boy. I don't even know what life holds for our marriage. I don't know if I will ever see my personal dreams realized. There are many struggles ahead. It isn't going to be easy. But I do know:

• After the flurry of doctors and nurses left my hospital room with a fetal heart-rate stablized for the moment, where I was settling back into bed, alone and on oxygen, when my OB asked what I needed I said, "My husband."  As she directed a nurse to call the Red Cross to bring him home, the tears I cried were not just ones of anxiety for my unstable baby, but because I knew how much that one request really meant. 
• 2 days later when he walked into my post-partum room, directly from the airport after 24 hours of travel, I fell into his arms in tears and never wanted to leave. As he pushed me down to the NICU, unable to walk the distance myself after the c-section, to meet our son, I struggled to not  think about having to say good-bye again in a few days and to enjoy the time we did have.
• That baby boy asleep upstairs has already in his 11 months of life (3 outside the womb) touched our lives, our family, and others in ways I could have never imagined.  We cannot imagine life without him. 

The choice for Life is hard. It can be dark. It can push us past our limits and make us jump into a seemingly bottomless abyss.  It can require more from us than we ever thought possible. It can force us to rely on others and to trust what has failed us before. It changes our hopes, our dreams, our priorities.

It is Beautiful. It is Good. It is Love. 

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
 I came that they may have life
   and have it abundantly." 
John 10:10