The Shadow of Death

My daughter's recent illness.

Photo by Fabrice Villard on Unsplash

I don’t often delve much into my personal life on here. But in honor of Thanksgiving and God’s particular kindness to us recently, I am making an exception. As some of you may know, my daughter Abby was recently hospitalized for pneumonia. She had battled with her health before, so this wasn’t entirely unusual, though it had been over ten years since her previous hospitalization.

On October 2nd, my daughter, Abby, was admitted to the ICU. This was terrible of course, we were disappointed that her health streak had come to an end. But this was not her first rodeo. We prepped ourselves, we knew the drill. We assumed she might be in the hospital for a week or so — no fun, of course, as any parent knows it’s agony to watch your child suffer — but still a routine part of her journey.

But that’s not how it happened.

Through this process, I realized that I had allowed a narrative to click into place of how things would go. A narrative that was just a bit too… tidy.

When things get rough, I think perhaps, without realizing it, we start negotiations with God. We permit some tinkering on his part, along as God behaves. We can, with largesse, say that, yes, it was hard there for a bit, but for example, if I had not had that car accident, I may not have discovered an underlying health issue. So, it all worked out for the best.

And that’s not bad. We know that trials are for the best. Romans 8:18 says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

The problem is when we expect life to work the same way everything else works—when we expect vending machine efficiency, DoorDash-friendly competence, and consumer-driven results.

We make bargains, treating life as a transaction.

This approach is subtle on our part, often passing unnoticed. Our expectations are subconsciously shaped around utility.

But it can get immensely frustrating when God doesn’t play by our rules. When it gets worse and worse, and it makes no actual sense, when life seems to spin and spiral, when God seems ruthless and cruel, when bad news leads to worse.

Our expectations leave us vulnerable.

When Abby had been in the hospital for a few days, and the severity of her illness came crashing down on us, we were left totally unprepared. She spent more than a month in the ICU, barely hanging on to her life. As one cardiologist put it, “She’s a real sick girl, ya’ll.” That’s cause we just moved to the south.

My son trying to cheer Abby up in her long hospital stay.

Anyone who knows Abby knows that she is truly the most joyful, grateful, non-complaining girl I’ve ever known. Yes, I’m biased. But she is. She lives every day of her life with a joyful acceptance of whatever is given.

Even the same forgettable breakfast. I’m not exaggerating. I mean, I feel like the fact that I’m walking around in the morning is a profound act of sacrifice on my part.

Abby is everyone’s favorite.

Abby thinks that any time is a great time for a hug. Even the time when I was filling out paperwork at an urgent care to get my ears flushed. Standing at the counter, surrounded by stern people who took life seriously and avoided eye contact. A time that belongs to doctor paperwork and insurance cards, in which miserable people simply endure.

*That* was the time when Abby just wanted a hug to remind me that she loved me. After all, why not?

She shed tears in the hospital, but the sight of my tears always drew far more concern from her than her own troubles. Her one big moment of complaint was when the nurse asked her how she was doing one day, and her response was to kick her stuffed bunny off her bed. We laughed.

Yet this girl had everything stripped from her: her ability to breathe, eat, talk, and even move. Why did God bring her to such a place of absolute darkness?

In our dark night of the soul, we were forced to prepare ourselves to say goodbye to her.

Sometimes, God brings us to the deep, dark places of the earth. There, are things rare and mystical, things you can only find in the deep down, the incandescent, the luminous, the otherworldly.

The beauty of hundreds of people praying for her all over the country, of hundreds of hospital hands caring for her as if she belonged to them, of a nurse giving her a mani-pedi when she wasn’t her patient, of the entire staff of her school dressed up in her favorite characters on Halloween, of our church surrounding us with meals, prayers, and visits, of people spending time singing with her and reading her stories, of visiting her in the depths, surrounding and upholding her as if she were the most precious.

The beauty of God’s transcendent kindness, meeting us, filling, and surrounding us on all sides overflowing. And God radically healing her.

Abby, home again!

She was almost seven full weeks in the hospital total. Though she’s still on oxygen she is home and all smiles.

This Thanksgiving, we can’t stop hugging Abby.