“But the doctor.. .”
“I know. We shouldn’t have listened.”
There wasn’t any finger-pointing, no blaming each other. But we were
both really upset with ourselves. We had tried to do the right thing at each
step. The doctor said Xrays; we did Xrays. The doctor said IVs; we did
IVs. The doctor said blood tests; we did blood tests. He was the doctor,
right? He knew what he was doing... right? At each turning point, we had
tried to make the right call, but we had made the wrong ones, and now
Colton was paying for it. A helpless child was suffering the consequences
of our mistakes.
Behind me, Colton slumped lifelessly in his car seat, and his silence was
louder than any sound I had ever heard.
There is a story in the Bible about King David of Israel. David had
committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of David’s
trusted soldiers. Then, in an effort to cover up his sin, David sent Uriah to
the front lines, where David knew he would be killed. Later, the prophet
Nathan came to David and said, basically, “Look, God knows what you
did, and here are the consequences of your sin: the child that you and
Bathsheba have conceived will not live.”^1
David tore his clothes and cried and prayed and pleaded with God. He
was so grief-stricken that when the baby died, his servants were afraid to
come and tell him. But David figured it out, and when he did, he got up,
washed himself, ate, and calmly took care of the funeral. His behavior
confused his servants, who said, “Hey, wait a minute: weren’t you just
freaking out a few minutes ago? Weren’t you just pleading and crying
before God? Now you’re so calm... what’s the deal?”
David explained, “I was hoping God would change his mind. But he
didn’t.”^2
In his mind, David had been doing what he could while there was still
something he could do.
When I think back on that drive to North Platte, that’s how I felt. Yes, the
X-rays looked bad, and my son’s face was covered in death.
But he wasn’t dead yet.
Now was not the time to quit and mourn. Now was the time for prayer