Resilience.

John Piper just posted this link on Twitter. Watch it first, then finish reading this post.

The technology was there. The technology was accurate. It was Trisomy 18, a genetic disorder I didn't even know existed. From what it looks like, Trisomy 18 causes cleft and bilateral pallets, incomplete heart and brain development and I'd imagine some kind of spinal abnormalities. No one survives this. Utterly fatal. Yet with all the information, all the knowledge, all the assuredness that these signs on the ultrasound really meant Trisomy 18, the parents courageously determined to see their son through delivery. And they did, as he was born with abnormalities and deficiencies which marred his face and body, yet somehow still retained the preciousness and beauty which can only be seen in an infant. He was their son. He was one of them. He was Thomas.

My mind is fully incapable of understanding the insurmountable pain this mother and father experienced in five short days. To watch their son gasp and gulp for oxygen, turn blue, think that Thomas was gone yet have him bounce back for a few more hours of life must have been torture. Four times, FOUR TIMES they were sure he had gone home to be with the Lord, yet with a hickup he was back gasping for more.

Then it was time. Resting on his sleeping father's chest, Thomas' heart succumbed to the twisted, tangled genetic code inside his every cell. They awoke to an empty vessel. His suffering had ceased.

The heart can tolerate degrees of pain unknown to the common man. By God's empowering grace, expecting parents can go to the funeral home to pick out a child's coffin who hasn't even been born yet. Financial decisions had to be made, knowing full well that their child just isn't going to make it. What that must have felt like I may never know. All I know is that some how, some way, God was glorified through all of this. His methods of glory are far too beyond our concepts and constructs. I think that is good.