Choosing Life in the Face of Fear

A friend sent me a link today to the organization Prenatal Partners for Life, which offers support to parents who receive an adverse prenatal diagnosis and encourages parents to choose life over termination of pregnancy. Looking through their website I was flooded again with the emotions that we had once felt after our twenty-week ultrasounds with Naomi, Emma, and Toby.

Each was a time of fear, a time of questioning, and a time to grow our faith. After we learned that our fourth child, a little boy, was missing a kidney, I feared that the one he had would be cystic as his sisters' were. I feared that his one kidney would fail after he was born. I feared for his life, but I had learned to trust the one who gives us these children. In the face of fear we named him "Tobiah" which means, "The Lord is good," and I wrote the following poem:

Heaven's Child

The blueprints are not flawed

Steady fingers have not failed

This is no accident

Sometimes grace comes veiled

It is not mine to prevent

Not mine to remedy

It is mine to accept

And simply bow my knee

This is masterful design

Not genetics going wild

Exactly as intended

This is Heaven’s child

Sent for more than my enjoyment

I can not hold him selfishly

His creator has a purpose

Higher than my plans for me

It is not mine to worry

Not mine to question why

It is mine to hold him

To gently hush his cry

It is mine to offer comfort

To love him without greed

It is mine to walk beside him

But let his Creator lead

Planned from long before creation

Written down, his Maker smiled

Exactly as intended

This is Heaven’s child

 

Tobiah Matthew Eby arrived with one healthy kidney and had no immediate complications. He struggled for his first year with inexplicably high potassium levels, but that has now resolved. He is full of life, energy, and a great desire to self-destruct that keeps me always on my toes. He is such a sweet and joyful little guy. We have been blessed, but now we're facing an MRI on Tuesday morning to find the cause of multiple lumps on his head. It is a good time for me to remember the words of faith I penned two years ago. May God bless all the families that face the fear of scary prenatal diagnoses and daily live the life of caring for Heaven's children.