Clarity

Just to be clear with everyone.....

Selah is NOT on life support, she is not brain dead....she breaths 100% on her own.  She does have a trach because she is not coughing like she should and could aspirate on her secretions and get pneumonia.  She has a tube on her trach that gives her moisture so her lungs  don't dry out.  It's basically like a humidifier but more focused on her airways.  She could live without it but it just makes her more comfortable.  She has a feeding tube because she can't chew or swallow correctly. 

We could have possibly made the decisions to withhold the trach and feeding tube BUT that goes against everything we believe in.  She would have either starved to death or choked on secretions.  We would not want to be responsible for her death in either of those awful ways.  We realize that the ethical questions we deal with on this earth will one day be something for which we are judged by God in heaven.   We had chosen BEFORE this ever happened our moral values, so there was NEVER a question of what kind of decision we would make regarding her care. 

If you know what you believe, when the time comes to make decisions, you won't question what you should do.  We believe LIFE is sacred.  God allowed her to come back and He allowed her to live and breath on her own after the doctors had given us no hope. 

We believe PRO life all the way.  We believe each life is sacred.  Selah has a will to live and we respect that.  Because we settled in our minds many years ago what we believe BASED on the WORD of GOD, we are confident in the path that we taken. 

Do we necessarily like the life Selah has now?  No it is hard!  But we also hate that Jon's dad is living with Alzheimer's disease that has taken so much from him.  He is not the same man I met 23 years ago but we still love and cherish him.  It is the same with Selah, she is not the same little girl we met just a few months ago but she is still our precious daughter and we love & cherish her.  With both of them, we realize that heaven will be such a better place than this earth BUT when they go is in God's hands!  While they are  here we will love and cherish them. 

We can't start devaluing LIFE...as if someones life is less worthy to live just because they are disabled in some way.  Unfortunately the world has done this and it has crept into the church.  Sure our life has just gotten 100000x more complicated and it is scary but  this is our lot in life.  It could happen to anyone, and to any family...accidents happen, strokes happen, disease happens, but we feel that  we as a society should not devalue life. 

But you might question, how much do we try and preserve life?  I don't know but think of this....everyone of us is going to DIE!  Yes YOU are going to die, we are all mortals...so to me it's simple, we give care to everyone.  So if you thought well let's not bother with the child that has a brain injury or the adult with Alzheimer's...they are just going to die anyhow....Guess what baby Bubba (as Jon would say) YOU are going to die too....  so if you take that kind of reasoning to the end, why should any of us go on, since we are all going to die????    Why waste medical experience & expense  on anyone since we are all just going to die in the end????  That is almost Darwinism..."survival of the fittest" although even the fittest die one day!

But in God's way of thinking, things are different, we are taught to care for the weak.  The bible says that that we should show good to others when it is in our hands to do good.  That means when we are able to do good to others and have the means, we should.  Well I also take that to mean when that since we have the ability to care for our daughter, or others we should do that! 

So while things are very bleak for Selah, her situation could be alot worse physically.  She still needs so much prayer, she is in what is termed a persistent vegetative coma.  The doctors do not expect her to improve from this point.  So please pray for her to recover, we are with her all the way no matter what happens...but we pray for a miracle!