Bowen was born on September 10th, 2010. Already, he has undergone a few surgeries. But there was one that stuck out to me in particular. I am going to post, word for word, what Matt and Sarah posted because I can not begin to capture the emotion felt in these words. First though, I wanted to post a picture of Bowen and the rest of the family so you can see this family's life with faces attached.
September 14
We want you all to know that Bowen is doing well on life support today. Sarah and I are still processing what we saw and felt last night and aren’t able to put it into words at this point. We are going to spend some time at Bowen’s bedside today and then spend some much needed quality time with our girls. Please know that all your prayers and messages have been a great support to us. We are so grateful for each one of you. We’ll keep you posted on his progress over the next couple days.
September 15
A couple of hours ago, we received a copy of Bowen’s blood tests and vitals. Sarah and the doctor joked that we should “frame it, because it doesn’t get much better than that.” His body is doing very well off of life support.
Thank you for all your prayers! We ask that you continue to pray for Bowen because we have been told, and have now experienced first hand, that his condition will make for a bumpy road with unexpected turns.
Upon receiving some good news, I feel that it’s easier to share the details of what happened yesterday morning when Bowen crashed. I’ve put together excerpts from my journal and have taken down Sarah’s perspective in hopes of giving you a glimpse of what we actually went through. I have also posted some photos and another song demo that holds new meaning to me. I had to compress the song demo to a low quality for my blog, but I still wanted you to hear it. I also want to warn you that one of the photos may seem shocking to some of you, but we want you to grasp the reality of what we experienced over the past two days…
On the morning of September 14th, at 2:13 am, Sarah received a phone call from the hospital. Bowen’s nurse exclaimed, “We’re starting compression, please come quickly!”
Sarah yelled for me to get out of bed. I jumped up as fast as I could and we raced to the hospital. We took the elevator to the fifth floor and ran down the hallway to the PCTU. After passing through the double doors to his unit, we turned the corner to see Bowen’s seemingly lifeless body being resuscitated. The nurse had her fingers between the walls of his chest, pumping his little heart, switching her hands every few minutes from fatigue. I was shocked that saving someone’s life could look so violent. They rushed us to his side to be near him in, what could have been, his final moments. All Sarah could do was stare down at the bed sheets, hold Bowen’s toes, and pull his blanket close to her face. I cradled her and wept into the back of her sweatshirt as I held Bowen’s hand and prayed. We were frozen in that moment while people all around us were shouting numbers, calling out orders, and working together to save Bowen’s life. It was like a scene from a movie. My iPod was still on repeat near his bed from earlier, and was playing loudly through a pair of speakers. As the words “I am restless ‘til I rest in You” washed over us, we knew that God was either ushering Bowen out, or ushering in a miracle. When the song “Restless” began to fade, I reached to put on the song “All of Me” that I posted the lyrics to on August 22nd. After almost forty minutes had past, Sarah and I were waiting for them to call out a time of death. Instead, they pulled us into another room so they could start the process of putting him on life support. We honestly thought it was a last ditch effort to save his life, and that he was already gone. For the next half-hour, we struggled to accept, and began to grieve, what we thought was the loss of our precious baby boy. At one point, I remember praying, “Father, if this is even a fraction of the pain that you felt when you gave us Your only Son…we thank You for letting Jesus die on the cross. Put into motion the redemptive and healing power of Your Son’s death to spare the life of ours.”
Shortly after we prayed, a nurse entered the room and told us what we never expected to hear. She said he was alive and he had been successfully placed on life support, or ECMO. Sarah remained in the other room while I returned to where Bowen was. From a distance, I watched as the surgeon reached into my son’s chest to look for what may have gone wrong. After he was finished, he covered Bowen’s chest, looked up at me with smiling eyes and said, “Hey Dad, you still have a kid in there.”
Re-read that post. A hint of what this family is living right now has been captured in those words. Imagine your baby, its chest open, with a lady's hand inside the chest cavity, holding a living heart, and pumping it with her fingers to keep your baby alive.
I think sometimes I miss humanity. This is humanity. Utter humanity. The lead singer of Sanctus Real. Who knew his name before I told you? And who knew this about his life? Probably not most of us. However, I bet you did know the name of his band, some of the songs, song lyrics and the title of the latest album. But now knowing what you do about his life, if you re-listen to his newest album Pieces Of A Real Heart, suddenly, you can connect. The pain, fear, confusion, yet trust, show through in all of these songs. The album was not written by a Christian "rockstar." No, they were written by a daddy, whose only son might die before he can ever even understand that he is alive. This is the very reason why I miss humanity. I have no problem assessing a life, and assuming that everything is alright with them; but I want people to know that my life has problems? If everyone thinks like I do, then we're all gonna miss the big picture.
This world is not our home. We were created for something better. "Hope is born of longsuffering hearts" and how can I hope unless I have something in my life that seem utterly hopeless? When it seems utterly hopeless, that is when God is strongest and brings the hope for the hopeless.
