Choosing to Celebrate

I sat on the couch, carefully cradling him in my arms. His lungs were working so hard to get air, and his forehead was burning up. I looked into his little eyes and just cried. I knew this would be the last time I got to hold him.

Francis died this morning.

He became part of the statistic I hate so much. He's now included in the 80% of children with an intellectual disability who don't make it to 5 years old. That statistic now carries so much more weight, and my abhorrence of it has increased more than I thought it could. It weighs more because it now has a face to go with it. It now has a name. It now has attached to it a moment when I had to say goodbye.

And so, I write tonight to make certain that he does not fade away into the numbers. To be sure that his face and name are remembered. He was fearfully and wonderfully made by His Father, and I want to celebrate it.

Don't misunderstand, I do not want to celebrate his death, nor the way he died. Someone (I don't know who...) will have to pay the price for the injustice he suffered- I am convinced God will not allow it to go unpunished. He will right every wrong, for Francis, and for each of those 80%.

I choose to celebrate, instead, that I got to be with him. For whatever reason, God saw it fit for me (and others) to be there with him for his last days and hours. I got to be one of the ones to make sure he knew he was loved. To cheer and beg him on as he ate and drank. To simply hold him and sing to him in between feedings. To be heartbroken when he breathed his last.

I still do not understand everything going on. I know that Francis will not be our last, but he will always be our first, and for that is reserved a most tender place in my heart. I pray that God make room in your own heart for him, that he be remembered by many who never even met him, and that his story would convict and compel your heart to whatever end God may choose. And as always, may our Jesus by ever so glorified as He does.