Only By God's Grace

Every year when this time of year comes around with warm weather & fireworks, I have a hard time not remembering back to 5 years ago watching fireworks out of a hospital window in Iowa City. Today, July 5, was the day that I held my son, Dawson, in my arms for the last time while he was alive. We knew the odds going into surgery were very risky but he couldn't survive without it. Handing him over to the doctors & nurses was excruciating. At the least, we were looking at 2 weeks without holding him but we weren't prepared to never have him in our arms again. I can remember almost every small detail of that day. I remember the waiting room, the smell of Avagard hand sanitizer, what we ate for lunch, and sitting in a conference room across from the doctors as they told us our son had a slim chance of pulling through the surgery. His heart had gone into cardiac arrest and he was without oxygen for a very long time. His 1 lung had sustained irreversible damage. Our walk of faith over the next 5 days took us to places that I never thought we could endure. But just as God is faithful, He sustained on us peace to make the decisions that we needed and for us to make those decision together as a married couple. God used our son Dawson to teach us so many things but I know that the main one is that we can trust God with our lives. We can trust Him when He calls us to do things that we never thought possible. I know He was priming our hearts to be open to the call to adopt but also to be a testimony of His grace. I can't imagine all we might have missed out on if He hadn't been getting us ready. So even as I sit here, almost 5 years to the minute of one of the most devastating moments of our lives, I know God is good. He has shown His goodness to us & no matter the road we walk from here, we will always lean on His past faithfulness to us.