Nothing much happens on time when you live with two little fellows unable to dress themselves.
We suspect we are not alone in discovering this. So it is no surprise that this mail arrives a little past its due date and I’m sure you will extend the sympathy to forgive me some of the silence of the past months. Samuel “Smiler” Berry completed his first concerted A to B crawl two days ago, blissfully unaware that this was the perfect birthday gift for his parents. We did not celebrate his birthday yesterday. The memory of that day brings too much pain. What we celebrated, and celebrate daily, is life. We feel time healing us of what was ripped out of his start to life. We are still brought sobbing to our knees recalling that day almost a year ago when our doctor gently suggested that we prepare ourselves for our precious child dying. Up to then his short life had been a daze of bleeping life support machines, tiny needles and lines lived out in the unreality of a hospital NICU. In that instant we grasped how fragile life is. The days and nights that we had spent talking to a baby we had never held rewound and played over and over in our heads. The books that we had read, the prayers cried out, the tears shed. In that moment the gift of his life, however short, was a reality that nothing could take away. The smallest things remind me of this still as a number of friends and work colleagues will testify. Awkward silences as they stare at a father rendered speechless, the tears rolling down his face.
The tears flow now as I write for our two sets of friends who are grappling with situations no parent ever dreams possible. A three-year-old son recently diagnosed with leukemia about to start chemotherapy and the future of an unborn child whose heart has a double-inlet left ventricle and will need open heart surgery in the first week after his birth and two further operations within four years. We cry out to God with them. We hope our story offers them hope at a time when they find themselves unable to pull themselves off rock-bottom, miracles in the sterile face of endless tests, informed guesses and brutal medicines and honesty in our inadequacy to even try to come to terms with the horror of what they are going through.
But we do know something of the good that these precious families are experiencing in the midst of all this. This blog makes a poor attempt to catalogue some of the kindnesses we have known in the past year. We are still visited by nurses from the NICU (still, after three months with us in their hair everyday in the NICU!). We got supper every day for 90 days. A worldwide praying community has left its mark on us and our circle of influence. Our eldest son, Matthew, has emerged remarkably unscathed too from this time. We have a medical aid that asks no questions and just keeps on paying – massive up for Discovery Health and the friends I have made on their customer support hotline! Sammy weighed in yesterday at 9.5kilograms (19lbs) – more than 10 times his birth weight! He has survived two colds in his first winter. There is so much that we give thanks for. We know that there are many of you who have never met us - you find us in the street and at shopping checkouts or come over to us after a church service. You comment randomly and encouragingly on the blog. We have been deeply touched by this circle of support ranging from English mates mothers’ bridge clubs to neighbours offering to sell their houses to cover our medical bills! Be assured over the years that young Samuel will not be allowed to forget his supporters!
At this time we would be so grateful if you could pray for and lift up our friends David & Danielle their little ones James & Charis and Marion & Rowan and their daughter Tamsyn & her unborn brother. They can’t make it through this time on their own.
As ever this comes with our love, deep appreciation and a slightly damper keyboard than normal
Terence, Michele, Matt and Sammy
Admittedly not our most attractive self-portrait!
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