The other day, I ran across the following passage from notes I took at a session on spiritualty held at a statewide conference for pediatric palliative care:
Caring for a child with a life-limiting illness is the closest thing to hard evidence of the existence of God and the validation that you are not in control.
Having graduated with a Journalism degree back in the days when good journalism was still the norm, I have a burning desire to attribute this passage the best that I can. The facilitator of this session was Ryan Campbell, a chaplain for Children's Medical Center in Dallas, who had this statement on a slide. Unfortunately, I do not recall if these were his words or those of a parent of a dying child.
It doesn't matter. Dylan did prove to me, beyond doubt, that God exists and is rich in our lives. I'm ashamed to say that it took a child with SMA to do that. But I see it now. Caring for Dylan was the most exquisite thing I have ever done in my entire life, and I had to trust God implicitly to do it. Staring into Dylan's beautiful blue eyes was witnessing God right in front of me.
Apparently, God likes to make raspberry noises, because Dylan did them incessantly whenever he was happy. I'll bet they're both up there doing it now.
Thank you, little saint.
