Awakening

How accurate is today's medical criteria for deciding who lives and who dies? 

A man’s pregnant wife fell into a coma after losing a baby to a blood infection. She was unresponsive and on a ventilator for two weeks. When the hospital told the man they were going to pull the plug, he “snaps and tells his wife off,” according to news reports. Two hours later, she began breathing on her own. Eventually, she regained consciousness.

This story and others like it have made me think. I wish I could ask some questions of the couple and the hospital:

• Could the woman hear her husband “telling her off” while she was in a coma?
• Did the doctor have any explanation for her awakening?
• Has anyone explored the possibility that brain activity becomes so quiet during trauma that it becomes unmeasurable by medical standards, giving the false impression the person is, in effect, dead?
• Has the fact that some people have awakened after being declared dead made the hospital rethink its protocol for turning off the vent?
• As healthcare costs continue to skyrocket and improved medical technology prolongs lives that would have been lost in earlier times, has the medical field lost its collective patience and begun to replace compassion with convenience?
• Has the financial and emotional enticement to harvest organs for transplantation trampled the physician's promise to "do no harm" to the patient?1.

Err on the side of life

As a mother who has twice had to fight for the life of a beloved family member against the decision of a medical provider, I urge others to err on the side of life until we have the answers we need for these and other vital questions. 

Everyone deserves the chance for an awakening.

1.https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html

Photo courtesy Erik Thorson 2023

The Gift of Existence

It would have been easier to die.

Kevin Thorson lay paralyzed in the grass of a church lawn in Canada, unable to move or breathe. Moments earlier, he missed a rotation while practicing backflips with a friend. He fell on his head and broke his neck nearly at his skull. As the friend ran for help, he lay there alone, fading into blackness as he fell unconscious.

He told us later that it was at the moment he felt himself near death that the presence of God came to him. The sense of the next world was intensely powerful, forever making this side of the veil seem the impostor. It would have been quick, even merciful, to have slipped quietly away to join God.

God wasn't there to take Kevin to heaven, though.

Instead, He had a message for Kevin. A voice so real Kevin thought it was audible told him, “You’re going to be okay.”

He awakened not okay. He was in a desperate fight for his life. Emergency personnel worked feverishly to keep him alive until he could be put on life support. He endured a helicopter ride to a larger hospital in Calgary, a doctor’s push for euthanasia, surgeries, pneumonia, bronchoscopy, paralysis, loss of privacy, and much pain in the first weeks before he returned home.

Later he endured serious infections landing him in intensive care. He had more surgeries for kidney stones. He spent two years on the ventilator before weaning off it during his waking hours, a feat declared an impossibility by his doctors. 

He regained more than they expected, but not enough for a normal life.

The loss was profound. It came in layers as the reality of the depth of his disability struck home. Some days he grieved over the dreams he would never see realized. Other days he longed for just the feel of grass beneath his feet again.

As victories came, like breathing on his own and taking his first steps and running a computer, his soul began to revive. He began to truly appreciate being alive. Watching him struggle to live out his faith despite profound brokenness, I began to see how completely God had brought to pass what He promised Kevin: 

He would be okay.

Existence, in all its facets, is a gift.

It is the man who has been told he would never breathe on his own who appreciates the feeling of air in his lungs.

It is the man who has endured great pain who appreciates a day when his body is at peace.

It is the man who once lost all feeling who takes joy in the warmth of the sun on his arms, the softness of a kitten’s fur beneath his fingers, and his legs under him again as he takes his first shaky steps.

It is the man who has had everything taken away who treasures anything given back.

Only when faced with loss do we truly understand the value of life.

To exist is to be. We are made in mirror image of our Creator, who calls Himself the great “I AM.” We were made to experience. We were made to feel, to love, to laugh, to hurt.

Those who say, “I would never want to live like that” must give room to those who do want to live, even if it is “like that.” The disabled and the vulnerable and the aged and the pre-born have no duty to die because their existence is inconvenient for others.

Yes, it would have been easier for Kevin to die that awful day in 1997. But what richness of life we would have missed in knowing him! The world is a better place because he exists.

Easier is not the same as better.

If you have ever contemplated how much easier it would be to be dead, talk to Kevin. He will tell you the gift is worth the fight. Check out the website Kevin founded and manages today. He is the owner/administrator of CMADDICT.com, a premier source of free Christian music and more. He would be glad to talk to you.

Photo Courtesy Grace Thorson 2023

Embrace the Pain

 

       

The Witch of Buchenwald

In much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.

-Ecclesiastes 1:18 NASB

Ilse Koch was the wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the notorious Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Not content to be a quiet military wife, Ilse immersed herself in a decadent lifestyle at the camp. The Kochs lived lavishly at Buchenwald, eating and drinking and partying as prisoners around them starved. It was reported that she and her husband even hosted orgies for the SS guards.

Ilse soon became an SS Aufseherin, or overseer. She was a reputed sadist who was so cruel that she was dubbed the "Bitch of Buchenwald," a corruption of the German Die Hexe van Buchenwald, "Witch of Buchenwald." She enjoyed tormenting prisoners as she rode around the camp on her horse.

She had a special fascination with tattoos. She singled out prisoners whose tattoos caught her eye and ordered them killed by the SS guards. Their skins were tanned, from which she had custom lampshades, book covers, and gloves made for her. She was reportedly especially fond of a purse made of human skin. Another of her hobbies was collecting shrunken human heads.

Waste not, want not. 

It took a world war to rip the façade from a regime so brutal that it still shocks the conscience of civilized nations. When the nearby town of Weimar, Germany, was liberated by Allied forces, General Patton forced its citizens to march past the piles of corpses, the crematoria, and the grisly body organ samples from Buchenwald to behold the holocaust that happened in their land as they looked the other way.

See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

For years I wondered how the world could not know what was happening in Nazi Germany. Now I understand. They chose not to see.

Knowledge is painful.

It tears at our hearts, our souls, and our conscience. It brings us to our knees and confers upon us the responsibility to act. And it makes us vulnerable to loss, to retribution, to the criticism of others.

It's so much easier to live in ignorance.

The recent videos exposing the thriving business behind the abortion industry have ripped off the mask of what is happening behind the mask of "women's health." It revealed what we guessed at but didn't want to acknowledge:

Once a person is declared non-viable, nothing is sacred.

Today, people are being harvested for their organs and tissue. It's big business, it's the next logical step, and it's been done before.

Waste not, want not. 

Will we stand with the citizens of Weimar one day and be forced to look upon the injustice that swirled around us as we busied ourselves with distractions conveniently hiding the truth? Will we weep then for the lives we could have saved if only we had spoken up?

Or will we open our eyes now to seek out the wisdom of God?

Are we willing to discover what breaks His heart? Do we have the courage to embrace the pain?

If we can do this, we can become His hands and His feet and His voice on behalf of a new generation who is perishing.

Threads

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb.  - Psalm 139:13

You're Complicated.

You probably guessed that. You may have even been told that a few times by a frustrated friend, co-worker, or family member. You may not have realized, though, just how complex you really are.

According to National Geographic, the average human body contains thirty trillion cells. 1. Each individual genome, or set of instructions for the development and operation of one person, contains approximately three billion base pairs of the chemical code that comprise our DNA, attached to twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. 2. This chemical code determines our sex, what we will look like, and much more. That's why it's called the master blueprint of the body. 3.

There is, in fact, nothing simple about the "simple cell." Each individual cell in your body is a finely-tuned factory working closely with the other cells of the body to sustain your life. You are not generally aware of the incredible processes of the systems keeping you alive, but you know when something isn't working correctly. The body strives to stay at a pre-set "normal," a state known as homeostasis, and even a small change in those processes can threaten your health or your life.

All that, and you're just one person.

On a planet filled with over eight billion people, it's easy to feel inconsequential. It's even easier to see others as inconsequential, especially if their lives don't meet society's expectations or they become inconvenient. The aged, the weak, the disabled, the unplanned, seem expendable from that perspective. What's one damaged life out of so many?

What's one broken thread in the fabric of God's plan for mankind?

Only everything. Just as every thread is needed to complete a work of art by a master weaver, so every life holds an important place in His plan for the world that is and the world to come.

Complexity points to a designer. A piece of art proves the existence of an artist. We all know that an intricately woven fabric is not made by dumping a bunch of thread on a loom. Someone must create it.

You're part of a grand design.

You and I are living threads in the hands of a Creator immense in power, limitless in imagination, and exquisite in the care with which He fashions His world. The skill with which He wove you in the womb, in all its unfathomable precision, pales beside the magnitude of the loom upon which He crafts history's story. 

Not only are you a vital part of that plan, so is every other human. Our job is not to decide the value of others on this earth, but to respect every person's value before God. Only He knows which threads will display the bold, royal colors of the kingdom, and which will carry the softer shades of grace. All are needed to complete the heavenly canvas upon which His story is revealed.

You matter. So does the homeless man on the corner, the baby with Down's Syndrome, and the elderly woman with Alzheimer's. May God forgive us for thinking we can choose the design for Him, for believing we know best.

My bones were not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, when I was being skillfully woven in an underground workshop.   

- Psalm 139:15 (GOD'S WORD Translation)

 1.http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/160111-microbiome-estimate-count-ratio-human-health-science/

2.https://www.genome.gov/11006943/human-genome-project-completion-frequently-asked-questions/

3.http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/dna5.htm

What One "Useless Life" Taught Me

 

Just one old woman.

She lay against the stark white sheets of the gurney, her face gray and her hands bent awkwardly inward. A series of strokes had long-silenced her lilting Southern twang, and she communicated much as an infant does, her cries and grunts only distinguishable to the initiated. At the sight of me, her face contorted in a pathetic wail, brownish-red drool drizzling from one corner of her mouth.

"Pneumonia," someone at the nursing had said two hours earlier, when they first called to tell me that they were sending my mother to the hospital. I had quickly arranged my schedule to meet her at the emergency room when she arrived. My brother joined me in the waiting room, and we watched in vain for her arrival. Finally I checked again at the desk and discovered she had not yet been sent down from the nursing home.

I called the home and learned they were still awaiting the doctor's order to transport her down. We waited some more. I called the doctor's office to see what was happening. No one knew. After two hours, she finally landed in the emergency room, where she lay untreated as busy nurses and techs buzzed around the nurses' station. I could only guess they were waiting for doctor's orders to proceed.

She continued to cry. We continued to wait. I stood at her side, stroking her hair and murmuring meaningless words of comfort as I choked back angry tears.

No one ever came in the room to care for her.

Something was definitely wrong, and I finally lost my patience. I summoned my nerve and marched out to the nurses' station. "Is Doctor in the hospital?" I asked the startled nurses.

"Uh, I can try to page him for you," one of them ventured.

"Fine. I want to talk to him."

They exchanged nervous glances and had him on the phone in short order.

"This is Opal Soyk's daughter," I spit out. "We have been waiting hours in E.R. to have her treated. What the h--- is going on?"

My rare foray into profanity surprised even me. But Doctor was up to the fight. "I wasn't planning to bring her down here. She's only here because you insisted."

I was momentarily confused by the direction of the conversation. After all, I was only there because I had been called by the nursing home. What was going on? My mind raced to untangle what had happened as I asked, "Well, what are you planning to do for her?"

One worthless life...

"Nothing. I wasn't going to treat her. She's an old woman. Her life is useless, anyway. Why do you want to keep her alive?"

My soul exploded into little shards of red-hot pain as clarity came. He had planned to let her die untreated in her bed at the nursing home.

But this was not a useless old woman. This was my mother.

All my life, my mother had fought for me. Always, unconditionally, and without reservation, Mother had been my champion and protector. It was time to return the honor.

"That is not your decision to make," I retorted loudly, turning heads at the nurses' station. "Your job is to treat her."

Doctor hung up on me.

He never did bother to show up at the emergency room. But shortly afterward, she was admitted to the hospital. With proper treatment, Mother recovered from her illness and lived some time longer before dying peacefully at the nursing home with her family in attendance.

Who Is the Lord of Life and Death?

In the months leading up to her strokes, Mother knew something awful was happening in her body. She kept it mostly secret, but looking back, I realized that she was preparing us for the inevitable. One day she told me that if anything happened to her, she wanted every chance at life. She also said, "I changed your diapers; you can change mine."

I remembered those words after her strokes and was thankful to know her wishes. But I often agonized as I watched her body slowly wither away. I knew, though, that if we hastened her death, it would not be her choice, but ours. That would be neglect. Or worse.

In the long nights during those five years, I reminded God that she had taken Him to be Lord of her life. I asked Him to be Lord of her death.

The last night the nursing home called us, she had fallen into a coma after not responding to medication for a new infection. Her body showed the obvious signs of shutting down. We gathered around her bed, sang all her favorite hymns, and cheered her on. We read Scriptures to her, prayed quietly, and loved her into God's presence.

My mother taught me how to live. She taught me how to die. And she taught me that God is the Lord of both.

Every Life Matters

 

Welcome to the Impossible...

…the place where "there's no way forward" meets "God is enough."

In the rarified air of the unknown, we walk with feet of clay, scale crags on bloodied knees, and reach up to touch the face of God from the dirt.

In this place, every life is precious.

 Every tear is gathered into God's vessel, to be poured out upon the feet of the Savior who carries us each step of the journey home. Here it's okay to be broken. In fact, it's better, because...

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit. 

-Psalm 34:18

My mother's strokes in 1989 first introduced me to the world of disability. When a doctor wanted to "let her die" because, he told me, her life was "useless," I learned the fight for life is as primal as it gets. Her condition wasn't terminal, just inconvenient.

Those years prepared me for a harder path. In 1997, our son Kevin suffered a near-fatal spinal cord injury in Canada. He was instantly paralyzed from the neck down and stopped breathing. Someone provided CPR and kept him alive until help arrived. It was a miracle he survived long enough to be life-flighted to a hospital in Calgary.

Soon the word "impossible" began to be tossed at us, first at the Calgary hospital as the doctor made his case for euthanasia, then later at the rehabilitation hospital in the States. As God helped Kevin conquered each impossible, new ones sprang up before us. He almost died two more times in the early weeks post-injury. As each stone rolled away from the decree of death, new obstacles littered our path.

That pattern has not changed in the twenty-six years we have journeyed this road. Each day, we face the impossible. Each day, God makes a way.

As we trudge the slopes of disaster, I gather the gems from the muck and put them with my treasures. I've learned how much God loves people and seen the intensity with which He invests in life. Whether I'm writing about parenting or caregiving or the stories of the elders, I am blessed to find the colors of life burst upon the dark canvas of struggle.

Whatever your story is, I'm glad you're here.

Life is a gift. Let's treasure what we have in this moment and trust God to keep eternity safe for us, for the day when the lame walk and God dries our tear-stained faces.

That day's coming. Until then, we will conquer whatever comes, together. No matter what you're going through right now, you can be assured you are never, ever alone. You're important to God, and you're important to me.

Living the Impossible

Impossible.

That's what they told us. Oh, they used different words at different hospitals, but they all said the same thing. After Kevin's devastating spinal cord injury sustained in a fall, his situation seemed hopeless. He lay paralyzed from the neck down and kept alive by a ventilator.

He was first taken to the local hospital at Lethbridge, Alberta, but was quickly transferred by helicopter to a Calgary hospital. We drove twelve hours through the night to join him after we received the call. When we arrived at the Calgary hospital the next morning, we were ushered into a gray room and joined by a gray doctor. He talked somberly about all the challenges Kevin faced. I don't remember much of what he said to us. But his face said it all:

Expect the worst.

The second consultation was with a sour doctor who presented us with a bunch of "nevers." Kevin would never breathe again. He would never move his body below his chin or possibly his shoulders. He might not even survive the complications of the injury. He would never go home to the United States, because no airline would take him on a flight. No medical crew would consent to accompany him, and no doctor in the States would accept him as a patient.

And, the doctor added, they didn't have vent patients there. Kevin's only way out was death.

But God is a God of the impossible.

We rejected this push for euthanasia, and God opened the way for Kevin to be flown back to a hospital in the United States in a chartered Lear jet, accompanied by a volunteer medical team and his brother Erik. Through the generosity of the people of Canada and here in the States, everything was paid in full. Kevin's Canadian surgeon was a wonderful man who gave us our first ray of hope by telling us Kevin would probably survive, although his chances of recovering any function or feeling were one in a hundred. Virtually impossible.

Kevin's trials increased after transferring to Spokane, when he experienced two respiratory codes and nearly died both times. He struggled with two bouts of pneumonia, finally stabilizing enough to be moved to a rehabilitation hospital. Along the way, he surprised the medical personnel by beginning to regain feeling and some slight movement.

Still, they reminded him that he could never wean off the ventilator. They told us that it would be impossible for us to care for him at home, and he would have to live in a nursing facility.

Our God IS a God of the impossible.

Seven weeks after his injury, Kevin went home with us, his family, as his caregivers. Two years after the injury, he weaned off the vent during his waking hours, only going back on it at night to sleep. He gained more feeling and movement back in his body.

Today he can run a computer, walk with help, and do a few things for himself. Recently he began a new, self-imposed exercise regimen and has made new gains. He taught himself computer animation and 3D graphics, ran a studio with his brother, and now is the founder and senior editor of a website devoted to Christian music, http://www.cmaddict.com.

In 2008, he served as honorary groomsman at his brother Erik's wedding. He was honorary groomsman at his friend Grant's wedding, as well. Last September, Kevin rolled down the aisle of our church to stand beside his brother Daniel as his best man at his wedding.

Every day for twenty years, we have lived the impossible.

It has been with great joy we have watched God work in our weakness. He has given us miracles without end in this journey. Together, we have watched God bring our family closer through trial and release the fragrance of His grace in our broken lives and dreams. We have stood amazed at the tenderness and love with which our adult children have served their brother and us. We see with joy that God is building new dreams.

Yes, life has been hard. Kevin has suffered much. But he has chosen to serve God in his suffering. We have chosen to serve God in standing beside our son. The beauty we have been privileged to witness far outweighs the sorrow.

Today, on July 11, 2017, we celebrate twenty years of watching an awesome God at work. We rejoice at twenty years of life restored to our son. We look forward to the future, knowing that our Lord is still a God of miracles. Every day, in His power, we live this wonderful, impossible life together.

 

The things that are impossible with people are possible with God.

-Luke 18:27

Crying in the Wilderness: Why Every Life Matters to Me

 

THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS,

‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.’ -Mark 1:3

Today my heart is broken.

I haven’t watched the video. But a description of its contents is enough to send me reeling. The revelation of a doctor’s extraction of the brain of an aborted fetus while its little heart still beat inside its dying body has pushed me over the edge.

Over the edge of every good reason I had to stay silent. Plunging down the chasm of my vanity, the worry over my image as an author and speaker. Past the safety net of positivism.

I spent the day grieving, just flat-out brokenhearted over what we have become as recent undercover videos of abortion practices and the sale of fetal body parts has revealed the seedy underbelly of the death industry.

Kill. Harvest. Clean up the blood. Dispose of the body.

Go to lunch and arrange another sale.

She eats, wipes her mouth, and says, “I haven’t done anything wrong!” -Proverbs 30:20 (God’s Word Translation)

Over twenty years ago, a doctor in an emergency room told me he didn’t plan to treat my disabled mother’s pneumonia because, in his words, “Her life is useless.” Eighteen years ago, a doctor in Canada wanted us to pull the plug on our paralyzed son because his life would be worthless.

I fought for my mother to live her final years in dignity. I have fought hard for my son to live well in his broken body. Along the way I’ve learned much about this fierce and glorious and fragile breath we call life.

The gift is so beautiful that I even have a hard time taking it from the critters that complicate our country living. I’d rather whisk a spider back outside than squish it. I used to designate all snakes as being either “one-rock” or “two-rock,” meaning the big ones took two rocks to kill. Recently I walked past a little bull snake lying on our rock wall as it cooled off in the sprinkler.

I left it alone. It wasn’t a good morning for anything to die.

Though I have been destined to fight for the lives of those I love, I have long resisted God’s call to speak out against the culture of death publicly, out of fear of being seen as negative or political. No more. I no longer care what anyone thinks of me.

When is silence evil?

A fierce national spirit and reluctance to actively protest the agenda of the Nazis kept the German church largely quiet against the genocide by their leaders. Few Christians had the courage of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who ultimately was killed by the Nazi regime for his participation in the resistance against Hitler.

Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today genocide is rampant across the globe. Some kill in the name of God. Others kill in the name of ethnic cleansing. In developed countries, we routinely kill the pre-born, the aged, the disabled in the name of compassion. Call it “women’s health” or “death with dignity.” Someone still dies, and someone profits.

Are we any better than Hitler? Or are we any better than a church that, for the most part, kept quiet as people were experimented on and gassed and skinned to make lampshades?

I have always been pro-life. But it became personal for me the day a doctor wanted to dispatch my mother because she was in the way. It became personal for me the day a doctor wanted to dispatch my son because his organs were more valuable to society than his life.

I realize my voice is a small one. It isn’t likely many will even read this post, much less feel compelled to act upon it. But I must add my voice to those rising to fight for compassion. I will fight with my last breath for the lives of those without a voice in this wilderness.

Why does every life matter to me?

It matters to God.

Will you stand with me? Will you educate yourself and speak out and support the families of the voiceless?

Photo Courtesy Erik Thorson 2023