Remembering Faith

The first night we spent at St. Christopher's was hard on us both, of course. We were given the "dorms" to sleep in. This meant I had to sleep in a room with up to 3 other women and Si had to sleep in a room with other men. Well, at the time we still hadn't celebrated our first wedding anniversary and had never been apart for the night. Do you think after just giving birth to our baby and not sleeping that first night at all because of him problems that I was really going to be able to sleep away from my husband in another room? No! I needed those nights more than ever. So - Josiah decided that I was going to sleep in the room with him. There was stuff in the room that showed someone else was staying there but no one showed up. So I did, we put the little mattress things on the floor so we could sleep beside each other. The next night, however, we did the same thing and this man came into the room. I felt very bad about being in there and so Si asked him if it was okay. He said it was fine with him. We found out that his wife was still at home because of a C-section. This started a friendship between David, his wife Ada, their little girl Faith and us. We enjoyed the fact that God brought us together and their little girl’s name is Faith and we chose the name Dillon because it means “faithful”. David was a refugee from Liberia and his wife was from another African country. They are both saved and love the Lord. They had tried to have a baby for ten years - and then they found out they were pregnant! During the pregnancy the Doctors saw that Faith had water on her brain and wanted David and Ada to kill her. They could not kill the little girl they prayed for ten years to have, though. Faith was born about a week before Dillon with the water so compressed that she had a brain stem but basically no brain. She was a beautiful little girl who moved her arms and legs and eyes. We were told that all her movements were neurological – in other words she was not purposefully moving anything. Faith went through many tests and procedures but to make a long story a little shorter she was still in the NICU when we left. At one point the doctors wanted them to take her off the ventilator to die. Faith was trying to breath during the day, it was only at night that she let the machine do all the work. Again, her parents could not play God and take her off. They were praying for a miracle and if it never came they were at least going to let God decide when to take her home. For the last couple weeks we were there Faith and Dillon were so close together I sat with Dillon and watched little Faith at the same time. I received an email last night from my mother-in-law (who was still emailing David and Ada – I didn’t know they had the email address other wise I would have been emailing them as well). Faith had the same surgery Dillon had – the feeding tube surgery. However, I guess there were complications from it. David and Ada spent three days holding little Faith before she died in their arms. August 10, 2006 Faith went home to be with the Lord. I told Dillon his friend from the NICU is waiting with Jesus and will see him, and us, one day. I want to write David and Ada and ask them for a picture of Faith to keep, if I get it I will post it so that everyone can see how beautiful she was and remember too pray for her parents.