Dear Little One,
On Sunday we sang these words, "Durch seine Wunden bin ich heil" ("By His wounds I am healed.") Did you hear us? The doctor told us that you are wounded, Little One, and we have prayed for healing, and so those words jump off the page to me right now.
As we have told different people about your situation, I have realized that how people respond to news like we received about you depends a lot on worldview. A Christian's perspective on this is very different than most people's. To many people in this world, wounds are seen as 100% tragedy. But not to us. Why is that? I guess it's because our whole faith is built around the idea that sometimes wounding and death serve a greater purpose than we can see at the moment when they're happening. Christians believe that the very wounds which appeared to have broken Jesus were the wounds that offer us healing.
We grieve about your deformity, Little One, but we know that somehow what is happening to you is not 100% tragedy. Somewhere between the bread and the wine on Sunday, we remembered that we don't look at Wunden in isolation, or else we would despair. We don't pretend the wounds are not there, but we keep our eyes on the future Heilung—not just for your little body, but for this entire suffering and dying world.
With hope,
