Mending broken hearts is all too familiar to guest blogger Kelly Denham. She and her husband’s hearts are still mending after a medical mistake left their son TJ irrevocably injured and later resulted in the decision she wrote about in today’s post.

On February 26, 2018, my husband and I stood in TJ’s hospital room and watched as nurses removed our 21-year-old son’s life support. As you can imagine, it had been an agonizing decision. Parents are supposed to protect their children and keep them from harm. We were choosing to remove the very thing our son needed to live.

TJ’s injury was caused by a medical mistake. We had spent five years in and out of hospitals and rehab centers, and we had seen too much. We had learned that we couldn’t always trust medical staff. If you followed TJ’s Caring Bridge or read his story in my book, Trapped Within, you know that God, in His goodness, provided a trustworthy Christian doctor, Dr. P, the last few days of TJ’s life to gently guide and walk with us through that hard decision. 

But what many of you don’t know is that after TJ’s death, guilt and doubt began to creep in. Questions like, “Would his condition have improved if we had waited longer?” began to gnaw at my husband and me.

In the spring of the following year, our adopted grandson Aiden had chosen to play soccer. Watching him play sports is one of the joys of my life. On this Saturday morning, I arrived at the field ready to be his cheering squad. As I sat on the sidelines waiting for the game to begin, I looked up and was surprised to see Dr. P walking toward me. His son was on Aiden’s team!

Dr. P sat down beside me. We exchanged pleasantries and visited for a while. Unable to control myself any longer, I quickly blurted out the question I had been wrestling with for a year. “Did we make the right decision, Dr. P? He was going to die, right? I mean, even if we had kept him on life support, he still would’ve died?”

“Yes,” he answered. “He was going to die. You made the right decision.”

I sighed deeply. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Dr. P’s reassurance was exactly what I needed to hear to begin moving forward and enjoy life again.

Some may believe that Aiden and Dr. P’s son being on the same team was just a coincidence. That’s not what I believe. On the contrary, I believe the meeting was a divine appointment orchestrated by God to mend a mother’s broken heart and save her from being crushed in spirit.

What about you? Are you experiencing affliction? The Lord doesn’t promise to prevent His children from suffering. He doesn’t promise to remove affliction while in the midst of it. He doesn’t even promise to prevent the very worst outcome.

What God does promise us though is that He will answer us when we call on Him. He will be with us in trouble, and He will deliver us and honor us.

We are secure in the Lord’s arms, so call upon the Lord, dear weary one. He’s in the business of mending broken hearts. His presence will give you the strength to endure any affliction.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted

and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Psalm 34:18

“He will call on me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble.

I will deliver him and honor him.”

Psalm 91:15

In loving memory of TJ Denham

July 16, 1996 – February 27, 2018

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Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash