It's Saturday. Abby is in the hospital doing pretty poorly. Her central nervous system pressure was sky high giving her a migraine, and they had to bleed spinal fluid from her. There's nothing quite like watching someone stick a 6" needle into your child's spine like juice box straw and watch the liquid pour out.

She has sores head to toe, and literally cries and moans even when she is sound asleep. I would have never believed someone could cry while sound asleep if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes today. To make it more fun, the sores hurt so bad she just couldn't work up the courage to go tinkle until her bladder became so full it felt like an overinflated basketball.

So there we are - myself, Michelle and Sami - in the hospital with Abby hitting rock bottom. All the emotions already jacked and whacked from the stress of watching Abby, and for me in no small part because I was working on one hour sleep - about a quarter of most other "normal" nights.

Suddenly… two doors down from our room, a 9 year girl codes.

For those of you who never watched ER, “code” means they are dead or about to be dead. “Code Blue Room 112; Code Blue Room 112; Code Blue Room 112”. An army of medical staff flood the hallways heading for the door. The atmosphere of the hospital is instantly charged and you can feel the collective heart rate of the entire floor double.

1Thess 4:13 .. so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

The mother and father lost all sense of control and despaired so pitifully that they interfered with the medical efforts to resuscitate the child and had to restrained. The father did not make it far until he collapsed, wailing and lamenting, finally throwing up on the floor and refusing to get up. The mother was inconsolable and cried so loudly that you could see the doors to other rooms begin to close as parents tried to both shelter and explain what was happening to their frightened child. I say this with complete sympathy but she was so uncooperative and consumed with emotion that she became at best a distraction to the doctors as they tried to revive the daughter.

I’ve seen many people grieve, and while I did not know that poor family, they certainly seemed to be “grieving without hope”. It is a truly sad thing to face death without The Anchor, The Hope, The Comforter.

At the moment all this was occurring, Abby had just had her spinal-tap-fluid-drain and several types of medications for sedation. We couldn’t wake her up. She should have regained alertness an hour previous to that, and we simply could not get her to open her eyes. Normally, this would be an exercise in patience, giving it some time, monitoring her vitals. In the midst of the “code blue”, all we wanted was to see Abby’s eyes open.

The floor today was full. Every room had a family with a child in various stages of cancer. Each of the parents there today, who for many the “cancer floor” at a children’s hospital is their second home, were all thinking the same thing:

Next time it might be us.

If it is, we will grieve WITH hope because we know who Hope is. The Lord gives, the Lord receives back to Himself according to His will. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

That was our Saturday. What’d you guys do?   
   ~ Brent