Mike & Helen

The baby I posted about last week is progressing well. They closed his chest late last week and took him off life support. Once again the faith of this family is absolutely amazing and inspiring. Matt posted the following update via Twitter this morning. Short, but powerful stuff.

“CHD, Surgery, life support, intubation, CPAP…these terms will be useless when God makes all things new.”

This little guy has been on quite a journey in life so far. One that has been filled with miracles. Keep him and his family in your prayers!

I am still not sure why I have became so drawn into this story. Reading through the comments posted on their blog, a reader felt the same way. Why were they so into this story of a family and baby they had never met before? One of the replies hit the nail on the head. Two reasons: 1) This family has been so open to the world on the story and the feelings they were dealing with every step of the way.  Matt is a singer/songwriter, and some of the music he has been working on during this situation is amazing and dives down into their feelings.  2) This story is bringing people closer to God. Some people even mentioned it’s bringing them closer to their children again, no matter young or old.

I have been touched by following the story of a baby that was born with a major heart issue. I will not go into a lot of detail here, as the blog entires the family provide are wonderful and truely heart wrenching. Tuesday I became aware of this story, and have found myself waiting for updates on the status of the baby. Mark Hammitt is the lead singer of a great band named Sanctus Real. I have been listening to their music for a few years now. His family had a couple of girls, so when their next child was created they were glad it would be a boy. From what I read from their updates, they discovered the baby had a condition known as HLHS, which is a serious heart condition. Any child born with this condition has a struggle to face. To make a long story short, little Bowen had to have surgery on his heart after being born. Things did not look good, and on Tuesday after surgery his heart stopped. As the parents were in the room a nurse used her bare hands and pumped his heart for half an hour waiting on the surgeon to arrive.

As Mark stated in his blog entry “For the next half-hour, we struggled to accept, and began to grieve, what we thought was the loss of our precious baby boy.”. Things were bad. Then a miracle happened, one that Mark and his family attribute to the outpouring of prayer by people who know them and by strangers who were following the story via updates on Twitter and their blog. Bowen’s vitals kept rising to the point he was taken off of life support. This morning Mark posted an update via Twitter saying “Great morning, great reports…his eyes are wide open.” Truely a miracle.

If you have a few minutes I would hope you read some of the entries on their blog. The faith of this family in the face of adversity of this depth is amazing. Mark has also written a song about this struggle and posted it as well. You can read their story at bowensheart.com.