Say it Isn’t So….
January 8, 2009
Little Connor James Neff died yesterday. Here is the story we received through email from my Aunt Norma Jean’s sister Nancy….
Connor is safely home with Jesus now. This morning when they took him off the respirator his lungs collapsed. That was the turning point. They took all the machines away, and Kelly held Connor on the rocking chair, and Jim knelt beside her, whispering to Connor. Bob and Pam and NJ and Larry (all grandparents) were there, and Connor’s heart stopped at about 11:20 this morning.
Bob and Pam are having lunch with NJ and Larry at their house. Jim and Kelly asked them to take all their things from the Ronald McDonald room, where they were staying, to their house before Jim and Kelly go there, and to put the baby things in the nursery and close the door. Norma Jean is expecting Jim and Kelly to come to their house this afternoon before they go home.
My heart aches for the parents going home to an empty nursery. Such wonderful expectations, and now such a different reality to deal with. Connor is safe, and we are sad.
so sad.
Born in the USA…..
January 7, 2009
It is always (in my book) fun, like today, to get a “Welcome Joey Scott Martian” or “Welcome Minerva Sue Flannigan” email in my inbox at work announcing that the Microsoft Public Sector family has been extended by one very tiny stockholder (read: employee’s child). In the United States we have the most incredible access to quality health care in the world. We take for granted healthy births. We expect them, many even schedule them, like a dinner reservation. That’s why when what happened to my cousin Jim and Kelly this week is so jarring. In short, amidst a very long labor with Kelly giving birth to their first child, their little boy’s heart rate took a nosedive while he was in the birth canal, and til an emergency C-section was performed, he was without oxygen for 11 minutes.
Little Connor James Neff. Perfect little boy, now barely able to move. What looks like almost certain brain damage has led to days with a cooling cap on, multiple seizures, just one session of opening his eyes, and life (so far) on a respirator. Jim and Kelly’s lives, while already being turned upside down by the addition of their first child, now hold the most unimaginable of circumstances. Right now, this is all we know. Whether and how Connor will develop and recover is in God’s hands. We pray unceasingly for the Neff family, for grace through trauma, for BIG miracles.
Intifada….
January 3, 2009
I am not an expert on the Middle East. But I have been there. In Jerusalem; in the West Bank. That alone doesn’t really give me any credibility. What it does give me is sympathy. For both sides, actually, in this current conflict around the Gaza strip. Because as much as we’d like to make it a cut and dry Hamas vs. Israeli conflict, it is and it isn’t.
For the most part, i agree with the Krauthammer AND Gerson editorials in today’s Washington Post — if there was ever directional moral clarity, it is clearly shining through this week. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Period. They put their own people, the Palestinian people, at risk of death, to further their own organizational ends. Contrast this disregard for Palestinian human life with the humane warnings of the impending strike, which the Israelis have given citizens of Gaza prior to the strikes this week. Apparently, and rightly so, Israel is fed up with having many of its citizens live in constant fear of missile attacks.
It is inconcevable to me that Hamas is in a position of power. Save Iran, most of the Arab states don’t know what to do with the situation from a positioning point of view. The cannot publicly support Hamas, yet they still seek many of the key goals to which the Palestinians have held strong for decades — land, access, sovereignty. Its incredibly unfortunate that some of the long term goals of the Palestinians — goals around access to Jerusalem, free flowing travel capacities, cannot even be on the table in this current discussion. How can they be when Hamas refuses to even recognize the right of Israel to exist?
When I visited Deheshu refugee camps in the West Bank and saw their suffering, when I stayed with Palestinian Christian’s in Bethlehem who couldn’t travel to work in the city – I saw first hand the true second-class citizen status they could not shake and under which they had to live, work and breath, day-in and day-out. However, until Hamas is no longer in power, how can we hope that things will improve? That Israelis living in the settlements within missile striking range of Gaza will be able to sleep at night? Any true cease fire must at least start here…
May God have mercy and spare more innocent lives of a people so desparate to live…..in peace…Right now, children on both sides of this conflict are growing up knowing only fear.
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Tonya is a Community Content Producer for
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