Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The Ultimate Time-Out

by JASmius



Unimaginable; absolutely unimaginable:

In the 1980’s, twelve-year-old Martin Pistorious became seriously ill with what doctor’s believed was Cryptococci Meningitis. His health started deteriorating and Martin lost his ability to move, make eye contact and even speak to others. His doctors told his parents, Rodney and Joan Pistorious, to bring him home and let him die. They told them he was as good as a vegetable.

However, he didn’t die.

Joan said, “Martin just kept going, just kept going.”

According to NPR news, his father would get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, get him dressed, load him in the car, take him to the special care center where he’d leave him. Rodney said, “Eight hours later, I’d pick him up, bathe him, feed him, put him in bed, set my alarm for two hours so that I’d wake up to turn him so that he didn’t get bedsores.”

For twelve years, Martin’s family cared for him without any sign that he was improving. Joan started to despair and even told her son, “I hope you die.”

Today she acknowledges that was a horrible thing to say but says she just wanted some sort of relief. Remarkably, now Martin is 39-years-old and says he was totally aware of everything going on around him.

That is the most comprehensive conceivable nightmare any family has ever endured.

Picture being Martin Pistorious's parents.  I have not (yet - who knows?) experienced the loss of either of my children, and the pain of that loss would never completely go away, but the passage of time does provide some measure of healing and cloture. And if you and your family know Jesus Christ as LORD and Savior, you know that you will see them again someday.  But what if your child almost died but never quite did?  The phrase "as good as dead" comes to mind, unbidden.  It'd be like his/her body was still here, but his/her soul and spirit was missing.  Every day would torment you with the cruel reminder of a tragedy you could never escape, with seemingly no hope of either their return or their finally resting in peace.  Yes, what Mr. Pistorious's mom said to him was horrible; but....twelve years of that torture.  Can anybody really blame her?

Although you'll note that she didn't ask any "doctor" to actually help her insensate son to "reach the other side".  Now, under the tender and merciful auspices of ObamaCare?  She wouldn't have had a choice.

But what that experience must have been like for Martin himself?  I can't pretend to know, or imagine, or conceive.  I just can't.  Being totally imprisoned in your own body, maybe in constant physical pain?  There aren't words.  Well, I guess there are, since he wrote a book about it, but I certainly have no words.  It's the kind of situation that, in previous centuries, would have gotten him buried alive, there to slowly suffocate in his coffin.  I hope he didn't have ADHD.

For anybody who wants to get an idea of the true breadth and sustaining power of the grace of God, I doubt you'll ever find a better example.

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