Tuesday April 8, 2008
[Laura’s update]
12:24 a.m. They are doing a Cat Scan, checking to see if there is any brain damage from the pressure.
1:21 a.m. We’ve heard from the nurse…there was minimal brain swelling! She’s off her sedation drugs. No collapsing or bleeding in the brain. She’s even breathing on her own! We pray she wakes up today! They say only God knows… it could be a while.
Happy dance! Laura, we love you!
Everyone else…thank you for your prayers, it’s going to be a long and hard journey.
Last week, Laura’s liver had quit working. It soon became apparent to all, that for Laura to live… someone else would have to die and donate their liver. That individual was a 65 year old woman from Michigan. Laura is alive today because of her death and sacrifice. We are saddened by the loss her family is currently experiencing and yet so appreciative and joyous for the life of Laura!
To many of us, this reminds us of the life another gave many years ago so that we may all have eternal life. As Don and I processed this together, we’ve come up with some similarities and some differences. If you have any thoughts, we’d like to hear them as well. Thank you.
With Laura’s new liver there are conditions and expectations. First, there was the pre-transplant process. Laura had to “earn” her right to have this liver. Livers are few and the need is great. Second, the timing had to be “right”…her kidneys, brain, lungs had to be stable enough to endure the transplant. Third, there is the possibility of rejection and a liver is certainly not free. She will have to work hard to keep this gift of life. It limits you… so, everything changes.
And now, about the other life sacrificed. God gave His only son, Jesus Christ…who was perfect, to die for our sins so we can have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. [John 3:16] How amazing! What makes this even more mind-blowing is that there are no conditions. It’s free, not earned, not bought. It’s given with immeasurable joy and love. You don’t earn it, there’s no rejection and it’s free for all to take, whenever. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. [Matthew 7:7-8] This salvation frees you and… everything changes!
-Sister-in-law, Crock
Over the past week we have spent countless hours sitting in the waiting room outside the ICU unit where my sister is laying. We have spent moments thinking that it might be the last time that we see her and then moments hoping against all hope that God would heal her. That God would provide a liver for her. At every turn we felt our utter helplessness in almost all matters. We (along with many of you) cried out to God asking him to rescue Laura. Then it happened, she got a liver transplant! One moment we were thinking it wouldn’t happen and then after a very long day she had someone else’s liver working inside of her.
All of us in the family have reflected on the fact (as some have commented on the blog) that someone else had to die in order for Laura to receive this gift of life. We do not take this lightly. Our family believes that our salvation in this life has come much in the same way. We have all fallen and have come up short of perfection and were in need of salvation so that we could approach our God and receive life. We look to the account of God’s son Jesus Christ dying on the cross as a payment for our shortcomings, faults, sins, or whatever you call them… so that we could be restored to new life. It was through His death and then resurrection that we have received new life. Because of that relationship, we were able to cry out with hope for Laura. When we were and many others, making our pleas to God on Laura’s behalf it wasn’t to a God that is far away. It was to a God that knows each of us intimately and whom we have a daily relationship with. It was a God who cared enough to send His son to die on the cross for each and every one of us. So as we hoped for Laura our hope was in Christ.
I know that many of Laura’s friends have been praying, thinking, and wishing well for Laura. I know that many of you have been checking this blog for updates. I don’t know if all of you have this same hope in Christ that we have. Christ is the hope that we have drawn strength over the past week. I want everyone to know that you can have it because Christ offers it to you freely. If you would like to talk, pray or ask questions about the savior who we have plead with for my sister’s life and who we have leaned so hard in this time feel free to e-mail us and I promise that we will respond.
-Laura’s brother, Don Rock
2 Corinthians 5:19
“17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
