“I lived through that.”

We had dinner last night with new friends who feel like old friends. The reason I say that is because their first child died four years ago in a hospital in Turkey, after she went into labor at 24 weeks while in a middle-eastern country. The medical technology was just not available to deal with her problem. She had an emergency c-section, and when she came out of the sedation, her child had already died. The hospital let them have him for about 10 minutes, and then they never saw him again.

We talked about loss, not just of our children, but of all kinds of things–hope, faith, dreams, naiveté. We also talked about restoration of a lot of things–hope, faith, dreams–but the naiveté doesn’t ever return. Once you’ve experienced tragedy and suffering like they have, you never live the same way, thinking, “those things happen to other people, not us.”

They now have a two-year-old daughter who is just a delight. She and Orison had a blast together. It was so amazing to listen to them playing together and laughing.

As we shared our pictures and mementos of Felicity’s birth with them (at their request, which felt wonderful to have someone ask to see her), she marveled, “I lived through that. God brought me through that.”