Our Days are Numbered

"A person's days are determined; you have decreed the number of months and have set limits he cannot exceed." Job 14:5

Everyone wants to know what happened to Callie.  Though most people haven't directly asked me this question, I see it asked on social media, and I know people want to know.  And I get it, when a child passes away, I always want to know what happened?  It's a normal question.  I also believe people want to know details so they can somehow prevent it from happening to them.  But here is what I know now more than ever....we are not in control.  We can do every little thing right for our children, and be crazy overprotective.  You can wrap your house in bubble wrap and face your child backwards in the car until they are 5 years old.  You can have them eat all homemade organic food and never allow them to touch processed junk. You can never allow them to do anything remotely adventurous, you can helicopter them and drive yourself crazy never leaving their side....you can be a very protective parent, but ultimately, we are not in control.  God is the author of life, he gives and he takes away.  He numbers all our days.  He knew before Callie was even conceived that she would only live for 18 months.  There was absolutely nothing we could do to change this.  Trust me, I have already driven myself crazy with the "what ifs", but it's just not beneficial and certainly not biblical.  Am I saying that somehow I could have saved her but God cannot?  Could God have saved my child?  Absolutely.  When we were in the hospital, crying out to God to spare Callie's life, could He have saved her?  YES, YES!  But he didn't.  It was His plan. We don't understand and it stinks, but we trust the Lord because we know he is good, loving, wise, and faithful.

What I do know is that whatever happened to Callie, it has to be extremely rare.  I took her to the doctor 2 weeks before she passed away and the doctor was not concerned about her one bit.  She was also ALWAYS happy.  She slept well, she ate well, she was never in pain.  There is no way I would ever known that there could have been something wrong with her.  Even the day she passed away, she was SO happy.  I remember her running around the house with Cooper, playing legos and giggling like all our normal days.

In one of the books I'm reading about a Father who lost his 5 year old son, he was really struggling with guilt.  As parents, we are supposed to protect our children, so it is very natural to struggle with that guilt no matter how they died.  It is a struggle I have to fight daily.  One of his pastor friends told him, "you could have carried that child around on a feather pillow all day, and he still would have died that day."  God is SOVEREIGN and it has never brought me more comfort than now.  There was nothing we could have done.   I'm thankful that I serve a God who KNOWS our future, who determines it, and it's not in our control.  Our days are already numbered and I'm so thankful he doesn't tell us what day that is.  Some people think having a shocking and unexpected death like Callie's is worse than a slow, knowing it's coming death.  And though the shock is definitely worse with the unexpected, I'm so glad we didn't know ahead of time the day Callie would pass away.  We had such a fun few months before she died.  We went to the beach with Justin's family, we went to San Antonio resort and sea world with my family, we did a ton of fun things with our little family when Justin had a week off.  We will always have sweet happy memories to look back on, and for that I am thankful.  She had a full and fun life.  She was loved well by many, many people.

To sum up this random post, I am so thankful God is sovereign and HE has our days numbered.  I'm so thankful He is in control and not us.  I'm not saying at all to be negligent with your children, the Lord gave us wisdom and discernment for a reason.  But please don't fall into the lie that we are somehow in control.  And please do not be scared of Callie's Story.  I will most likely not share what we find out about the results of the autopsy.  It's not beneficial.
 I want Callie's story to be used to point people to Jesus, not to point people to fear.   That is my prayer and my desire.