A Story Unfinished

Matt Mooney is here today and I hope you’ll take a moment to read his words. The message within this post is something near and dear to me. Escaping pain will steal joy.

Please welcome Matt, the author of A Story Unfinished–99 Days With Eliot:

Ginny & I found out at 30 weeks pregnant that something was seriously wrong.

Everything up to that fateful ultrasound had been normal- well, when you’re having

your first child you probably stand in no position to define normal. But it seemed

that way to us.

All of a sudden, the doctors trudged back into our room with heads down, and

now it was anything but normal. We were told that the baby had some serious

complications and problems that needed addressing.

In hindsight, I cannot say what stuck out to me in the precise moments that they

relayed this information to us. But I do know what stands out to me from where I sit

today.

the baby.

That three-word article typically easy to discard in any bit of communication,

now trumps all other words spoken that day. Words of heart problems, potential

surgeries and numerous other abnormalities all fade into the background of that

tiny word-

the.

Because up until this very point in time, all talk of coming child had been

encompassed in a starkly different vernacular.

It had been our baby every time before this one.

Was there cognizant effort on anyone’s part to turn the page on how we were

communicated with? I doubt it. The mouth merely follows the heart, and the heart

was telling these doctors that everything had changed.

And this unconscious word exchange explains so much. It had all changed.

In days afterward, we could be found seeking any and all information on Trisomy

18- the diagnosis we were handed. We fashioned birth plans to outline what

measures we wanted taken on the child’s behalf and toured the NICU, the place we

would end up- if everything turned out in miraculous fashion.

Eliot did come and the 99 days with him were more than miraculous.

As I think back on all of it- the beauty that his life beheld and the pain that I now

know intimately. I see that this two-word two-step so precisely reveals our

tendency to run from pain and hurt and sorrow. The child is the language of selfprotection. We felt within ourselves an overriding desire to weave layers of

covering for our hearts. By God’s grace alone, instead, we leaned into what we knew

could kill us.

This was the decision that made all of the difference for us, and yet the very

determination we could not will on our own accord.

I now see clearly what no one could have convinced me of: when we shield

ourselves from deep pain, we shield ourselves from overwhelming joy as well.

The world aligns in a chorus of either-or and markets joy and beauty as opposites

from the lowlands of pain and anguish. In Eliot, we found the best and the worst

all intertwined in a package deal. It always is. A life of protection and running may

produce a life unscathed, but an unscathed life is no life at all.

The child was our child.

:::::

Thank you, Matt.

You can get your copy of A Story Unfinished on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble

You can keep up with Eliot’s family on Matt’s blog, The Atypical Life.