We Are at Peace

January 18th, 2025

8:30pm

Thank you all, again, for your prayers. We were able to go to church this morning, and it was wonderful to grieve with everyone there. We are very blessed.

While we grieve, we are at peace. We feel as though a burden has been lifted from our shoulders. After a month of struggle and suffering, Ruth is finally free of all pain. Ruth has finished her race, and she ran it well. In a way, we were sprinting alongside her. Now God has pulled us all out of this race, and while we are disappointed to be out, it is such a relief to be finished. Ruth is with her Savior, and one day we will see her with our own eyes—I’d like to see whether she takes after her mother or myself.

God magnified Himself mightily through Ruth’s month of life, using her testimony to strengthen our faith and the faith of dozens of churches and thousands of people. In Him we were able to bless the people in the NICU, and we were given many opportunities to explain to Ruth’s caretakers the peace that we have in Christ.

We have been tremendously blessed with God’s providential hand. We were planning to stay in El Paso for three days. During this narrow window, Ruth was born. Had she been born anywhere else, this would have been much more difficult—and quite possibly, Ruth would have died immediately. As it was, we have been blessed with an amazing church family, the presence of Hannah’s family, an advanced hospital, and a month with Ruth.

At birth, Ruth measured much larger in a couple key dimensions than she was supposed to. Typically, a child born at 18 weeks dies without question upon birth. Ruth was just large enough to accept a breathing tube down her trachea—the doctor struggled with it for a while before it finally slipped in, as if an unseen hand was guiding it. The same doctor was at Ruth’s bedside when she passed from this life. When the dust settled, she got to hold her with us afterwards.

Ruth could have died upon birth, or Hannah might have carried her to full term, only to have her stillborn. But God miraculously allowed us to spend an entire month with Ruth. During that time, we were allowed to touch her, sing to her, and pray with her—every six hours, four times a day, at 2pm, 8pm, 2am, and 8am. I made approximately 125 visits to the NICU over this past month. Many of them filled with joy, many filled with sorrow as I watched Ruth struggle with life.

But it’s all over. Ruth has been given eternal rest, having gone on ahead of us, and it is our duty now to tie up the loose ends, climb out of this valley, and continue serving our Lord. I can get some sleep, Hannah can recover, Priscilla will spend more time with her parents.

We are in the process of making funeral arrangements—we plan to have a service in El Paso this week, followed a couple days later by another funeral and burial near the farm in Mexico. We will keep you updated as these details become available. We plan to make the service available on livestream.

Thank you for your prayers. Pray specifically tonight for Hannah—she’s at peace as well, but extremely sore from being rousted out of bed last night and having to do more than she normally does over the past 24 hours.