For more than a week now, I have enjoyed the severe privilege of visiting a soldier and his children in the hospital. Their wife and mother was asleep one door down from us, lost in a coma caused by some sort of bleeding on the brain.
Over the first couple of days of visiting with them, everything was spinning. The soldier was trying to figure how to take care of his kids' (ages 14 and 12) daily needs as well as budgeting--both long covered by his wife. He was surrounded by friends and family. On the third day I visited him, I got to see the kids as well, and play charades with them all.
Today, I took a fellow captain with me, who served in Iraq with this soldier. The captain had flown here for several weeks of duty from his home in Seattle, and was planning to do dinner with the soldier and his wife. She fell into her coma on the day that he arrived.
The captain brought a plaque with him for the soldier, commemorating his service in Iraq. When we arrived, the teary-eyed sister of the wife appeared, letting us know that they had received bad news. The wife had several more strokes and the doctors were in the process of telling our soldier that his wife would not wake up.
I put my arm around the sister and started praying with her and the captain. The soldier came in a moment later and joined us in prayer. He was glad to see his old friend from deployment and was honored by the plaque. They talked about those bygone days for a few moments, then the soldier invited us into his wife's hospital room. He brought the plaque in with him and put it by her bedside, saying that he could not have done it without her.
I listened as the soldier talked to his wife, knowing that the light is slowly fading from her eyes. I watched as her chest heaved up and down, knowing that it would not do so on its own. Again, I went before the Lord in prayer with these dear folks, asking for the same God of grace who had so lavishly gifted this family with life and love to care for this dear woman as she walked the valley of the shadow of death.
Before we left, I told the soldier that I knew he needed to adopt a deployment mentality right now for the sake of his family, but that one day, he would need to re-deploy (return). I believe he heard me.
He then left to pick up his kids from sports practice, like his wife would've done, and tell them that it is time to say goodbye.
