June 7 2023 Public update about our twins that I posted to Facebook

 On June 7th I posted

"I did want to make a post for those who've been praying for all 5 of us with the situation with our twins and/or for those who want to keep up to date about how the situation has been affecting me. I had an experience on Saturday May 27th that I consider a God-directed encounter due to the sheer improbability of the occurrence happening through random chance. Since part of what makes this experience unique is how very improbable it was, I will be adding extra details to highlight that as I share it.

Early in the morning on Saturday May 27th, I had headed down to the southern edge of Wichita, which is around two hours and forty-five minutes from my house, to teach Aikido to a group that I usually teach once every other month or so. This was not the weekend I should have been in Wichita—I was scheduled to be there a totally different weekend, but I got food poisoning, and this was the make-up time that most students could make. Additionally, class went extra long with everyone's approval so that I could help two students work on some techniques for their next test, which changed our departure time for lunch by around a half hour. After class, I let the locals pick where to eat. They picked a Wichita State University campus lunch spot about 20 minutes away that would normally be too far off the beaten course for me to be ok with, but this trip I didn't have to hurry back like I frequently do, so I opted to go there instead of one of the closer places we often go to. I had been stable the whole time down to Wichita and while there, but on the drive to lunch my heart had one of its rougher patches, and I was crying and praying intermittently about my daughters while driving to the restaurant. Once there, as I was waiting in line for the others to arrive, a man I knew from many years ago in Hays walked over and started talking to me. He and his wife had just pulled up shortly after me and were grabbing lunch there. His wife had been a pastor in Hays who I knew many years prior. She and her husband had moved away from Hays several years ago, and they now lived in Emporia Kansas, which is about an hour and a half northeast of Wichita. They apparently only travel to Wichita a few times a year, but they showed up at this little restaurant in the middle of quite a large city within a couple minutes of when I did. The wife asked how I was, so I answered honestly, and she said she felt God had meant for me to run into her there. She told me about her daughter who was standing nearby; the doctors had told her that her daughter had conditions in the womb that meant that she was not going to survive. They said she was likely to die in utero if they did not intervene and would have brain bleeds and not live after birth if they did intervene. She chose to go ahead and have them get her daughter out, and her daughter did have brain bleeds, but they were not terminal and did not turn her into a vegetable. Instead, she survived and was just graduating college in Wichita. I had met her daughter before, but I never knew any of this story.

She then essentially asked me if I would still be following and serving God whatever answer He ended up giving regarding Baby A, and I said I would. She said if that was the case, then it is better to hope and to trust in a miracle until/unless a different outcome occurs, and then to walk in that if it occurs. She also said these words weren't just a hollow platitude--she had also had a miscarriage, so she had walked in both outcomes and really meant this advice. It was a bit of an emotional roller coaster to listen to her story and chat a bit more, but afterwards, I was struck at the sheer improbabilities of running into her there at that time and location, especially not previously knowing any of that about her daughter. I also can't help but feel that the advice is probably the wisest path to walk. False hope can be dangerous, but being afraid to even hope and giving up in advance to protect our hearts can also be dangerous (or can put us in a place that refuses to truly live life, including all its ups and downs). I'm not sure that this encounter was supposed to tell me what the result will be with Baby A and Baby B, but I do feel that this was a direct answer to prayer in the car and to many of you who have been praying for us in how I am supposed to align myself regarding this current situation/how I am supposed to approach things. It makes more sense for me to hope and live in hope unless something changes. Keep in mind, at this exact moment we have two babies with developing brains, beating hearts, and moving hands and legs. At the ultrasound today, they were kicking each other in a way that left the ultrasound tech joking about how they were definitely behaving like sisters. In a sense, this course is also the most pragmatic and practical, because it is also all we can do. We enjoy the time with our two for as long as that time lasts, and we certainly hope it is longer and longer, but we all never really know when someone else's time (or even our own) will end.

For those who may be curious about outcomes relating to limb body wall complex, which our doctors have simply said is terminal (no discussion of a living through it option), I'll share this resource about a baby with limb body wall complex who lived (according to the website his doctor's gave him a 5% chance for some reason) https://www.oakleysmiracle.com/ I'll also share this website that shares stories of the many who choose to have their child and were only with their child extremely briefly or who had a stillbirth https://limbbodywallcomplex.net/ --click the 'our stories' to read them. You should only read any of these, of course, if you have a desire to. Some of the stories can be quite hard.

Ultimately, I think God did guide that interaction to occur between someone who had been told her baby would die and me in my current circumstances; while I don't know that it was intended to indicate any final outcome for Baby A and Baby B, at the very least I think it was to tell me to live in hope for now."