Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Sustained by God in the Loss of a Child Meet Brian and Caris

Transcript

Sustained by God in the Loss of a Child Meet Brian and Caris · Pastor John Piper's answers

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When I think of suffering, there is a place where
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: God comes and takes away that pain. But there's also
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: a place where a God says, no, I will not
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: take away pain. I'm going to use the pain to
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: produce something else. My name is Brian Chan. I live
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: in La I'm forty one years old and I run
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a software company. I met my wife back in the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. I was at eighteen at a time,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: So we dated for like four and a half years,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: five years, and I got married.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Probably two or three years into the marriage. It was like, okay,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: it's about time to have kids. And you start trying,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: and you're not able to have kids for some reason,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: and so I start questioning.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And eventually we try. Yes, it wasn't successful. We weren't
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: able to get pregnant.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: When we hit ten years of marriage, Brian was like, okay,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: let's just try one more time.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I remember the moment I got the phone call from.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: The doctor when we finally found out. We're like, oh,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: you know, we're pregnant, you know, So it's a little
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: shock that way.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So when we went to the doctor, we saw we
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: saw one baby in there, and suddenly we saw another
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: one that was half the size. It turned out to
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: be the bigger one was actually Ezra the boy, and
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the smaller one was Gallia the girl. So God had
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: suddenly given us twins, and then I was then so overjoyed.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, God, you've given me two.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: After my kids were born. They came early, actually, I
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: think it was thirty six weeks.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And one was lighter in color and the other was
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: darker in color and smaller, and I just thought, well,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: maybe they took after one side of the family. You know,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: you know there's different gradations, right, one is more tan okay,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: and then the other. Within a month, they're like, we
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: got to send you to a higher level hospital.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: And so the doctor was like, something's wrong with her
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: ducks from her liver, and that was when things started
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: going downhill for us.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Weeks passed, months passed, and she just kept getting bigger
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and bigger, and the doctors just didn't know what to do.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Everyone was throwing out ideas. They did a lot of
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: blood work trying to figure out what she had. They
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: thought she had a bad liver.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: And they're like, we just got to give her a
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: liver transplant, okay. And while they're trying to give her
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a liver transplant. Somehow they cut off one of her
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: main cords and she became paralyzed halfway through her body.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: We ended up spending about ten months in the ICU
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: before she really stabilized and was at home, and then
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it was just nursing care twenty four to seven. She
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: would feed her through a gtube. Initially it was through
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: her nose to her stomach, eventually it was through her
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: stomach massage time. And then one day I got a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: call from a geneticist and they said, oh, you need
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to come in right now.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: We eventually did a genetic test and we found out
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: that she had the NPC diagnosis. And NPC is an enzyme,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: a missing enzyme in your cell that can process cholesterol.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: So if your cells can't remove the cholesterol from its cell,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: then eventually that cell becomes dead.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Most who have neil natle don't live past, you know,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a couple months or a year. So at that point
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: in time, I remember just being really really I was like, God,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: she's gonna die. We're in a hospital every every two weeks,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and and she just she wasn't feeling well. I was like, Oh,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I think we keep her home now, let's let's take
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: her to the hospital. We took her to the hospital.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: You know, even the er doctors and nurses who've seen
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Gallia before, Like she's come in, she's had seizures before,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: and we've taken her to the er. So you know,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: she was like being playful right before then, and so
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: we were just expecting to bring her back home.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: But she and she looked at me and then and
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: then breathed her last. I saw her and give her
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: first breath. Kars didn't see it, and I saw her
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: give her take her last breath, and I prayed.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: I prayed, Yeah, yeah, I would not wish anyone to
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: experience the death of their child.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: There are multiple moments when I I just go through
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: a super hard day and I'm just like, I don't
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: know how I can face tomorrow.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's such an emotional thing that like I don't even
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: know how to put it to words. And I think
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: that's the best way. Like you you get thrown into
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: moments where you just do not have words.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: You don't know what downcast is until you have gone
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: through suffering. I've asked God why he didn't heal gallia.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: When the time of testing comes, it just reveals what
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: you are.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: But I think when I took the perspective of God,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: you put your son Jesus through suffering to do a
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: greater work, it opened my eyes to more of what
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: God's desire was. It's a desire for his redemption story
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: to be told, his desire for me to be more
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: compassionate and more loving.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: There is a place where God comes and takes away
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: that pain, but there's also a place where God says, no,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I will not take away the pain. Okay, I'm gonna
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: use the pain to produce something else.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Like my perspective of suffering is like, Okay, you're putting
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: me through something. I don't fully understand it, but I
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: want to be like Jesus in the midst of it.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: He wasn't distant, he.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Wasn't an absent God in the midst of my suffering,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: but an ever present one. And I think there's a
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: joy in knowing that he's walking with.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Me through that He's walked with us, He's and he
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: empathizes with us.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Just remember that it will be removed fully, maybe not
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: on this side of heaven or on before his return.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: He's gonna come back. He's gonna renew all things he's
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: gonna The dead will be raised.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Think of day,