“Please pray that our little son will someday joyfully lift his hands, formed and malformed, in heartfelt worship to the King who in love and mysterious providence saw fit to have him walk this path—even when he can’t know exactly why it had to be so.”

There are many reasons I love being a Christian, but right up there is being able to learn from others how to think in mature, biblical ways. Recently my friends Ewan and Rachel welcomed a new baby boy into their family, and immediately experienced a shock as they realized he had a significant physical malformation. They soon sent a letter to their church (Grace Fellowship Church Don Mills) to introduce their son and tell about his condition. I received their permission to post it here and do so in order to provide a model of truly, distinctly, inspiringly Christian thinking. What follows is from Ewan and Rachel Goligher. I hope it blesses you as it blessed me.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Thank you to everyone for the warm wishes and congratulations following our son Ewan’s birth last week. It’s been a joyful and happy time and we are grateful to share this joy with our wonderful church community.

Last Thursday morning shortly after Ewan was born, the nurse called me over to see him. She pointed to his tiny left hand and foot; I was stunned to see that they had not developed properly. Much of his left hand was missing and his little thumb was oversized and partially fused to a single adjacent finger. Similarly, some of his left foot was missing, he had a single large toe and his ankle appeared twisted and bent inward. These congenital anomalies, as they are called, had developed during the pregnancy but were not seen on ultrasound. We brought him over to Rachel and showed her his little foot and hand. As Rachel and I looked at him and then at each other, tears welling up in our eyes, we quickly realized that the road ahead for little Ewan was going to be unexpectedly difficult.

A torrent of conflicting emotion followed, unlike any prior experience for either of us. We were overjoyed by his arrival and deeply shocked and dismayed by these anomalies. Even as we burst with happiness at the birth of our new son, a sudden, unexpected, and weighty sense of tragedy hung heavily on our hearts. Many tears followed, not for ourselves, but for our little boy who even before his birth was already experiencing the terrible consequences of life in a fallen, broken world. It was painful to tell our other children about this, excited as they were to meet their brother, and hard to tell family and friends who were ready to celebrate his arrival and unprepared for this difficult news. A day of good news became a hard day of breaking difficult news.

Ewan has been examined by several pediatricians and undergone a number of investigations. To this point, no underlying condition responsible for these anomalies has been identified; this is good news, as it’s therefore less likely that there are other health problems that he will face. We are thankful to live in an era and in a part of the world where skilled surgeons and therapists can significantly enhance functional capacity and quality of life for children like Ewan. He has a long road of tests and treatments ahead and it’s uncertain just how disabled he will be as a consequence of these malformations. Certainly, he will not be able to hide his hand from the world, and it will not be long before Ewan realizes that he’s visibly different from other boys and girls his age.

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