Recently, I read a story about a baby boy born in 1982, known to us only as Baby Doe. Interestingly, this baby who had no name quickly became the center of national debate over the sanctity of human life.

In the court of public opinion, some found this newborn baby boy to be guilty of two grave offenses. First, he had Down syndrome. Somehow, he had managed to breeze through pregnancy without being detected, thus taking away his parents’ ability to abort him in the womb. Second, he was born with a (surgically correctable) condition known as tracheoesophagael fistual. Yet while a nearby hospital and its medical team were ready and willing to perform surgery on him, Baby Doe’s parents chose instead to follow the archaic and biased advice of the mother’s obstetrician…and they did nothing.

When I was in college, I took a class one semester on religious cults. The class was fairly small, and I knew almost everyone in there. Except there was a new girl. I had never seen her before, and she was very different than what I was used to seeing in my school. She wore all black, sometimes with spikes on her clothes, and she had many piercings. But what made her really different, causing her to stand out so starkly amongst my classmates, was her anger. In our class on religion, it was very clear that she was angry at God.

At first, I chose to ignore her. She was different, and it is always easier to ignore different when it makes us uncomfortable. But as the semester wore on, the Lord kept bringing her to my mind. She sat alone day in and day out, and she needed a friend. He wanted me to be that person, so finally, I befriended her. What I learned has stayed with me ever since.

The other night, Trey and I were going through our nightly bedtime routine with our three children. He was managing our two kids, who are 3 and 5, while I was getting our youngest, who is 15 months, dressed for bed. After Trey tucked Justin into bed, I heard him instruct Kate, our oldest, to put on her pajamas and to brush her teeth. We had gotten in from church earlier that evening, so while Kate did as he instructed, Trey stepped outside to finish cleaning out the minivan from our day’s activities. 

We have a small ranch-style house, and all three bedrooms are on the same hallway. This hallway also leads out into our garage. As I was putting on Alisa’s diaper and pajamas, I heard the alarm over our garage door beep. I thought nothing of it since I knew Trey was going in and out of the house, but I also wondered what Kate was doing. She should have been brushing her teeth by that point, but I assumed she had gotten sidetracked playing in her room, as she often does.