Too Young to Die?

I don’t think it ever becomes easy to watch a child suffer—God help us if it does.  We’re watching Sharon, our 10-year-old newcomer, die a slow death from the HIV infection that has a stranglehold on her life’s blood.  Isn't 10 too young to die?

We have other children with HIV.  We almost lost a boy in 2010 to the virus.  We stood by helplessly and watched as his body wasted to skeletal proportions.  When he was in the hospital, he couldn’t sit up on his own.  His body was wracked with coughs from TB, a common side-affect of a weakened  immune system.  When I would help him to a sitting position his head, so large for a wasted frame, would loll like the head of a newborn.  Body too weak to support its weight.

That case was different, though.  Sammy was sick because his body had become dangerously weak before doctors allowed him to begin a regimen of ARVs (Anti-Retroviral drugs).  Once the ARVs began to do their work in his body, he grew strong.  Now, you’d never guess he had flirted, for weeks, at death’s door.

Until now, our experience with HIV has been that if the body is given proper drugs, a person can live for years with few to no symptoms.  That was before Sharon came to live with us.  She’s  taking ARVs, but the virus that courses through her veins is killing her anyway.  

One moment, she’s walking home from school, the next she’s passed-out in the dust on the road.  More than once, the children have run home to tell us Sharon is lying on the road.  Young Ones unaware of the seriousness of their friend’s illness. 

We’ve carried her limp from the road-side, from school, from church.  When she regains consciousness, she has labored breathing and fatigue.  Some days, she stays home from school because of headache and fever.  We’re learning to this aggressive virus no one is too young to die.

So we pray.  We wait expectantly for a miracle.  And we trust that, “in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Not  because it’s an appropriate scripture for the situation, but because we have experienced the truth of it.  Even in our darkest moments, when we don’t understand, God is at work.  Working all for good.