We saw every type of doctor you could imagine, lost count of how many treatments and therapies we tried, spent thousands of dollars, gave up all hope of her getting better, and started making plans for an early death. I was in my mid-thirties making plans to be a single father.

He had told me in those final days that when accepting his cancers, he’d lost his faith, but he also told me that I should never lose mine. That it was the most interesting thing about me. Emboldened, I read to him from a psalm of King David, Psalm 32.

It’s hard for my wife not to feel cursed. Instead of a warm and welcome space for her children, she can picture her body to be dangerous and uninhabitable. She wants to think of Aiden as our miracle child, the only one to survive the harsh climate of her broken body.