Thirty-five years ago today (July 10), my wife Joyce and I went to the local hospital in Lebanon, expecting that we would give birth to our first child. We did, but not the way we anticipated. David Randall Wilkey was a stillbirth.
My wife and I were devastated, but God carried us through that valley in our lives, as He always has.
As I reflect on the anniversary of David’s birth, I can now see some “good” that came through his death.
It has made me much more aware and appreciative of how precious life really is. Women give birth to babies every day, but we can’t take those births for granted. According to the March of Dimes, stillbirth affects one in 100 pregnancies each year. This is estimated to be about 1 percent of all pregnancies. About 24,000 babies die each year due to stillbirth, according to estimates by the March of Dimes.
And, this does not include the countless miscarriages women endure or the hundreds of thousands of babies who are aborted each year.
When David was delivered he was fully developed. Don’t let anyone ever tell you a baby is not a living human being until birth. The memory of his stillbirth 35 years later drives my passion to advocate against abortion. Too many would be parents, who can’t have children of their own, would give anything to adopt a newborn baby.
God later blessed Joyce and I with two other wonderful children (Joanna Beasley and Daniel Wilkey) and two equally precious grandsons (Eli and Parker Beasley). But even some of those pregnancies and deliveries were difficult and one of them was life-threatening.
Life is indeed precious. Let’s never take it for granted. B&R
