I bent down and kissed the scar where his side had recently healed, overwhelmed with gratitude. As I pulled back to admire him, I noticed the puncture wounds on both of his hands and both of his feet. This was the moment I realized that my son Ambrose possessed the five wounds of Christ.

Ambrose was delivered into our lives during a scheduled c-section after a routine pregnancy with no issues or concerns. We didn’t know our fourth baby’s gender when we entered the operating room, and I was grateful to deliver the news to Amanda, “It’s a boy, Ambrose Charles is here!”

The excitement in the room soon dampened as the nurses seemed to add some extra steps to the normal baby cleaning and measuring processes. Something was off, but I couldn’t yet figure it out. Amanda was eager to meet our little Ambrose and have that special moment of skin-to-skin contact that profoundly connects mom and baby, but that didn’t happen.

“Dad, this baby is having trouble breathing,” the nurse in charge told me. “We are going to get him to the NICU for extra help. Let’s go.”

What. What?!

“Babe, I’m going with Ambrose,” I said as I quickly kissed Amanda’s cheek and began to cry for her, knowing it could be hours or days before they would be reunited. I dialed my mother-in-law to let her know that the baby was here, another little boy, and that I needed her to join Amanda in the operating room because I was following Ambrose to the NICU.

What happened next is a bit of a blur. The nurses continued checking Ambrose’s vitals as they progressed through treatments and efforts to assist his breathing. An X-ray revealed his lungs were completely flat, having not inflated as they should. His condition didn’t improve as they tried one treatment and then another. They started with a bit of oxygen, then a CPAP, then intubated him and tried a ventilator, then surfactant, then a more high-powered ventilator, and finally one more round of surfactant before they informed me that Ambrose was moving to a different room of the NICU for additional care.

In his new room, Ambrose was surrounded by machines, and they let me know that the nurses would no longer come and go but that they would maintain a constant vigil over him. They also delivered the update that they were moving to a more aggressive treatment as the final option to keep him alive. They removed his ventilator and placed him on an oscillator, a machine that no longer attempted to breathe for him but instead shot puffs of air into his lungs several times each second.

I was informed that the oscillator was a very intense machine and that it could not be used for very long before it would start to tear open his lungs and further damage his body. To administer the new treatment, Ambrose had to be sedated and paralyzed and given dopamine and fentanyl. As his body lay lifeless, the doctors turned up the machine higher than they had for other patients, but let me know this was a desperate situation and that they had run out of medical options for saving Ambrose.

Amanda was still recovering from her surgery in the post-partum wing of the hospital. Everything felt surreal to her, having entered an operating room pregnant earlier that day, and now recovering alone on a floor full of babies. Meanwhile, I was witnessing Ambrose’s fight for life firsthand and praying for a miracle. I was so engulfed in the minute-by-minute health updates and needs of my son that I never made the customary email or social media post about his birth. I didn’t understand what was happening and kept praying “Thy will be done” through the tears and the tough news.

As predicted, the oscillator tore the ends of Ambrose’s lungs open, even as they remained deflated. The doctors pierced his side to insert a drainage tube. Things were looking grim for our boy, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of his life. Simultaneously, I was worried about my wife and decided to visit her room late that night as she recovered. I showed up just before midnight and told her that I planned to sleep for an hour before heading back to be with Ambrose.

Twenty minutes later, we were shocked to see the door to her room swing open and the NICU doctor instructing us to get a wheelchair and come with him quickly. Ambrose was crashing fast, and it was time to say goodbye to our son. The moment of truth had arrived. I was wheeling my wife down the hall as fast as I safely could, completely distraught with sadness, and repeating the words, “Thy will be done” over and over.

When we entered the room, the doctors and nurses cleared a pathway for Amanda to be by Ambrose’s side. He had different tubes and wires sticking in him from every side, and just when they were going to hoist him in Amanda’s arms, the doctor said to wait. He wasn’t crashing like he had been just moments ago, so they didn’t want to disturb him. Instead of holding her son, Amanda could only place his fingers on one section of his arm.

We spent almost two hours by his side together, and the rest of the world seemed to melt away. In this state of sadness, I had my faith and my family, and that was all that mattered. Ambrose was still alive at 3:00 am when they wheeled my wife away to recover in her room. I was texting with my dear friend, Fr. Martin Casteneda, and arranged to have him baptize Ambrose the next morning when our son was just 25 hours old. The Baptism was beautiful and heart-wrenching at the same time. When the sacrament concluded, we continued in prayer and trusted God’s will.

Just after noon on that second day, I finally posted an update on social media and emailed friends and family. I asked people of faith to join us in prayer.

Less than two hours later, Ambrose received his next round of X-rays. Amanda happened to be visiting when a doctor came to the room to let us know that something had changed. As she started to speak, tears flowed down her cheeks. She was crying for joy as she could see where Ambrose’s lungs had finally opened.

“I am not sure why his lungs are open,” she said. “But I stayed up praying for your son last night, as medically we have been done for almost 20 hours now.”

His lungs never closed again. When Ambrose was five days old, he came out of sedation. We held him for the first time when he was eight days old. And when Ambrose was almost three weeks old, he came home to meet his three older siblings.

It was medicine that prevented Ambrose’s death during those first 30 hours, and prayer that caused him to live thereafter. Undergoing the stress and exhaustion of Ambrose’s birth story helped to frame every day of my life since that moment almost six years ago.

• I do not take this special day, or any other day, that God has given us for granted. Ambrose is my reminder to truly say “Thank God it’s Monday” at the start of each new week.
• I love and glorify God in all things and do my best to love others for His sake.
• I use the gifts that God gave me to multiply His message and amplify the gifts of others. I am grateful that I am surrounded by many others who operate in the same way.

To this day, I can still see the scar where the drainage tube pierced Ambrose’s right side, and I often think about the moment I realized he had the five wounds of Christ. I then think about how God uses Ambrose and his story to impact the world and keep me grounded in joy and mercy as I approach each new day.

What signs, symbols, or people in your life help to provide you with the proper perspective?