Abby's Story (Part I)

Here is the text of what Matt said at Abby's Service of Thanksgiving before showing the original Honest Questions About Abby video and collection of photos. The video features Daniel Bedingfield's beautiful song Honest Questions which has helped us enormously in coming to terms with Abby's condition.

As most of you will know, Abby’s story started in September 2003 when she was born by emergency caesarean-section after difficulties in the womb. She spent a month in special care, where it was discovered she'd suffered "catastrophic" brain damage due to a lack of oxygen before birth. Abby was in hospital for the first nine months of her life and nearly died on several occasions.

When she finally came home to be with us as a family, we had to get to grips with a very different kind of parenting. Abby suffered from severe cerebral palsy, severe epilepsy, had very little control of her limbs and was nearly completely blind. Doctors said she may live for twenty years or "she may not make her first birthday".

In January 2005, Abby defied the doctors’ worst prognosis and reached sixteen months old. During that time, Nix and I had struggled a great deal in coming to terms with Abigail's condition. We had many questions about what had happened, what could’ve been, and how to reconcile our faith through it all. Some of those questions will remain unanswered until we too get to heaven.

Two years ago we collected a series of photographs from Abby's life and made it into a DVD. It depicts a journey from those awful early months through to happier times at home with us. We wanted to show that although Abby's overall prognosis remained very bleak, we had begun to see some "brighter days".

The video is a testament to how far we’d come as a family in that first year and a half. A testament to how far Abby had come. So this is part one of her story. These were our ‘Honest Questions’.