It is a heartbreaking fallacy in today’s secular world that a person’s life is somehow less worth living if they face adversity or hardship.
This reasoning is used to destroy unborn life in the womb and to take severely sick or injured patients off life support or even engaged in physician-assisted suicide, in some cases.
While it is heartbreaking to face the possibility that your husband might live his life with no awareness of what’s going on around him, when one woman was told this would be the case for her own beloved, she refused to give up, against the doctor’s advice.
Today, her husband is responsive and living at home, watching his daughters grow up, making slow but sure progress in rehabilitation and is being tended for by the hand of his loving and devoted wife.
While Paul Farnsworth is indeed experiencing a severely limited life, it is still a life, and it is one surrounded by those who mean the most to him and cherish him dearly.
His life may be remarkably challenging, but is it worth living?
His wife, Victorija, most certainly thinks so.
In 2016, Mrs. Farnsworth received the phone call that many wives dread. It was from her husband’s phone number — but a police officer was on the other end. Paul had been involved in an accident on his motorbike in their home of Sidney, Australia.
While Victorija thought at first that he had probably just suffered a few scrapes and bruises, having been involved in minor accidents before.
This was not the case.
“His body lay lifeless in the small bed. Monitors beeping, tubes coming out of every direction, the ventilator helping him breathe,” she told The Epoch Times.
“My husband of 7 years, with whom I shared two beautiful little girls, was in a critical condition.”
Victorija prayed fervently that the Lord would save Paul’s life. She assured their two daughters, then ages 5 and 3, that daddy was “having a long sleep at the hospital to try and get better.”
Doctors would go on to tell her that her husband would “end up a vegetable” and that he should be removed from life support so he could die naturally.
She panicked, unable to give up on the life they shared together. After seeking comfort in the hospital chapel and calling a friend who reassured her that Paul was fighting, she felt the peace and determination she needed to insist that she would fight for his life as well.
The devoted wife met the doctor’s warnings that a very difficult path lay ahead of the couple with her “head held high,” as the Times puts it.
Five years later, Paul has made amazing strides for a man who doctors were sure would “end up a vegetable.”
After 18 months of intensive rehabilitation, he was able to return home. Five years later, he remains a quadriplegic, but is able to communicate and to join his family on fishing trips, shopping, and to church.
Victorija is certain that he is cognitive and aware of what’s going on around him and cherishes each new milestone he achieves.
“Paul is making sounds with consistent speech therapy exercises,” she said. “He communicates with eye blinks, foot taps, and vocal sounds. He makes decisions using eye gaze and assistive technology devices.”
The couple’s life is still very far from easy, and at times Victorija, who manages Paul’s 24-hour disability support team, feels “depleted.”
“It is hard watching someone you love in pain,” she shared.
Yet it is her faith in the one who crafted Paul in the womb that keeps her going — and able to shower her husband with the care and love he needs to go on.
“I have a strong faith in God—it got me through the worst time in my life. It continues to carry me through the good and bad times and I would be lost without it,” she said.
Amen.
What an incredibly moving portrait of love and commitment to the bond of marriage as well as a testimony of the value and worth of each and every precious life, no matter how limited.
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