A Child's Destiny
The work-out tank top that had the word “motivated” printed on the front of it explained it all. Carissa and Matt Dover went to the North East Georgia Medical Center on Aug. 26, 2016 to deliver their first child. Carissa wore her favorite tank top that day to set the bar for her mood as the medical staff induced her at 37 weeks. She soon gave birth to her little 4 lbs. and 11 oz. baby girl. Hope Dover was no bigger than a minute.
An ultrasound was done during pregnancy and the doctors found this little girl, covered in fluid. They told Carissa that this was a sign of a miscarriage. Carissa’s faith in God allowed her to have hope about her pregnancy.
Carissa labored and watched as the doctors took her baby that she had been carrying for nine months from her arms just ten minutes after birth to the NICU for further testing and stabilization. Hope had markers for Trisomy 13.
The whirlwind of doctors and family moved around like they were walking through a house of mirrors that was full of smoke, just trying to see to do their job. The nurse practitioner told them that baby Hope looked great and she didn’t see any markers for Trisomy 13. She just looked like a healthy baby girl with a cleft lip and pallet. Carissa watched as her husband walked out of the labor room expressing his joy as he hugged that nurse practitioner and followed her down to the NICU where Hope was. Carissa was recovering from childbirth and grabbed a bite for her late dinner that night. She was surrounded by family and friends. The time for Carissa drifted by like smoke moving through sunlight.
Trisomy 13 often includes but is not limited to heart defects, brain and spinal cord abnormalities, cleft lip and cleft pallet, weak muscle tone and poorly developed features. Only 5% of children with this condition live past their first year and is fatal for 90% of babies within their first days or weeks of life.
The doctor told Matt and Carissa that they were going to preform two tests that will show the results of Trisomy 13. Carissa was left curious as to why they were still toying with the idea of that condition. She prayed that Hope would be healed within her womb, she believed that she was. The nurse practitioner even confirmed that, off the record. Her husband broke the news to her later that day, that the nurse practitioner in fact, did think that Hope had Trisomy 13 after further examination.
Two days crept by as if this reality was someone else’s. Carissa visited Hope in the NICU at different times, only to be able to stare at her baby girl through a tiny glass box.
After a bone shattering diagnosis, she sat there in a cold hospital room, holding her child without a shadow of a doubt that Hope was going to make it. She was going to be okay. They were going to be okay.
“I started to realize because God gave me a peace right after getting that diagnosis. I had the peace of God. I felt it tangibly, like a warm blanket on me.” Carissa said.
She comforted her husband and assured him that everything was going to be okay. The hospital kept Hope for 2 weeks, only working on her blood sugar and then the new family of three went home.
The evening time was always the worst. For Hope the witching hour was not midnight, it was the hours before bedtime, when the restlessness had set in and there was no toy in the Dover house that could distract her from it. Carissa was full-time care for Hope. She got up every couple of hours during the night to feed Hope because Matt had to go teach school every day. She was with Hope all day. For three months Hope took a bottle until they realized that she was aspirating. In October, Hope had surgery to place a G-Tube into her stomach. The daily routines shifted drastically. Hope was fed every three to four hours. Carissa would get up in the middle of night to run her feeding machine for one hour. After her feed was complete, Hope had to be held upright for 20 minutes. This routine repeated itself. This pattern would take place every three hours. The point of exhaustion would be met when Matt would come home from work and take over for the remainder of the evening. Although Carissa was exhausted, her duties were far from over. The formula stained clothes did not clean themselves and dinner had to be prepared.
Hope was born with a hole in her heart the size of a 10mm bullet. This was called atrial septal defect. It is a fairly common defect, known as ASD for short, but the sizes vary. For infants, ASD’s under 5mm will not likely cause problems and can close up on its own. This was not the case for Hope. Holes that are larger and measure between 8mm and 10mm often do not close and may need a procedure to survive.
The medical staff told Carissa, it would not likely close up on its own, but that Hope may be denied surgery because of her genetic condition.
For 5 months, Hope lived with a 10mm hole in her heart. She was gearing up to have cranial surgery and needed clearance from the cardiologist due to her ASD, to have the cranial surgery. The cardiologist cleared Hope for cranial surgery, without doing another test to see how big the hole in her heart was. Carissa insisted that they test her once more.
“They did it and it showed that her ASD had gotten smaller. The doctor looked at her and just shook his head and said, ‘That’s amazing’ and he just walked out of the room. He walked down the hall way scratching his head. He couldn’t believe it,” Carissa said.
The ASD in Hope’s heart shrank to 5mm and from there, there was no concern regarding the hole.
The time for Carissa started to speed up. Hope was progressing physically and mentally at a high rate. She started figuring out her toys and learning routines. Her body became more active and so did her mind. Over time, the harsh reality of this condition started to become one that Carissa relied on. The feeding went from every three hours to just three times a day. Life for Hope was starting to move forward and become that of a healthy child. Hope’s playful and reckless behavior left both Carissa and Matt struggling to keep up.
“She was always one step ahead of us. By the time we figured out something that worked, she figured out how to destroy the plan. She would beat the system, every time.” Carissa explained.
The sound of a soft tune from Carissa lingered from the hallway into Hope’s room every morning as the sun would rise. The slow wake comforted Hope in the mornings. She always went for her pink bear named Violet, just after her eyes would open. Devotion time, breakfast, and Hope’s morning feed got consolidated into one fluid motion for Carissa on most mornings.
The routines faded away, but new ones would always take their place. Almost on a daily occurrence, Carissa and her mother-in-law, Sharron Dover, spent their late mornings talking to one another over the phone. Words from God continued to pour into each of their lives, through the other. The conversation always ended with Sharron saying, “angles all around”. Messages from sermons, bible verses, theological ideas and symbolic rituals helped move Carissa throughout her days.
December 7, 2018 was one of those days, where she needed a Savior to move on behalf of her. The morning brought with it a sense of fear for Carissa, as a mother. She feared how Hope would grow up in a broken world that is full of sin and hurt. She had been given a perfect gift of life to nurture and take care of but fear and doubt slowly crept in. Carissa did the only thing she knew to do. She knelt down at the feet of her God.
A sacrament of grace purged out the fear from Carissa’s heart that morning. Words were written on tiny pieces of wood that represented the sins that consumed her thoughts. An offering was given from the burnt ashes of the sin ridden pieces of wood to act as a testament of Carissa’s faith. She placed the ashes in a heart-shaped jar and sealed it up. The label on the front read, ‘death was overcome by victory’. She recalled Jesus’ words in the book of John, when He told his people to ‘take heart’ because He had overcome the world. For Carissa, this was an act of obedience to place the life of her daughter in the hands of her God.
Matt Dover’s Story
“Something that should have never been, that should have never happened, the doctors said, “it’s not going to work out” here she was,” Matt Dover said.
His little buddy had just arrived on the evening of Aug. 26, 2018. Hope Dover weighed nothing more than 4 lbs. and 11 oz. Her appearance to this world was different but Matt Dover had never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
With a wild ride through pregnancy, Matt’s wife Carissa stood on faith to carry her through, while Matt did everything he could to connect the scientific facts to his faith. The line between believing in miracles and giving up to the realization of science became disturbingly thin for Matt. When a portion of the medical staff mentioned markers for Trisomy 13, Matt stood close to the edge of that thin line.
Their nurse practitioner told them that Hope looked great and no markers for Trisomy 13 were visible to her, at quick glance. Matt kissed that lady, right on the forehead. His hope in his faith had prevailed for that moment. After holding Hope for about ten minutes, the doctors took her down to the NICU for testing and stabilization. Matt followed and allowed his wife to rest and finally eat dinner, after the storm of childbirth.
Matt stood there in the NICU and looked at his fragile little girl through a glass box, while the nurse practitioner stood beside him to finally execute her trained examination for Trisomy 13. Her words of hope that had just sailed through Matt and Carissa’s veins began to fade quickly. She pointed out every marker that she saw for Trisomy 13, as if she was just rattling off her grocery list.
At a point of desperation Matt chose to not rob his wife of her happiness that day. He bottled up this tragic news until he couldn’t contain it anymore. His emotions spilled out in the form of words and tears. Together, they waited for test results as the next 2 days seemed to slowly drift away. Matt dug into his faith to pull him through this desperate time.
“A desperate prayer to me is like when you are face down on a carpet, your face has carpet burns, your snot is everywhere, when you get up your hair is pasted and matted, and you can’t talk because your voice is so raspy and dirty because you’ve been screaming out to the Lord,” Matt said.
The following day, Matt and Carissa were told that their little baby tested positive for full Trisomy 13.
Sleepless nights and long days really described this new life with baby Hope. Matt taught students with emotional and behavioral disorders at White County High School during the day and returned home to his newborn baby, that also suffered from a chromosomal disorder, every evening to care for her. This season of Matt’s life aged him 5 years in just a few short months.
Bath time was right in the middle of Hope’s witching hour. For the first couple of months, she hated it. Eventually, she learned to love the water as if she had turned into a mermaid overnight. Apple’s FaceTime feature on all of their products that was designed to keep friends and family connected did just that for Matt’s parents. The endless giggles and laughs from Hope during her bath time became something that they just couldn’t miss watching. The consistency set in and the sleepless nights and long days began to bleed into a new normal for the Dovers.
With Hope’s G-Tube, she had to be fed every three to four hours. The nightshifts were Carissa’s territory. The evening shifts were Matt’s. They experimented with night feedings, where they let the feeding machine run for the duration of the night, dispensing a small amount at a time. That worked well for a while, until Hope became more active. The tube would get pulled out and the formula and water mixture saturated the crib and poured into the floor.
“She wrecked our house and wrecked our hearts man,” Matt said.
Hope was born with vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) condition. This is a condition where the urine flows the wrong way in her body and caused it to back up into her kidneys. The levels of severity for this condition go from 1-4. One of Hope’s kidneys was a level 2 and the other was a level 3. A condition with this level of severity was dangerous for any human but has the capability to heal itself in an otherwise healthy body.
With Hope’s diagnosis of Trisomy 13, this was a condition that would most likely not heal on its own because of the other abnormalities in her tiny body. She went in for a routine six-month checkup for the Nephrologist to perform an ultrasound and a VCUG test to actually go in and watch how the urine travels throughout the body. The nurse came out and shockingly explained that everything was normal, her kidneys and bladder were working on a completely normal cycle. For Matt, this science didn’t make sense. There was nothing to explain how this had happened.
Hope endured 5 surgeries that really shook Matt’s faith. He knew that the science behind all of this was against their odds. He watched as his little girl completely crushed cranial surgery, only to be discharged from the hospital two days later. He recalled being able to use these desperate moments to pray offensively for his family. He began to speak promises to his situations and started asking God to perform the craziest of miracles because he knew that none of it made sense scientifically, and a part of him had reached the point of believing that there was no limit to what his God could do.
It became an everyday occurrence for Matt to be late to work in the mornings. That extra 20 minutes always turned into 30 and sometimes 40 minutes. He became so grooved in this routine that his boss and coworkers started expecting it. No one blamed him for it, either. Every morning at 7:20 a.m. he knew that if he waited just a few minutes after, he would catch her waking up. He would slip into Hope’s room to admire his little buddy while she was waking. Violet would always come next. He knew that the little pink stuffed animal brought Hope the most joy in the mornings. He became addicted to this sweet occurrence. The moment he squished Violet to make the toy play a song, Hope grabbed it and immediately started to giggle and squeeze violet like it was going to be her last time hugging that little pink bear, every single time.
A normal night in late November of 2018, Hope laid embraced in Matt’s arms with a calm spirit that was highly unusual for her. She laid there caressing his beard and starring into his eyes for 15 minutes, as if she knew that she was secretly comforting him. The peaceful and mild energy moved him that night. He was thankful for the sweet moments like this, but he knew it wouldn’t always be this way.
***
A brisk Friday evening in December began with an early celebration of Matt’s birthday that was on the following day, Saturday, December 8. Matt had joined some friends that evening to celebrate. At home, Carissa and her mother attended to the daily life of Hope. They had her evening feeding, bath time and of course play time with Violet. Hope spent the entire day humming joyous melodies. Carissa’s mother would often come over during the evenings to help out. This evening was no different except for the absence of Matt. She came to love on little Hope and give Carissa a hand but then she left. She left with the sound of Hope’s hums still ringing in her ears.
Carissa laid Hope down for her bedtime. A couple of hours passed by and Matt made it back home to his family, after celebrating his birthday over a couple mediocre karaoke performances with some of his best friends. The house was quiet, and Matt was out of it after just a couple minutes of being home. The celebration would pick back up again tomorrow, on the actual day of Matt’s birthday.
A little after midnight, Carissa, still on Hope duty, went into Hope’s room to check on her, as she did every night. Though, this night was incomparable.
Life had ceased to exist in Hope’s room. At some point after midnight, Hope had stopped breathing. No seizure, no heart attack, to aneurism, she had just stopped breathing. Carissa was trained and certified in CPR, but it never once occurred to her that she would use her skills to attempt to bring her daughter back to life. The sound of sirens and the heavy footsteps of the first responders carried through the Dover house that night and instantly crippled Carissa and Matt with fear. Carissa believed in a God that preformed miracles on behalf of her daughter, and she believed that He would do it again.
Matt restlessly woke into a blur of chaos which eventually left him with grim memories of that night in the Dover house. The questions and guilt began to kick in. The sight of his little buddy not breathing was a hard blow for him, so hard that his mind mentally pushed it out. This was not the birthday that Matt expected.
Carissa was sitting on the cold, hard hospital chair, lost in a blur, holding her child. The room was sloppy, not sterile anymore.
“I knew that the pile of needles and medical paraphernalia on the floor was because of the determination of a miracle believing mother,” Pastor Kevin said.
The emergency room was weighted down with people whose faith was trying hard to lift Hope back to life that night. After hours and hours of attempts to resuscitate, Hope had long before heard the joyous melodies of angels and finally decided to join them in their rejoicing. This 2-year-old little girl, who weighed 4 lbs. and 11 oz. at birth and suffered from one of the most terrible chromosomal conditions to exist passed away on Dec. 8, 2018 at 4:11 a.m.
Carissa recalled the bible verse that she found at the time of Hope’s birth that would remain as a testament for Hope’s life, but she was unaware of how true it would actually become.
She described part of a letter that Paul had written to the Romans to assure them that nothing can separate them from God’s love, not even death or one’s own sinful nature and whoever is justified will be glorified not because of their faithfulness but because they serve a God who is faithful and just.
Life for Matt and Carissa required a new chapter to be written. They were hanging onto the last threads of their hope. Questioning how to keep on, keeping on. But they believed without a shadow of a doubt that their Hope lies within the arms of Jesus.
The covenant of marriage suddenly needed extra attention after the loss of their child. Being together felt as lonely as being apart did. Grief was natural. Grief was necessary. But grief stung, in the worst way possible. They had one thing to hold onto, and that was hope.
“We grieve and process things very differently. You have to give your spouse space and grace to grieve. It’s hard to grieve together.” Carissa said.
Life took a tragic turn for both Matt and Carissa Dover, but they have carried each other through the dark days and long nights only by their faith in God. Two and half years ago they were given a ministry that has prepared them for their new beginnings.
“I don’t think we can wait to do ministry until we are healed,” Samantha Burnett, a close friend of Carissa said.
Two months after losing their child, Matt and Carissa took a leadership ministry position at their church. They have pursued ministry together to not only lead the college students at River Point Community Church but to continue to move through their grief together and show hope within despair. Together they climb through this journey, on their knees.
Preparing for the future looks like a dining room full of carpentry tools and new wood slats for their hardwood flooring sitting in the driveway, as Violet sits perched on the top of the dresser watching all the new renovations take place in the Dover home.