A Heart-breaking Witness For Life - NO WAY To Assisted Suicide ｜ ALS Patient Kirsten MacDonald
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Summary
Join us this week as we hear from David and Kristen MacDonald, founders of LifeSite, as they share their incredible stories of faith, hardship, and triumph in the face of adversity. Join us at the 25th Anniversary Canadian Gala on July 18th in Toronto, Canada, where LifeSite is celebrating 25 years of service to life, faith, family, and freedom.
Transcript
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I climb up on a wheelchair, kiss your cheek and brush your hair.
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Mommy, it's even hard for you to breathe this air.
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It's really my privilege to share stories of amazing, heroic people.
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But you know, I think that this story that you're about to hear is probably going to be
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one of the most moving stories you've ever heard.
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And it's a real privilege for me because it deals with friends that I've known for many,
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many years, friends that have inspired me in so many different ways.
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And when you hear this story, I want you to share it with all the people, you know, because
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This July, we at LifeSite are celebrating 25 years of service to Life, Faith, Family and
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Freedom with a gala in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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So especially for those of you who couldn't join us in the United States, LifeSite is gathering
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our whole team and a few very special guests in the pro-life and pro-family movement for
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a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at our newly announced 25th anniversary Canadian gala.
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LifeSite's star video reporter, Jim Hale, will be there with an onstage special with the 16-year-old
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Experience LifeSite's Faith and Reason show live with Father James Altman and Liz Yor.
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And you'll be able to interact with our reporters from all over the world, including U.S. Bureau
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Chief Doug Mainwaring, Canadian reporter Anthony Murdoch, and Rome correspondent Michael Haynes.
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You'll also hear keynotes from LifeSite co-founder Steve Jelcevac and myself.
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So RSVP for the 25th anniversary Canadian gala now.
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And don't miss the opportunity to get a live, in-person, studio experience of LifeSite's
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top news show that broadcasts every Friday at 8 p.m., Faith and Reason.
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So RSVP and get your tickets today for LifeSite's 25th anniversary Canadian gala in the beautiful
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To buy tickets for the 25th anniversary Canadian gala, visit gala25can.lifesitenews.com.
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David MacDonald and Kristen MacDonald, welcome, welcome to the program.
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Let's begin as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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So David, I actually want to start with your story, because we go back so many years.
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If you wouldn't mind telling us your story from the beginning, because that started us
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in a friendship from the very first time I heard about you.
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I love who you were, and how you came to the faith, and how strong you were in it as
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a guy who was alone in terms of relationship, but living all for the Lord.
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So I grew up in a family that, you know, science was our God, and my parents, it wasn't
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My parents would sometimes play Frisbee with plates and, you know, that kind of thing.
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And it was also, you know, we heard a lot of religious words in our family, but they
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weren't used in the right context, if you know what I mean.
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He really was against anything that, you know, he thought it was very anti-scientific.
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There were car bombings and, you know, that kind of thing.
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And I had a tremendous desire to get attention.
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And the first way I got attention was learning how to get beat up.
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And so I got beat up in school a lot as I was growing up, and there'd be big circles
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But, you know, it was very traumatic, too, at the same time.
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You know, it's funny to look back on, but it's very tragic also.
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But I found a much better way to get attention was I had a talent in music, and so I picked
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up the guitar at eight years old, and I excelled very quickly on it.
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And in my teenage years, I went out and started playing on the streets for money, you know,
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with my guitar case open on Spark Street Mall in Ottawa, and, you know, that kind of thing.
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And then I got picked up and got a record deal at 18 years old, and I got a bit of airplay.
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I was sent down there after playing in Montreal for a bunch of concerts in Montreal.
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I got picked up by an agent and sent down to Club Med, and I played there for six months.
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And then I got picked up by CBS Records and a couple of other people were down there,
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and they liked what I was doing, and they said, why don't you come to New York?
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And so I went to New York City, and I auditioned for a Broadway show.
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Well, first I did produce some rap music in Harlem, which was an interesting journey.
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I could, you know, they called me the Mighty Whitey.
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And, you know, so I did the string arrangements and, you know, that kind of thing.
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And got a show on NBC TV where we did a preppy rap.
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So I was producing rap records, and then we went to preppy rap for a white kind of rap,
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And then I got cast in a Broadway show, and everybody said, you're an actor.
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I played Mick Jagger in a show called Rock and Roll the First 5,000 Years,
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and then I went on to the show Cats, the U.S. National Tour of Cats.
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I did a show called American Passion with Robert Downey Jr.,
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and, you know, so that kind of generation of actors.
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And, but I soon realized that there's a lot of ways you can get shipwrecked in life.
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And, you know, I didn't know the Lord at all back then,
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and I was very, very promiscuous, and I was involved in three abortions.
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And so I basically sacrificed my children on the altar of my ambition.
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So I, you know, and the interesting thing is, is the universe and Jesus and God,
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we're all subject to whether we believe them or not.
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So the laws against, you know, the moral, you know, case against abortion that God makes
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is still subject to those who are involved in abortion, whether or not they believe it or not.
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I started using more and more cocaine, alcoholism, bulimia.
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I was doing a show on Broadway called Baby, which was very ironic
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because it was about three couples who were having children.
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And I think the dichotomy of me playing somebody who was expecting a baby,
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you know, on Broadway and just having gone through abortion was, you know,
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the cognitive dissonance that I would get was just, you know, incredible.
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I injured my voice on the U.S. National Tour of Cats in Philadelphia.
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I blew my voice out as a result of, you know, bad living and getting sick and pushing too hard
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and living, chasing after the North American dream of, you know, let me get famous
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and, you know, then I'm going to work out all my other problems, my emotional problems.
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So came back to Ottawa with my tail between my legs.
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I went on a search, a journey, and I ended up in that search looking at the New Age
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because people in Hollywood and in New York are very attracted to the New Age.
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And there's a really good reason for that because the New Age doesn't make any moral demands on us.
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So, oh, wow, I can get spiritual and I don't have to do anything.
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Well, you know, what's not to like about that, right?
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Now, the reason I sound like this is because of the injury on my voice.
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And so I went from there to this search and I was just about to give my life over to a guru
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And I was really serious because I wanted this search.
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I was seeking for truth, you know, and I got lost in Montreal
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And I got off the bus and I saw this big, huge church.
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I didn't know the name of it at that time, but it was St. Joseph's Oratory.
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And I went in and I walked around what I now understand to be the tomb of Brother Andre.
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And I had an experience there which was very profound.
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And I went up to the third floor and there was nobody in the church at all.
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And I just lay in front of the cross the way I did prostrate in front of the guru,
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And I just lay in front and I heard myself say this little prayer.
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But I just said, you know, Jesus, I don't know you.
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And then I just put my head down on the ground and face forward.
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And I felt this incredible power come over to me at that point
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And I lost all interest in the new age and everything else.
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I got out of all of the bad living that I'd done,
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even in the LGBT community for a period of time.
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You know, I just felt the Lord calling me away from all of that.
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And it's just like, no, I'm calling you away to a new destiny.
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And so I went from there to, you know, finding out where I would belong.
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And I had an experience with Our Lady that brought me to the Catholic Church
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because I went to the other churches, which I thought were really great
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But there was something about this mother, you know.
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And I went back to university and I got a degree.
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And I went, I did music a little bit on the side.
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And then on a Christian, my voice came back for 10 years.
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And I was doing a show and you were doing talks.
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And so I toured around as a Christian musician, got some airplay.
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And I was going to live a celibate life, living the teachings of the church.
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And I really think it's important for everybody to understand,
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teachings of the church is no sex with self, you know.
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Like it's so, so important for single people to maintain that purity with self
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because masturbation just dulls and clouds your spirituality,
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Father Bob Bedard, who was a great priest, used to say, you know,
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it just clouds our relationship with the Holy Spirit.
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And so, you know, I was living a pure life for a number of years,
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living the teachings of the church and staying away from porn
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and staying away from all these different things.
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Yeah, let me, you know, what I found fascinating was I remember meeting you
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and I remember you having stories about being able to witness.
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One of the most fascinating things was you were able to witness in LGBT communities
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or regular communities that you've been celibate for so long
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Like if you say, I don't masturbate, they're like, you're lying.
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And it's like, it's like, no, you've met somebody who doesn't masturbate
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You're not going to die if you don't get sex, you know?
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And so I think in our, in our over-sexualized society, we have to understand that, you know?
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And so we can live the purity of the church and still have a full life.
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Many, many times people were just jaw dropping.
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But I had to do a lot of, you know, accountability and working with other people
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and getting in groups of people and, you know, working together with others
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It's not just, it's not like you just, you know, wake up one morning and go,
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No, it's an effort to live the teachings of the church
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and to relate to other people who are trying to live the teachings of the church
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And, and when you stop doing all that stuff, it's amazing.
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Because I remember you were then at this point,
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you were also singing for the March for Life very often.
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I always wrote the theme song for the March for Life.
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And so we started out with 700 people the first year
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and it went up and up and up and up and up by 2010.
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And, and then we did the March for Marriage, which had 25,000.
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And I wrote a theme song for that called One Man, One Woman.
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And, and so, yeah, it was a, it was a great experience.
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And to see the witness of the Canadian people really on fire for the truth,
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And it was amazing because at that point, I thought, what an amazing fellow.
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He had this past that, yep, I came from a similar kind of a past.
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But, and I was at this point married with lots of little children.
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He's living the life, the same life, giving over to Christ everything.
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And I remember you saying about how you're totally celibate, which is great,
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Like any priest would say, yep, I'm just given to a life of celibacy.
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And you thought, at least when I was talking to you,
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Yep, I thought I was going to be playing music and doing my testimony
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And I had no plans of getting married because I'd had a word from Our Lady
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early on that was, well, you don't want that, you want me.
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And so I thought that I was called to a life of celibacy.
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Now, the interesting thing is Our Lady would have to do something bigger than that
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And in all honesty, I thought, wow, that's like such a beautiful lady.
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Because if anybody deserved a good, holy, and beautiful woman like that, it's David.
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So this is where tradition, the Catholic tradition, says that Mary said yes to the Archangel Gabriel
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And so I was there, and miraculously, it was empty, except there was a choir rehearsing on the second floor.
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And so there's this beautiful music in the background as it was sitting in this place where the Archangel Gabriel,
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where tradition says Archangel Gabriel came to Our Lady, and she said yes to birth, you know,
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to give the conception, the immaculate conception of Jesus, right?
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And so there I was, and I was sitting cross-legged on the floor and just praying.
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And then all of a sudden I heard, and I had known about Kirsten, and I was trying to avoid her because I was really attracted to her.
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And I was trying to, you know, I'm like, I'm celibate.
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I have to just, you know, not pay attention to her.
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And, you know, but I wanted to pay attention to her.
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And it was the same voice as I heard 25 years early, is you don't want that, you want me.
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And I heard, David, I want you to marry Kirsten.
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And then at that last time on Kirsten, the choir started, stopped, and the bells started ringing.
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And all of a sudden the love I had for Kirsten just burst into my, you know, from my stomach right up into my whole body.
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And I just felt, wow, I have permission to go forward with Kirsten here.
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And so that was, you know, Our Lady, you know, giving us the go-ahead, you know.
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And so all this time, Kirsten was on an interesting journey because she was a missionary, an evangelical missionary, who had a dream about the Eucharist.
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And she had been taking communion each day using like a cracker because she believed John 6, you know.
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And in her evangelical church, they were talking about that.
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And then she had this dream where her version of communion was held up against the Eucharist.
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And she heard there's depths and treasures in this thing called the Eucharist that you're not getting in what you're doing now.
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And anyway, it began a long journey for her, a difficult journey because she didn't know a lot about the Catholic Church.
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And she, so her road, as I was moving towards marriage, she was coming into the Catholic Church.
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And I was put in contact with her because I have a Catholic website called Catholic Bridge that, you know, helps people understand the Catholic faith and things like that.
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And so she was sent to me by somebody who said, well, she has a lot of questions.
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David might be able to answer those questions, right?
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And so that's how the whole thing, how we got to know each other.
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And Kirsten at the time, of course, she was running about 5K and she was, you know, super athletic and all of that.
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So for you guys who are not married, there is hope.
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You know, so I was 48 years old and Kirsten was 43 and we'd gone through a number of, we got married and it was a beautiful marriage.
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And we could feel the anointing on it and both of us just really sensed we were going in the right direction.
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And then, you know, we weren't thinking that we were going to be able to have children because Kirsten was older.
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And we had a couple of miscarriages, three miscarriages.
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And then you had a miscarriage, three miscarriages.
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But I have to tell you, a miscarriage is way different feeling than an abortion.
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There is, like, people who make that comparison between miscarriage and abortion, there is just absolutely zero comparison.
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Like, there's a sense of sadness but a sense of gratitude when you're involved, when you have a miscarriage.
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And, of course, the spiraling until we accept responsibility for it, addiction.
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You know, I think the incredible proliferation of pornography among men these days is hugely dependent on the proliferation of abortion that men are involved with.
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And when men start owning up and taking responsibility for the deaths of their own children, we're going to see healing from pornography.
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And, anyway, so it's a very different feeling, the feeling of the miscarriages and the feeling of abortion.
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And then we had two years of absolutely nothing.
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I was doing work for people with disabilities and working in technology for people with disabilities.
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You know, and she would be glad to tell you this, I'm sure.
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So she had a tremendous amount of baggage around Mary.
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But after this mass, she felt this incredible experience of her, like, grabbing Mary by the shoulders and kind of shaking Mary and saying, help me, help me.
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And she didn't know what she was saying help me for.
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And she felt this kind of warmth come over, I believe, and this kind of sense of Mary's presence.
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And then she came to me and she says, I've just, something's happened with me and I don't know what.
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And, you know, we were always very shy about it.
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So the doctor, the OBG, said, well, congratulations, you just won the lottery.
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Because if you line up a thousand women and, you know, you might get one who's going to have their first baby at 48.
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You know, so it was a, for me, it was a bona fide miracle of Our Lady intervening in Kirsten's life.
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And, and, but two days after that, we got a biopsy back and she had breast cancer.
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And you've just been told you won the lottery by the doctor.
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Two days after we get a biopsy back that she has breast cancer.
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Because she'd had a, she'd had a, a lump underneath her, underneath her armpit.
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About a year earlier, we went to the doctor and said, don't worry about it.
00:25:09.980
But just before we left for, for Poland, I said, I think you should go and get that biopsy.
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And that's, the biopsy was just before we went to Poland.
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And I can tell you, having witnessed this up close, that I am married to a saint.
00:25:36.160
That she, she basically said to the doctors, I don't want any chemotherapy.
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And they did have types of chemotherapy where they said, well, there's less intervention.
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It's a lower dose and different things like that.
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But all of the studies that we saw were very short term and they were very mixed results.
00:25:59.980
And so we were not, you know, I was like, Kirsten, this is going to be your, your call.
00:26:05.680
Because there's nothing immoral about taking medical treatment, you know, when you have cancer.
00:26:15.080
So what they did was they took the, the cancer out underneath her, her arm.
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It was the breast, right in this part of her breast.
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And they took it out in this first trimester in the doctor's office because they couldn't get in an operating room quick enough.
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And she did it under local anesthesia, not general anesthesia.
00:26:35.260
So it was a first for the doctor, for the surgeon.
00:26:37.380
And they were really, the surgeon, I have to say, they really played well with us.
00:26:48.960
But they wanted her to take chemo afterwards because they said the treatment wasn't complete.
00:26:53.320
But she didn't want to do any of the drugs or any of the chemo or any of the radiation afterwards
00:26:57.060
because she felt it was going to interfere with the health of the baby.
00:27:04.140
And it was a successful, you know, Odessa was perfectly healthy.
00:27:09.240
You know, and it was funny at the time when we were pregnant with her, the doctors were like,
00:27:13.260
well, you know, you are kind of old and you do have cancer.
00:27:16.720
You might want to do a test to see if there's Down syndrome, you know.
00:27:20.240
And I say, what would you want to do if there was Down syndrome?
00:27:24.480
You know, knowing full well what they were thinking of, right?
00:27:31.340
If I have a disabled baby, it's perfectly fine.
00:27:42.380
And, you know, at five years old, she was reading all the Chronicles of Narnia.
00:27:45.720
And, you know, reading in a grade four level and doing great.
00:27:56.620
And we had six years of complete freedom from the cancer.
00:28:05.860
So we're going to pause for Kirsten to say something.
00:28:09.580
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Oh, yeah, okay, sure, yeah, there's a, we had a real miracle in the second trimester, sure.
00:29:03.660
So in the second trimester, we had another kind of a miracle.
00:29:13.160
When I say we, I mean Kirsten had to have three lymph nodes taken out right underneath her armpit,
00:29:18.640
right at the edge of her breast, because they wanted to see if the cancer was spreading.
00:29:25.560
It's a new kind of technique where they just take a couple of them rather than, you know,
00:29:32.680
But we did the surgery locally again, not under general anesthesia,
00:29:36.120
because she was pregnant in the second trimester with the baby.
00:29:38.640
And it was a critical time with all the features of the baby, you know, growing.
00:29:49.080
I'd put one hand on her breast and one hand on her womb where the baby was.
00:29:55.080
And I would say, Lord Jesus, I just ask that you would let Haman die on his own gallows,
00:30:01.580
like the story of Esther, and let Mordecai be exalted, you know.
00:30:06.260
And I would think of the baby as Mordecai and the cancer as Haman, you know, going after the innocent life, you know.
00:30:15.400
And I was reading the Bible, 360 at that time, you know.
00:30:19.300
And it's an interesting thing to come back to after saying that.
00:30:23.240
So we had, in the second trimester, we, she went in, she had the surgery.
00:30:32.960
You're going to experience, you know, lack of movement.
00:30:38.360
Here's a bunch, you know, if you need morphine, we can get that and all that kind of stuff.
00:30:41.620
And she got home from the surgery of getting these lymph nodes out.
00:30:45.880
And she just saw the picture of Our Lady of Chesterhova, which was where she had the miracle with Odessa, you know, the conception of Odessa.
00:30:54.400
And she said, Mother Mary, if it's okay with you, I'd really like to be free of pain here.
00:31:01.180
You know, I don't really want to have a lot of pain.
00:31:05.120
And she had no pain after four hours, after the first set of, you know, the local anesthes wore off.
00:31:15.080
And then the epidural wore off after about 15 hours.
00:31:25.460
I said, if there's anything, if I've ever seen a miracle, that's a miracle.
00:31:29.380
And I said, I don't think the cancer's going to come back.
00:31:33.600
I don't think we're going to hear anything more from Mr. Cancer, you know.
00:31:37.100
And so as we came up to the birth of the baby, I was reading the Bible.
00:31:47.220
And I'm like, I think I'm actually going to be reading this story of Hayden and Mordecai, you know, around the time.
00:31:58.380
I do one, I do, you know, one chapter a day, you know.
00:32:06.840
And then on the day that our baby Adessa was born, Haman hung in his own gallows.
00:32:20.020
To me, it was just an assurance, you know, of his grace and his love for us.
00:32:26.880
And so, you know, we just thought, okay, so Haman's hung in his own gallows and we're done with Haman, you know.
00:32:37.760
And then we moved out to the Muskokas from Ottawa.
00:32:41.860
And Chris was running 5K in the back and she started to trip.
00:32:47.860
And I thought, oh my goodness, I think maybe there's something going on with the cancer.
00:32:51.460
And after a difficulty with the medical system trying to get a doctor, we couldn't get doctors anywhere, even with these kinds of symptoms and previous history of cancer.
00:32:59.880
I went to a private clinic for an MRI and they said there's no lump, so that's really great.
00:33:09.880
There's no masses, but there's a shadow that we don't understand too much these days because it's early days.
00:33:18.780
And so they recommended us over to a neurologist.
00:33:21.820
And finally, when we got into the system, we were good in terms of getting the care we needed.
00:33:27.640
And Kirsten went to the clinic and, you know, they diagnosed her with ALS.
00:33:38.760
So ALS is otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
00:33:43.420
So the most famous person with Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS, of course, was Stephen Hawking, who was the astrophysicist, who was, you know, radically anti-Christian.
00:33:52.980
And I think about Kirsten as the antithesis of Stephen Hawking, you know.
00:33:57.980
She doesn't, you know, she's not big on all the science stuff, but she, in the spirit, boy, she is a, she's as masterful in the role, in the world of the spirit as Stephen Hawking is
00:34:12.760
And, you know, she would pray three to six hours a day, many days.
00:34:18.220
And she still, now she prays six to eight hours a day.
00:34:29.980
And so in these last two years, she's gotten to the point where she can't move her feet or her legs, her hands, she can't move her hands.
00:34:45.920
So she looks at the keys and the keys will type ahead, will guess what she's trying to say.
00:34:53.120
So it's, you know, I have a background in assistive technology for people with disabilities.
00:34:57.360
It's like, it's like God was like preparing me for this moment.
00:35:01.200
You know, Jesus was like saying, okay, you know, you're going to need everything you've learned, you know.
00:35:12.460
She says the greatest thing about ALS is she can pray all day now and nobody bugs her.
00:35:23.340
And she feels also that the Holy Spirit guides her in prayer.
00:35:26.060
And she has a very particular spirituality, which I feel it's a real privilege to witness because I, you know, I've traveled a lot in evangelical circles and in the Catholic circles.
00:35:37.460
When I was doing music, I was hanging out with a lot of evangelical and evangelical world.
00:35:42.720
And I've never met somebody with a particular spirituality like Kirsten.
00:35:47.540
A lot of times she'll go into prayer and she doesn't know what she's praying for, but she feels like the Holy Spirit is using her to do stuff.
00:35:57.760
It's like it's being, she's being prevented from seeing it, but she knows when she's finished.
00:36:02.520
And she feels extremely anxious if she doesn't finish.
00:36:09.260
And I feel very blessed, you know, to, to witness it.
00:36:13.880
I'm trying to say it the best I can, but it's something like that.
00:36:19.040
And she, you know, and she's been very, very strong in bringing up her daughter.
00:36:26.200
So, you know, we, she gets communion almost every day.
00:36:29.400
Uh, and, uh, you know, I bring it to her and, uh, and, uh, she, uh, and our daughter now is, uh, you know, very active in the church.
00:36:39.420
And, uh, and, uh, you can ask her anything about the Bible and she, you know, she knows all the stories and everything.
00:36:46.340
And this is all a result of Kirsten's, uh, mama bear.
00:36:50.780
You know, she's like, my daughter is not going to be part of this culture.
00:36:53.700
You know, she's going to be part of your culture, Jesus, you know, Jesus culture, the real Jesus culture, right?
00:36:58.720
And, uh, and so she is really, um, like a mama bear around that.
00:37:04.120
So we homeschool her and, uh, and she's doing great.
00:37:07.660
She's, you know, reading level, uh, you know, level of French.
00:37:11.540
Um, she reads like an adult in French and she speaks French fluently.
00:37:18.020
And, uh, and so she's doing great, uh, you know, in all, in all ways, our daughter.
00:37:22.300
And, uh, and so this is where we're facing right now.
00:37:25.960
And Kirsten is, you know, it's a very fast moving, uh, ALS.
00:37:30.400
And, uh, we're, you know, of course, praying for a miracle.
00:37:35.540
We don't know whether the Lord wants her there with him or whether he wants her here with us.
00:37:44.860
And, uh, we're just, you know, praying that the Lord's will be done.
00:37:48.600
But of course we're praying for her to be healed.
00:37:55.640
We just don't know what, what kind of miracle the Lord's going to work this time.
00:38:00.040
You guys send out a newsletter to, to friends, to family.
00:38:04.740
Um, and, uh, on the latest newsletter, uh, Odessa sings a song with you.
00:38:10.380
I heard you brushed off your, your, uh, guitar and, and, uh, started that up again.
00:38:16.800
Yeah, so, you know, when I got married, I, uh, and after I lost my voice, I really didn't see a lot of purpose in me continuing the music that much.
00:38:24.240
And I, you know, I was very active writing pro-life songs.
00:38:26.700
And if anybody wants any of our music, it's pro-lifemusic.com.
00:38:30.640
You know, you can just go to pro-lifemusic.com and you'll see our stuff.
00:38:33.960
Um, but, uh, did that for many years, right up until about 2008.
00:38:39.820
And then, uh, after that, I didn't do hardly any recording at all.
00:38:43.480
I only wrote one song for Father Bob Bedard in 2012.
00:38:47.180
And then I didn't do anything, uh, for the last number, you know, 10 years.
00:38:51.780
And so, uh, and I hadn't recorded for 15 years, but I just figured, I'm going to try this.
00:39:02.960
It was a big pain to get it all up and running again.
00:39:06.780
I'll show it to you a little later, uh, in my room.
00:39:09.200
And I, you know, these two screens and, and, uh, I laid all the tracks down.
00:39:13.660
And, uh, then, uh, Kristen said, I think Odessa should sing this, my daughter.
00:39:19.700
And me being like a perfectionist, I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to, you know, and I said, yeah, let's do it.
00:39:25.620
And so, uh, so, uh, Odessa sang it and I think she did a fantastic job.
00:39:35.880
And, you know, if your readers want to give it a listen, we'd love for you to listen to it.
00:39:39.900
Oh, let's, let's do that now because I think that this is so touching.
00:39:45.720
Uh, in fact, when I heard it, I was like, oh my gosh.
00:39:49.960
Um, I knew I had to come out here, uh, because you need to listen to this.
00:39:55.620
I climb up on a wheelchair, kiss your cheek, and brush your hair.
00:40:06.100
Mommy, it's even hard for you to breathe this air.
00:40:14.040
Mommy, I read you stories of the saints of old, the greatest stories ever told.
00:40:24.520
Mommy, I think you're the greatest saint I know.
00:40:32.040
You're a miracle, you're a miracle, I'm a miracle, I love you with all my heart.
00:41:01.820
You're a jeweled sword in the hand of the Lord.
00:41:08.980
You're grateful for every breath you breathe, to have me sitting on your knee.
00:43:24.220
Um, what is for you, uh, the favorite thing about your mom?
00:43:41.040
And, um, you've got a very happy family, do you?
00:44:07.940
Now, your daddy said that you know lots about the faith.
00:44:19.200
So, if I were to ask you some of the books of the Bible, like, who are the four gospel
00:44:33.040
She can actually give you all the books of the Bible if you...
00:44:39.560
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges.
00:45:02.960
Um, John and Revelation is definitely the last one.
00:45:29.920
I'm going to think of a really, really hard one.
00:45:34.680
Here's one for all of the, um, all of the modern scripture scholars.
00:46:01.100
The people who wrote the, who are named after them.
00:46:16.900
Or at least, so says tradition, but not the scholars.
00:46:33.140
And it's, um, we have, like, this, um, kid's Bible that, um, we actually have a few.
00:46:39.840
And it's like, um, when we finish one, we just go to another one and then we keep doing
00:46:44.980
My dad said it took three years to read the whole one, like, the whole huge one.
00:46:50.980
And, um, if you had a, something to say to kids whose mom or whose dad are sick or maybe
00:47:02.820
passed away already, what would you say to encourage them?
00:47:16.040
Well, just knowing that she'll be healed again.
00:47:31.900
Well, it's where God lives and it's where all the people who love God are when they die.
00:47:46.820
You are a beautiful child and a child who's very, very blessed.
00:47:51.420
And the greatest blessing you can have as a child is holy parents because they give you
00:48:01.660
Thank you so much, Odessa, for speaking with us and for singing for us.
00:48:07.540
So, Kirsten, one of the things that is, uh, I mean, someone in your situation, first of
00:48:23.080
And, uh, I wanted to ask you a kind of a hard question because this is probably the, the
00:48:34.300
They call you the poster child for, you know, um, euthanasia, assisted suicide, dying with
00:48:40.620
dignity or whatever they call it, because you've, you know, you had an incredible life.
00:48:46.400
And as David was saying, you're very active, ran 5k a day, every day.
00:48:50.160
And you've successively lost control over your ability to move at all and then to speak.
00:49:00.380
And now it's affecting your lungs and things like this.
00:49:05.380
Oh, you want to be able to end that suffering before it ends itself.
00:49:14.320
And have you ever had that, encountered that already in your situation that you're in?
00:49:18.980
One of our PSWs recently told me that her end of life views have definitely changed since
00:49:36.820
Unfortunately, I wasn't near my computer to ask for clarification and she hasn't been
00:49:46.180
So you think that perhaps she is moved in her, in the, in the direction of life?
00:50:17.680
Because, you know, these are, it's a difficult situation and no one says that it's not.
00:50:28.300
It comes from knowing the Lord and that I can completely trust him.
00:50:34.920
It may be difficult for people to understand, but I feel joy most days.
00:50:42.900
It comes from knowing the Lord and that I can completely trust him.
00:51:02.260
Is there, is there anything else that you'd most like to say that I could ask?
00:51:06.520
However, of course, I have difficult days, mostly from the emotional pain of being unable to
00:51:23.420
I'm very thankful for living in an age with technology and being able to communicate.
00:51:27.960
And that, my friend, is the story of the McDonald family.
00:51:35.260
I had a last question for you, David, before we sign off.
00:51:39.240
A lot of people, given your whole trajectory, which is just, it's an unbelievable story,
00:51:46.920
but a lot of people would be like, you've suffered like Job in many ways.
00:51:53.820
Because I know you suffer sort of through your wife, because of your wife, with your wife.
00:52:06.500
You don't, like, blame him or, what, just tell us in your own words, what is your reaction?
00:52:16.620
Because you've gone through, this is a life of suffering in many ways.
00:52:27.980
I've always found that whenever I try to avoid suffering, it usually gets worse.
00:52:32.800
So facing it head on and just surrendering it to the Lord, just saying,
00:52:40.860
There's many days when it's very, very, very difficult and it's a suffering.
00:52:44.300
But I'm not mad at him at all, because I just know that he has such a great plan for all of us.
00:52:50.160
And I look back on my life and I see all the miracles that I just know he has a good plan for us.
00:52:57.580
And I don't know what his, you know, his ways are not my ways, right?
00:53:03.840
Um, you know, I have to dig deeper and I have to say that, you know, when, um, when I, I, when I got in a career of, of, uh, disability and working in that, I became quite successful at it.
00:53:17.220
And, you know, I started to enjoy being the guy in the room who people wanted their, his opinion, you know, and, and I could get a certain amount of pride from it.
00:53:25.860
And this situation, having had to stop work and to take care of my wife and to like really break down and to, to really start to look at what's really important, even in our walk with Jesus, you know, the material world is very dangerous world.
00:53:41.900
It's like, it's like Frodo carrying the ring to have any affluence or any success at all in this world.
00:53:47.640
And so the Lord is in this situation really reminding me that, no, I have to be dependent on him and the people who I respect the most, I have a whole wall of saints over there.
00:53:58.060
They were all really poor and they were all, they all really suffered a lot.
00:54:02.380
And so, so if I can just follow them and, and rather than rebelling against God and being angry at God, saying, God, I love you so much.
00:54:11.540
Teach me the lesson you want me to learn in this suffering.
00:54:17.160
Then I do way, way better than if I start getting resentful and all that stuff.
00:54:22.240
And so I'm very, very grateful to the Lord and we, we, we thank him, you know, we praise him in this storm.
00:54:31.060
You know, being here with the McDonald's, it's, it's quite something.
00:54:37.820
I mean, Kirsten, for all of you not hearing much of her, speaks very loudly.
00:54:46.960
I can hear her very loudly because she speaks love and it's a love first for Christ and then for her family.
00:54:56.800
And I'm just so privileged to bring you this story, people I'm so proud to call my friends.
00:55:07.960
And I want to ask you to, we've, we've put up a life funder for them.
00:55:12.840
Um, if you feel called to support this family, they'd be grateful and, uh, I'd be very, very grateful.
00:55:27.760
And Jess, you want to say goodbye to everybody?
00:55:33.660
From the home of the McDonald family, which have been so generous in sharing with us their life, their inspiring, love-filled life.
00:55:57.660
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00:56:03.680
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