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So when we first got to Kenya and were staying in Nairobi my Mom filled me in on a situation with some friends of ours back home.  Cole Nickel is the youth pastor at my church in Aiken, New Covenant Presbyterian Church.  His wife Julia was expecting a baby and they had been told that there were some serious health issues.

She told me that there wasn’t a high percentage that he would survive the c-section, and that if he did it would only be for a few hours.  My Mom was letting me know so our team could pray about the c-section which was to take place the next day and for their family whatever the outcome may be.
So I filled in the team as well as some others and we prayed for strength for their family.  Little Matthew survived and he even lasted more than the few hours that they had foretold.  In fact he made it for over seven weeks.  Surviving a very difficult surgery and surpassing many odds.  During the whole process when I could find internet I was keeping up with the blog Julia was posting.  Reading what she wrote brought me so much encouragement through her faith and her strength.  And really just the way she completely relied on the Lord through it all.  What a testimony it was for me to read.  
Today when I made it to the internet the first thing that I did was pull up her blog.  I’m sitting in the middle of a cafe and it was hard for me to keep the tears from streaming down my face as I read the words she had written.  So I wanted to share her words with all of you that read my posts.  Some of you know Julia, and are much more in the know than I am on the situation.  Some of you don’t.  Whatever it may be though I hope these words bless you the way they blessed me.  As heartbreaking as the situation may be.

Grieving with Hope

Years ago, when I lost three of my best friends within one year, I remember playing Steven Curtis Chapman’s song “With Hope” over and over again as I cried. The first verse and chorus go like this:

This is not at all how
We thought it was supposed to be
We had so many plans for you
We had so many dreams
And now you’ve gone away
And left us with the memories of your smile
And nothing we can say
And nothing we can do
Can take away the pain
The pain of losing you, but …

We can cry with hope
We can say goodbye with hope
‘Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no
And we can grieve with hope
‘Cause we believe with hope
There’s a place where we’ll see your face again

This is kind of how I feel now. I’ve never known pain as deep as this and at times I think my heart might explode with the hurt. As I drove home from Charleston yesterday, I found myself almost furious with grief. I do trust that God works all things for good, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not struggling. There are so many things that I had hoped for that will never be. I will never get to bring him home, never get to watch him play with Claire, never give him a bath, never hold him without having all those monitors and IV’s in him, never hear him laugh, never really get to be his mother. I feel so cheated. We’d always known he could die, but we had so much hope after he made it through surgery and we actually thought he would come home. This past week I had started to feel confident that he actually had a chance. And then everything came tumbling down. In just 8 hours I went from laughing and being carefree to holding my dead little boy in my arms. Even now I feel like I’m in someone else’s life and I’m just waiting to get snap out of it. But this is my life. The worsthas happened. And I’m wondering if the pain will ever go away.

But then God gives me moments of peace and I’m able to breathe again. I’m able to be thankful for the 7 weeks and 2 days that Matthew was alive and so very grateful that I got to be there for every single day. Mostly, I’m thankful that God answered my second prayer. You see, whenever I prayed, my first request was that God would heal Matthew and let him live to be a strong and healthy boy and man. This was what I wanted most. But my second prayer was that if Matthew’s life was going to be filled with lots of surgeries and if he was going to go through all the pain that came with them and still die at a young age, then I asked God to spare him and take him to heaven. I had heard so many stories of babies like him who went through multiple surgeries only to die while still toddlers and I didn’t want Matthew to have to go through all that pain.

Our sweet little guy was born with so much wrong with him and I am thankful that he is now enjoying peace with God. I miss him so terribly and when I think of never seeing his cute little face again in this life, I almost go crazy with grief, but God is giving me moments of joy amid my tears. It would be a lie to say that I understand why this happened, but I’m trusting that God will reveal it to me in time. I think that hardest part about having a young child die is the wondering why. So yes, I am wondering why this happened to us. I am wondering why God would create a baby with so much wrong with him. I am wondering why God would give me so much love for a baby I only got to enjoy for 7 weeks and 2 days. But I’m trusting that this is not the end. We are grieving with hope because we believe that one day we will see his cute little face again.