My quiet times have been rocky since the beginning of summer when my schedule got all wonky because of work schedules and vacation. I'm determined to make being in the Bible my morning priority and to get it back into the morning routine before I do anything else. This is a post about what Jesus has been doing with my life since Sunday, August 25th.
Before I say anything else I need to recap something else. 3 weeks ago Kaden Isaiah Stone was born to Diana of Hormonal Imbalances blog and her husband, Sam. For an in depth look at who she is and her life you can read this but I'm going to recap her life in a couple sentences here. She was married young to a marine who was deployed for a crazy amount of time twice and who later struggled with PTSD and an alcohol addiction. They had a daughter, Bella, and then they got pregnant with identical twin boys who they lost at 20 weeks. They pursued adoption but it failed on them at the last minute so when she got pregnant and was due in August it was exactly what they needed to soothe them from their losses in the past 10 years. Kaden was born on August 5th and was put in the NICU for some really minor complications. The day before they were to leave the doctors found out that a virus which would normally cause us to get sick for a couple of days had attacked his heart causing his capillaries to fail completely, he couldn't pump any blood without a machine.
And this is where this week starts. On Sunday Diana was with Kaden and Sam was with Bella in El Paso when they were told that Kaden would die in the next day or so. I can't even compute the emotions they would feel because I can't handle my own, and I don't even know them. Hit with this they rallied themselves and others to pray to the Lord for a miracle. Diana writes for She Reads Truth and is a part of The Influence Network so a group of bloggers began spreading the word through instagram and facebook. And this brings it to Sunday.
Sunday Melody from Dance Parties in the Rain created a Google doc to organize a 24 hour prayer vigil for them, you can see it here. I signed up when it had been posted for about an hour and was still pretty empty. I checked it right before I went to bed and it was so full, every 10 minutes for nearly 30 hours. When I woke up I checked it again and was blown away by the sheer amount of names written down to pray for almost 2 days every 10 minutes. I spent time searching God's word for verses of God's power and his comfort and prayed for little Kaden for 20 minutes at a time in the morning I would normally be very, very asleep.
For me prayer has always been a rather formal affair following the ACTS concept I learned in 5th grade. Only in the last month or two had I really started branching out and pleading to God with what my heart was telling me to say rather than following a rigid plan. Monday morning I was crying out to God to save that little boy, the little boy who hadn't had the chance to truly live, the little boy who was a gift to his parents when they needed him most. Throughout the rest of the day I prayed and thought of that family awaiting God's plan in a NICU room in Dallas.
When I got home in the evening and checked instagram I found that God had called little Kaden home to Himself. I don't even know how to express the feelings of grief I felt and that I'm still feeling now, carefully masked so no one notices. This morning I didn't even know what to do except read my Bible and hope for comfort from it. I found Psalm 119:50 which says "This is my comfort in my affliction, That Your word has revived me." The perfect verse to cause me to stop and think of God's goodness and power and to see that God has a plan in this. God is completely sovereign nothing happens that He isn't in control of, even the unthinkable death of Kaden. This morning's devotion from She Reads Truth further preached God's sovereignty in a moment that I desperately needed it.
All of this brought back to mind my own brother's death and the grief I still bear from that and sometimes give in to. I remember my dad saying to me a year after or so that "Andrew was blessed because he got to know God and experience life. I feel worse for those babies that pass away before they can know life." While I consider that to be true there is also a great mercy in being taken away from this earth. She Reads Truth had a great post about how death only causes believers to be weaned of the world and eagerly look forward to the day when death is gone and God reigns over the earth.
This post ended up way more rambly than I was planning but I needed to get this out of my system, to publicly grieve for this family and to rest in God's promises of comfort and hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment