Saturday night Chris received an email that would change me for the ensuing days. For simplicity and out of respect, and simply to avoid dealing with the details of the email, I will only say that a coworker of Chris’s sent a mass email to his company asking for prayers for his cousin’s daughter who had just been through a horrific event and was in the hospital fighting for her life. When Chris showed me the email, I was seconds from getting off the couch and heading to bed. But when I heard what this family was going through as I was about to go get in my comfortable bed, I just couldn’t. Some how, some way, I was going to get enough prayer so that this little girl could live, so that the parents of this precious child would be able to feel their daughter’s smiling cheeks pressed against their own faces. I wanted them to be able to see their baby’s bright smile, hear her sweet voice and smell her soft hair. The reason I wanted these things so badly was because I have a child who is very close in age to this little girl and I don’t know what I would do if I had to give those things up. I just don’t know if I could. And here were these parents, stuck in the middle of a nightmare. But the nightmare wasn’t over. The child was still alive, on life support. The next morning the doctors were going to perform one more deciding test. The results of this test would conclude once and for all if there was any activity left in her brain. To me, that meant hope!
I sent an email to my church asking for prayers. I posted a facebook post asking for prayers. I got down on my knees and cried and I told God that He was going to give this baby a full recovery. I knew He had heard me and that He was going to do it. At church Sunday morning I went to the alter and cried and prayed for her and for her family. I prayed for her to not know what had happened to her. I prayed for her parents to have the strength to deal with it without tearing at their clothes in anguish. I prayed again to God to heal her completely. It’s selfish to want her to stay here with her family if she can’t really live.
A few hours after church I found out that the test didn’t work. This sweet, precious baby can’t be in the world anymore. She was declared legally dead early that afternoon. However, the family chose to keep her body alive long enough to find recipients for their daughter to donate her organs to. Her life was taken and she continued to give life to others. Tonight I watched on Facebook as they said goodbye to their baby. I watched the mother lay in bed with her daughter and touch her sweet face. I watch her standing over her with a wet face, not wanting to look away, only wanting to prolong that moment of togetherness. I’m so heartbroken for her. I couldn’t do it.
Maybe I’m not mature enough in my faith but I don’t understand prayer right now. I feel like our prayers had no power. I know that there were armies of prayer warriors going strong for this child. I know that I commanded God to save her. Didn’t Jesus tell us that if we have even the tiniest bit of faith, we can command mountains to jump in the the rivers? Why was my faith not strong enough to help her when I thought it was? I’m beside myself with grief for a child that I never met. Her name is Grace and I’m so sorry for my lack of faith.
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