prayers for a friend

Today is a sad day for a few of my friends.  Please take a moment and say a prayer of strength and peace over them.


When I first started to go to our church, Rochester First Assembly, I was invited to go to an infertility group that was meeting there.  I decided to go and check it out.  We met at a girls house and her name was Amanda Jones.  There were several girls at this meeting and we all shared our stories and encouraged each other in our journey towards family and motherhood.  Several months after that meeting Amanda got pregnant.  It was a miracle.  The dr.'s had told her she would never have kids and they were getting ready to do foster care in hopes to adopt one day.  After having a beautiful boy she surprisingly got pregnant again!  And then after her 2nd child was born again she found herself with child!  This time it was a girl.  This past week she gave birth to that little girl, 7 weeks early.  She wasn't breathing well and the dr's discovered that little baby Hannah was born with a very rare disease where she had too much calcium in her arteries and in a matter of days it would destroy her.  Our whole church and many others prayed for baby Hannah, but she went back to God to be with Him today.  Miracle turned to tragedy.  My heart breaks.

I can't imagine her pain.

I can't imagine her confusion.

I just can't imagine.

In times like these where my heart breaks for a friend, I wonder what's going on in this world.  Why do we live in a place where bad things happen even to good people.  Why did God not answer our prayers? The prayers of hundreds!  Could we have changed His mind? Did He have control over this? I used to ask these same questions of my own personal tragedies.  Wondering why God didn't step in and stop the circumstances that killed my parents.  I felt like God could do anything, so why did He choose to be silent that day?  Why did He choose to be silent today?  These questions are hard and linger for so long with no answers.

I've heard too many of these stories like Amanda's of children leaving us way to soon.  I wonder how it all works.  I look for a pattern to make sure I or any of my family and friends do not fall into any bad tragedies.  But there is no pattern.  There is no calculation that would allow us to have a perfect life.   We will have pain.  We will suffer. We DO have hope.  We DO have redemption from God in our situations.  But that doesn't always answer the WHY's that we scream in the middle of the night.  I've screamed that "why me?".  I never really got an answer, but I'm beginning to believe rain falls on the just and the unjust.  Tragedy will strike us at some point.  Maybe not like Amanda's story as I know her story is not my story.  And my story is not her story.  We each walk this road to motherhood but they are different to us all.  We both encounter tragedy and sadly this will not be the last sad night we ever live.  But God is here.

God is in the hospital with them right now.  God is with them when they go home to hug their 2 little boys. God is with the woman filled with disease who dies too young and leaves young children to be raised by a single father.  God is with the neighbor whose husband commits suicide.  God is with the homeless man who for 10 years drinks his morning McDonalds coffee on the side of a hill as he asks for cigarettes from strangers. God is with cousins who struggle to live a normal life and end up in car wrecks and find themselves in surgery.  God is with us.  He is near.  He is ready to take this broken world and redeem it.  One day He will come and restore all things.  But until then, he holds us close and redeems one tragedy at a time. And for that I am thankful. For His arms are the best arms to fall into.


...weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. ~Romans 15:13