An Unexpected Journey

My heart is hurting for a family I know who just said goodbye to their baby.   He was in his twenties and a daddy himself when he lost his long fight with illness.   I have prayed for another family this week whose baby teeters precariously between life and death because of a tragic accident.   He is four months old.    Today my husband and I have cried for a man our age whose wife and two daughters went to heaven after a car wreck yesterday.   He is alone.   I have stared into the faces of the beautiful children at Sandy Hook and let the tears flow for those parents who still have unwrapped Christmas presents in their closets even though it is January.   No little fingers are coming to open them. Yesterday I couldn’t erase it from my mind.   Her squirmy little body twisting under the covers in her tiny princess bed.   Soft blonde curls spread across the pink satin pillow that pressed its coolness against her warm cheek.   H...

I have really grappled with this since Makiah's death.  And I don't have it figured out.  Probably never will.  How to pray??? "I have a bad feeling," he says.  The last time he said that on a trip we came home without our daughter.  Oh, we prayed psalm 91 for protection.  I thought those sort of scriptures were promises back then.  Sort of an unspoken contract that praying the right scripture ensured God's protection.   Her death has left me floundering. So today on the drive home when he says "I have a bad feeling," a knot forms in the pit of my stomach.  My mind is scrambling for the way to pray.  Claim protection?  Ask for angels to gaurd us?  I fumble for the words as a few muddled scriptures come to mind.  Then I land on it. The prayer of Jabez.  Cameron preached on this recently.  Jabez was a man in the bible whose name means " pain."  His mother literally named him pain!  It says he...