Held

A little over a month ago tragedy hit my office at work. One of my coworkers and his wife lost their baby days before she was expected to deliver him. I remember when I found out, it was right as I was getting ready to go home. I got home and balled my eyes out as I told Derek what had happened. They were so excited. They had been trying for several years to have children and this was to be their first. It didn't seem fair that this was happening to them. He was literally dancing around the office earlier that day, so excited for the arrival of his baby boy. There aren't words to describe this sort of devastation.

One of the most frustrating things for me was not knowing what to do. As an office we bought them gift cards, sent flowers and wrote notes of encouragement in a book of prayers for them, but I wanted to be able to do something to really show them how much God loves them, and was frustrated because I didn't know how to do that. I am the girl whose most significant loss involves my cat Sam running away while my family was on vacation when I was little. I'm being serious. I have grieved with many friends who have lost loved ones, but I myself have never experienced that loss personally. I don't know how you approach someone who has just lost a baby and tell them that there is a God who loves them more than anything and will be with them and hold them through this horrendous time, even though that same God has the power that could have prevented it from happening in the first place. If someone who had never truly experienced loss came up and said that to me I would probably want to punch them in the face.

So I prayed for them, because I didn't know what else to do. And then the other day I stumbled across this: www.audreycaroline.blogspot.com. The blog of a mother who lost a baby girl 2 hours after she was born. And she loves Jesus. The blog begins soon after they found out about midway through the pregnancy that their baby wasn't going to survive. This blog chronicles how they deal with that and their faith in the Lord through it all. How they know that the Lord is good and has the power to prevent these kinds of things from happening, and how they choose to continue to love Him and allow Him to heal them when he allows it to happen. It's incredibly sad but incredibly encouraging at the same time. I urge you all to go there and read from the beginning.

So this is how God answered my prayers. He gave me this blog to share with my coworker and his wife. He showed me someone who could express everything to them that I wanted to, but it's someone who actually knows exactly how they feel and is able to beautifully put into words what I would stumble over. I pray that they would know how much God loves them and how much he longs for them to take their sorrow and brokeness to Him and let Him carry it for them and just hold them. If you want you can say a prayer for them too. And one more thing to leave you with is this song by Natalie Grant, Held. It's one of my favorites and I think its appropriate.