Healing

First of all, what is it about throwing all your emotions and thoughts, good or bad, out there in words on the Internet, that people find appealing? It always seems so strange to me and yet, I’m here before you doing the same. My sister-in-law Kim recently sent me a blog of a women named Boothe Farley that recently lost her 8-day-old daughter, Copeland, to a disease called Trisomy-18. The family found out Copeland had the disease during the pregnancy and were told that she would not live long after birth. Boothe’s blog is a document of how the family dealt with the tragic news from the point when they found out to current time. I started reading the blog one night and just read a few posts because it was just so heartbreaking and now as a mother myself, I could not fight the flood of tears. I went to bed, only to find myself with a sleepless night, so of course I got up and read Boothe’s entire blog from start to finish, finally heading to bed around 3:30am. It was amazing how God was using this family and the words He has given Boothe and her husband Conor to place on their blog. The comments alone were unreal, one post having 650 comments alone. It was great to read Boothe’s words and her raw honesty about loosing her daughter and her feelings towards God. On her most recent post Boothe wrote this,

“So am I mad? Sometimes. If God didn’t ordain Copeland’s sickness, if it wasn’t His design, why in the world did she have it? Because I live here. It’s like asking why I have a Southern accent. It comes free, courtesy of my locale. She wasn’t sick because I needed to learn a lesson. She wasn’t sick because I didn’t do enough things right – or too many things wrong. She was sick because we live in a broken, fallen world and until Jesus comes back, things are just going to keep going wrong. Not all the time – that’s when the glimpses of Heaven come in.”

I found these words so perfect. Recently my heart has been very heavy due to many things, like Copeland’s story for one and we recently found out that a good friend of our family, Kevin Hamilton, who also delivered Harper, has cancer. He is just such a wonderful, godly man who God has used for so much good. We are praying healing and favor for Kevin, his wife Christy and their two children, Hunter and Lady. God has also placed a dear friend of mine, Ashley Frost, on my heart. She lost her boyfriend, Frank Shaffer, not long ago to a cancer called sarcoma. Frank was only 26. I know she is still healing and I think and pray for her often. I just can’t imagine, how these people feel and I won’t insult them by even trying. All I know is that we do live in such a temporary place, and though it’s easy to forget this is not our “home” its so hard to deal with what life throws us due to relationships we so naturally form, long for and need. Recently I read this scripture, “…for I am the Lord who heals you.” Exodus 15:26. I love this verse, so simple and so true. Not only can He heal diseases and hearts burdened by heavy grief, but everyday bumps and bruises life hands us.

I painted this after reading the verse the other day. It was a gift for Ashley.