Today my heart is heavy. A precious little girl went home to be with Jesus yesterday. My heart aches for the family. I can't imagine the loss of a child. Sweet Annabelle Butcher was not even two months old. A CHD (congenital heart defect) baby born with HLHS (Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome). She had been home just a few weeks when our Father called her back into His arms. I can't begin to understand why God would take a child, but it's not for me to understand. Only for me to pray about and to pray for the family. I keep coming back to a Casting Crowns song "Praise You in the Storm." It's a song that helped verbalize the feelings I had when Kaden was going through his surgery and hospital stay. Such a dark time in my life. But out of that darkness came a light. A blaring, blinding light, guiding me to fulfill a calling. God called me to start Saving Little Hearts of SC and help families like Annabelle's. I prayed for my emotions to be kept real and alive in me so that I would remember the pain. That I would never hear a child's story and not be touched to the core of my being. The tears I've shed for Annabelle are pain filled. I hurt so deeply for her precious mother Rebecca and her father Scott, and for her big brother Wyatt. Still a baby himself at 3. I pray that God comforts them and holds them so close they can feel His breath when He speaks. I know that out of this darkness in their life, they will find the lighted path He has laid for them and He has told me He will raise in them a new song to sing. "You are who you are no matter where I am....."
I encourage everyone to hold their children just a moment longer today and remember a precious family in your prayers.
My life as a wife and mother
