The last few days have been tough.
I’ve wept alongside stories of loss, mothers whose wombs and arms are left empty. Friends who have miscarried. Strangers who have experienced tragedy.
October 15th is a day of remembrance for so many beautiful, strong, and courageous women. As I read story after story I was reminded of how incredibly graceful, peace filling, and perfect our heavenly Father is and how real, painful, and heart wrenching grief can be.
“For God is not a God of Confusion, but of Peace” ——-1 Corinthians 14:33
I cannot even begin to imagine the pain a mother feels upon losing their child but as I wept I was reminded of Baby Clare, the precious and beautiful little girl I held in Kenya who forever changed my life in her final breath. Her story is really His story, one that tells of his faithfulness and sovereignty.
May it remind us of how undoubtedly present He always is.
Here’s her story:
This is not actually Clare, this is a little girl in Burkina named Fadi who is currently suffering from malnutrition.
I noticed her the second we walked in, wadded up in an African fabric, eyes hardly open, she sat lay helpless in her mothers arms waiting…
The hour we spent going bed to bed I couldn’t take my eyes off of her I found myself constantly checking to see if the doctor had come to see her, he hadn’t…
We made our way to the table on which she lay and I held her in my hands…her tiny frail body, I watched as her tiny lungs rose up and down…her face not fully formed, her cleft lip cutting into her almost non-existent nose…She was beautiful to me
Clare…a 3 month old precious girl who was set to have cleft pallet surgery shortly, was in the hospital today because she had been completely unable to eat for over a month…(we’ve all seen malnourished children on tv but they held no comparison to sweet Clare) I could feel her brain in her head, see every rib in her chest…
I put her tiny hand around my finger and held her close, she grasped on and held as tight as she could…
“you’re beautiful baby Clare, I want you to know that you are so loved” ( from the second I looked into her hardly opened eyes I felt compelled to speak love over her)
I didn’t realize she was clinging onto life
As I held her I prayed, “Clare is in your hands Jesus, let her feel your warm, loving hands hold her tight…”
She took her last breath in mine…
From my hands to His…
In that moment I realized I was the only one who noticed…how do you tell a baby’s mother that her child has stopped breathing?
Anger rushed through me, how could no one notice, how could no one care enough to try to save her life, how is this fair?
Tears poured out of my eyes as I turned to Clare’s grand-mother…her face went white and she just sat there
Our translator went over to the nurses, they took her temperature, it was 34 degrees Celsius, she was gone…
The nurses walked away, never officially announcing that sweet baby Clare had passed, they simply walked away and sat down
I was furious and heart broken
Why did this little girl die in my hands, why was I the last one holding her, why did nobody take a second glance at her…how is this fair?
Clare’s grandmother held back tears, I put my arm around her,she couldn’t hold them in anymore, they came streaming down
there are no words for a moment like this…
I looked around and realized Clare’s mother wasn’t even there
10 minutes after she took her last breath, after her hand lost grip on my finger, after her eyes closed… Her mom walked in, completely unaware that her precious daughter was no longer alive…her face fell
those last moments, standing outside the ward listening to a mothers horrifying shrieks, heart wrenched sobs, and unrestrained tears…how do you erase that? How do you forget that?
I was sick to my stomach…
“I didn’t sign up for this” were my first words to Mike… “I signed up to hold laughing, crying, pooping, drooling babies…I didn’t sign up to hold a baby as she dies…” “is it ever what we expect, ever what we sign up for? Doesn’t God always give us far more than we could expect or imagine? Don’t you realize God only gives us what he knows He can trust us with? He trusted you to usher that baby into His presence and you did…”
I’m not sure where to go from here, I’m not sure what to think, I’m not even sure how to mourn…I walked the half an hour home feeling completely empty and helpless, angry and thankful, blessed and uncertain…
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
I don’t know why I had the honor, and it was the highest honor, of holding beautiful Clare in my hands in her last moments but I do know she went straight from my hands to HIS
Clare has forever changed me and I know that right now she is resting in the arms of our Father in heaven, he’s looking down at her perfectly formed face and smiling, her eyes are open and all she can see is HIS glorious face…she’s held in his warm and loving hands….
