Sault Ste. Marie - With Dan and Laura

It’s past 1am and I have a pretty long 8hr drive a head of me tomorrow but this is all too fresh on my heart to not write right now…

I got to Sault Ste. Marie at around 5pm tonight and went straight to Dan and Laura’s church. Dan was my intern at Summit (my first year of college) and then we worked together all summer doing a skills and leadership training program with teens. We were pretty good friends for that year but in the past 5 years have totally drifted apart. He heard I was driving through and invited me to come stay with them in ‘the Soo’. They have a really cute 7 month old boy named Jaxon and Dan is the youth pastor at Bethany Baptist Church.

So we had a fun night hanging with the kids and I spoke a little on prayer. When we got home they showed me the scrap book that Laura made of their daughter, Mya, who only survived 30hrs. Wow… I had no idea they went through this and totally didn’t expect to break out in water works tonight… I truly couldn’t even fathom as I looked at the pictures of this beautiful 8lb5oz girl who looked completely healthy. Then I saw the little white casket at her funeral………… They did a beautiful job of capturing the 30hrs of her life through photo’s and writing but I couldn’t help to think, WHY GOD, WHYYY???? It’s one of those things that I guess will only be understood in heaven.

The faith that Laura and Dan have is incredible… like way beyond my understanding. At the funeral they sang the song “Blessed be your name” as a reminder that God gives and takes away (even first born babies… ouch) and they have totally given God the glory for giving them the strength to get through the past couple years… and I’m sure they know God far more deeply because of all this….

So I’m just sitting here, at almost 1:30am feeling sad and pondering faith and the weird and unfathomable ways that God works even through the most difficult of times...