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| Little Girl in a Blue Armchair by Mary Cassatt, 1878 |
Though this isn’t exactly the insightful post I’d hoped to start the new year with, it’s a necessary one.
Yesterday I got a call from one of the ladies in my Bible study group. We have a couples group that meets every Friday–the adults do the study, and our kids play upstairs. For the eight adults, there are approximately, oh, a gazillion kids. 😉 Okay, so 11. Lots of enthusiasm there, and we’re all so glad to be building relationships for and with our precious little ones.
One of the kids from this group is 8-year-old Hailey. At our last study before Christmas break, her mom mentioned how Hailey’s balance had seemed off, though she’d been trying to hide it. Walking very slowly, and indulging in wobbles and railing-gripping only when she thought no one was looking. Then at our Christmas party, Mom mentioned how her pupils didn’t seem to be dilating correctly. No one else noticed this when she called Hailey over and kind of laughed it off.
Apparently Hailey has gone to the doctor a couple times since–the family was expecting this to be some kind of ear infection, to be causing balance issues. But yesterday a scan showed a growth at the base of her brain stem. A growth “four pencil-erasers high.” They’re not sure yet whether it’s a cyst or a tumor, benign or malignant. She goes in today for an MRI and tomorrow will travel to the Baltimore area to see a specialist at Johns Hopkins.
Please join me in praying for Hailey and her family. Her mom was, needless to say, panicked and terrified and far more than just “upset.” And as someone who has gotten to know this little girl a bit this fall, I just ache for them. Hailey is a girl with a big, golden heart, one who loves quickly and without restraint.
Father God, we beseech you now for Hailey and her family. Though we can’t always understand Your ways, we know they’re there. Though we are baffled and shaken when such illness strikes our little ones, we know that You love them more than we ever could. Father, our healer and provider, please touch Hailey. Strengthen her for the scans and appointments, breathe Your peace into her, and touch Your finger to this growth. Make it shrink, vanish, change in whatever way it must to be nothing. Heal her, Lord our God.
And wrap Your arms around her family, please. I know this is a family that loves You so much, and I know right now they’re crying out to You in agony. Soothe them. Embrace them. Help them to feel You in every scary moment throughout this ordeal. Hold them so close that they can’t for a moment forget Who is in control.
In the name of Your precious Son we pray. Amen.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.
Praying. Ephesians 3:20 came to mind reading this.
Absolutely praying for Hailey, her family, and everyone who God wants to come alongside them during this time. Scary, but so comforting to know He is in control – and has been preparing them, and others, for this trial.