| As some of you may not know Chris and Jessica lost their precious baby boy yesterday. Please see the letter from them below.....
My dear, sweet family & friends ~
Yesterday, April 29, 2006, Caleb Christopher Stricklen passed from my womb, to our hands, and to our Lord at approximately 2:38 p.m. (he was 11 in. & 15 oz.) He was absolutely beautifully & wonderfully knitted & formed by our Father! I mean, he was PERFECT! - down to his tiny fingernails, toes, forming eyebrows & eyelashes, and light brown hair! It was the most precious moment of my life apart from my new life in Christ & then my covenant with my sweet husband.
Saturday morning God allowed my body to go into active labor and the doctors explained to us that they would not be able to delay labor or to save Caleb because he was so young. Immediately following delivery we were able to hold Caleb. We spent hours with him and it went by like minutes! We felt his little heart
beat and loved on him long after he had gone on to be with Jesus. It was so good for us, our parents, and my sweet sister, Gabby to have that time with him to say goodbye, for now.
The Lord gave us 5 1/2 months with Caleb and for that we are forever thankful. We don't understand WHY but we know WHO. We know our Father's character to bekind, loving, gracious, merciful, and most of all He acts in our best interest,so we NEVER have to wonder if He knew this was coming or if this went through
His sovereign filter first. We trust His plan in ALL of this and if it was just to bring us closer to Him that would be enough. He gave us the grace for yesterday and He will give us the grace for today and tomorrow and the next day and the years to come. But, He only promises to give us our grace portion for that day and so we continue to trust Him and depend on Him on a daily, moment by moment basis.
As we close this chapter we will be "retreating" to a place just to heal a little while, so please wait to call until next week. If the Lord puts it on your heart to call our cell phones this week to leave an encouraging message,please feel free, just know that we probably won't answer it but we will check the message at a later time & allow it to minister to us. Please feel free to e-mail as well (but not to the jstricklen@mnsmail.com address, just my regular jessicastricklen@hotmail.com ) as I will check that sometime next week.
Thank you all so much for your constant prayers for us & Caleb. Know that we do not consider them to have been unanswered b/c we believe that a miracle did n fact occur - not the way that any of us would have chosen necessarily but in God's perfect way. I think I said this before but Caleb Christopher means
"bold Christ-bearer" & as this was all happening I was thinking, "Lord, how is he going to be bold for You if he doesn't make it?" God answered me this morning in my time with Him - He told me that through this situation Caleb has made a bold statement for Christ to many through his short life. He is a testament to God's strength in us, His perfect peace, and His graciousness in the difficulties of life. This is how Chris & I & our families get to experience the cross in a very real way and are thus getting to share in the sufferings of our Lord which serves to make us more like Christ. Wow! And that,my dear, sweet family & friends, is the whole purpose in our trials of life(the big & the small). For all of us, in Christ, should be expectantly awaiting
2 Cor. 3:18 - to be transformed into His likeness more & more every passing moment.
On top of this blessing, He will allow us to be able to comfort others with the comfort we have received, & will continually receive, b/c of this amazing experience (2 Cor. 1:3-7). As you can tell, the Lord led me to 2 Cor. early this morning as I was struggling to sleep - He's so faithful!
O.K., this is way too long & I'm not trying to "preach" but typing all this up is incredibly healing in itself, so thank you for reading and receiving this.
We love you guy's & will look forward to talking to you soon! |
