Posted on 06/10/2002 10:50:40 AM PDT by Redcloak
Keep Redcloak focused on Your Holy scripture and based in Your Wisdom Lord. Remove the anxiety from their hearts and replace it with growing love, faith and understanding of and for You. Pour out Your heavenly Grace on this family Lord, and keep Forrest in Your loving arms until he can be reunited with his fellow saints in Christ- the family he would have been blessed to be a part of here on earth.
Thank You for hearing my humble prayer Lord. In Chrsit's name I pray. Amen.
May the Lord send you some folks all the days of your life to remember all your children and the place they each have in your heart.
Abundant blessings in Christ
What to say when one loses a child? I have no answers...all I can tell you is this...
I lost my 15yr old son to a very horrible form of leukemia, many years ago...His dianosis, his prognosis, his treatment and his death were horrors, that I never thought, I as a parent would ever have to go through...we always think that it is the other guy, who will have to go through things like this...
And like you, I never envisioned myself place in the situation, where one of my children would die before I did...
We also had another child, our younger son, who was 11ys old at the time of his brothers death...I think that children, at different ages, respond differently to death of a loved one...so I dont know what to say about your other child and how you need to deal with them in this time of grief...all I can say is, love them, comfort them, explain to them when they have questions..This will seen so difficult, because you are in such grief yourself, but the remaining children still need to know how much they matter to you, and how badly they themselves are also hurting...
The death of my son, was the worst thing I ever endured...and I am sure that you feel that exact same way now...But I had a wondeful husband, and another son, and a whole support system of friends and family....Please use those who present themselves to you, for support, and allow yourself to grieve...
God has gathered many children home to Him, and we do not know why, except that we know God has His plans and His reasons for what He allows to happen...I know it seems so hard now, to understand, and perhaps we are not meant to understand right now...perhaps we are meant to go on faith, that God will keep our dead children, safe in his keeping, until we can return to them, in Gods own good time...
Again, prayers, thoughts and kind wishes forthcoming from our family to your family..
We will pray for you...
Be grateful that Jesus and God has made this provison of eternal life for you and Forest. I am grateful that your wife was not injured in her child birth. There was a time when many more mothers died giving birth as well as their infants than today.
The Lord can give you another child. Dedicate the child to the Lord Jesus Christ and raise you new child up in the ways of the Lord so he will be a blessing to the whole world. And dedicate your daughter also to Jesus Christ. Explain all this to her when she can understand and the day will come when she will rise up and call you Blessed.
Praise God and the gift of His Son Jesus Christ and eternal life through him.
Love God with all your heart, mind and soul and He will give you and your wife and daughter comfort and joy.
Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King;
Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King;
Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King;
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! We're going to see the King.
Verse 2: No more crying there, we are going to see the King;
Verse 3: No more dying there, we are going to see the King;
Yesterday was Forrest's funeral. My wife is Jewish so the ceremony included Jewish and Christian traditions. Her brother led the service for us with my pastor. They both did a beautiful job. Everyone was blessed by it.
We realized yesterday how much God has blessed us with friends and family. One friend brought dozens and dozens of roses. Another friend has been an incredible blessing thoughout this whole ordeal. She collected all of the baby shower gifts and returned then. The also gathered up all of the items scattered throughout the house that related to Forrest, such as ultrasound pics and the like, and put them in the nursery so that we wouldn't keep stumbling across them. She made dozens of phone calls for us and helped me get through making the funeral arrangements. And most importantly, she was there with us in the OR during the C-section.
I mentioned earlier that we were worried about our daughter. She hadn't been directly expressing her sorrow. That changed at the funeral. Part of the Jewish tradition (and what was once my church's tradition back in the "old country"...) is to have each mourner in attendence place a shovelful of earth onto the casket. The finality of that brought out her tears. I held her and told her that it was OK to cry and feel sad, even though we know that Forrest is in Heaven. She then returned to her "Kleenex patrol" duties and started handing out tissues to everyone she saw crying. (She had stuffed her little purse full of tissues for everyone.) She and my niece also made sure that everyone got a rose to take home.
...
I'm not sure that today isn't harder than yesterday. Today was supposed to be his birthday. I was supposed to be making a gaudy "Baby FReeper" post and handing out cigars. But that's not in God's plan and I do trust in His plan. A great blessing will result from this.
This is one of the traditional prayers said by the Jews at funerals and throughout the mourning period. I wanted to include it because its central focus is on praising and honoring God, not upon death.Magnified and sactified be God's great name throughout the world which God created and governs by divine will. May the Kingdom of God be established during your lifetime, and during your days, and during the days of all the house of Israel, yea speedily and in the near future, and let us say Amen.May God's great name be blessed for ever and ever.
Exaulted, glorified and honored be the name of the Holy One whose glory is beyond all blessings, hymns, and praises which people render, and let us say, Amen.
May great peace emanate from Heaven with good life for us and for all Israel, and let us say, Amen.
May the One who makes peace in the heavens, make peace for us and for all Israel, and let us say, Amen.
-The Mourners' Kaddish
Again, thank you all for remembering us in your prayers.Listen, I will tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed- in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. Now when this perishable puts on the imperishable, and this mortal puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will happen,"Death has been swallowed up in victory."
"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"- 1 Corinthians, 15:51-55
Hugs
2T
Redcloak and his family will need all our FReeper prayers and support for a long time to come...This is about as rough as it gets in my opinion. God Bless the FR family.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.