Long-time friends recently passed the nine year mark of their baby girl going to heaven after a year long battle with leukemia. I can take myself back to those days so easily. The shock that Paxten hadn’t made it…that she hadn’t gotten her miracle. The empty, hollow feeling of what now?

I’ve watched these friends learn to live in a world without their daughter for nine years. I’ve seen them crawl towards love, fight for joy, and build a new life that absolutely includes Pax…just not they way they’d hoped and longed. This year had an entirely new perspective for all they’ve been though. This year I couldn’t help but go back to our desperate prayers for her healing. Those same groanings I repeated over my little boy nine years later.

I started thinking how wonderful to be the parent who can proclaim, “God is good! My child is a miracle!” because their child could have died but didn’t.

But even more, the depth of peace, knowing, and love for the parent whose child has died and can say the same thing.

Nine years later, my friends stood and said, God is good. While my heart still breaks for their loss, what an inspiration and hope for my raw and confused heart.