A true account of my tragic Christmas.
We wrestled in prayer for nearly 3 hours on Saturday night believing that God will hear our prayers and answer by rescuing Rene from the clutches of death. Five hours earlier, she had gone to the indoor swimming pool at our hotel (where we held our 3 day Christmas convention) to swim with her friends shortly after our Saturday morning service. She veered to the deeper section of the pool and nearly drowned according to the friends she went to the pool with, who were also eye witnesses.
For the entirety of the Saturday night evening service, the whole Church prayed for her. We learnt from those who accompanied the ambulance to the hospital that she was on life support since she could not breathe by herself; we had to cancel every activity planned for the Saturday night service in order to travail for her in prayer.
With our Regional head and our District Pastor, I together with 3 other Elders of our Church proceeded to the Hospital to see the state of our daughter in Christ first hand.
The report we received from one of our members(a medical practitioner) who accompanied Rene and her mom to the hospital was very grim; even though the emergency crew had found her pulse and heartbeat, there was no indication that her brain and lungs were functioning correctly. Tears welled up in my eyes when we entered Rene’s ward to see her lying motionless and breathing only with the help of support. We witnessed some seizure episodes which brought the nurses and attending medical practitioners running in. Rene was the loveliest and most affable child you would ever come across. Right in the her ward, I remembered what she used to say: that she will be the first black lady president of the United States of America and yet there she laid, yet there she laid motionless at a puny age of six. Even grimmer was when her mom recounted an experience she had in the ambulance when they were en-rout to the hospital; “I felt her weight on me and I felt her arms wrap my shoulders as if my daughter’s spirit gave me a hug to bid me good bye” said her mom. At that moment, I was in a mixed frenzy. The precariousness of the situation dawned on me - my canal mind whispered that Rene was already gone but my spiritual man kept faith with God.
We prayed with them and gave them some words of encouragement. Besides, our regional head talked to the mom about the sovereignty of God stressing that, even though we had prayed fervently for the child, everything rested on the power of God.
We left the hospital after midnight. I could barely sleep when I got home. My mind kept wandering back to all that had transpired earlier on in the day. I prayed again for the unresponsive child and fell asleep. I had barely slept when I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to get up and go to the hospital. As I freshened up to go to the hospital, my phone rang. It was one of the members we met at the hospital the night before. He informed me the girl had passed on into glory. She passed on 0750am on Sunday morning.
Does God really exist? Does HE listen to our prayers? Is God really powerful? Is His word true?- because the Bible says ‘the fervent and effective prayer of the righteous availeth much’
If God truly exist then is HE a loving God? If HE is, then why does HE allow bitter and inexplicable circumstances such as this to befall HIS children? Did God take Rene’s life? If yes why did HE do so at a Christmas Convention and in such a painful way?
Above are some of the questions that kept racing up my mind as I drove to the hospital that Sunday morning.
I was reminded of the brevity of life when I saw her lifeless body at the hospital. The word of God compares human life to a flower. It blossoms today and tomorrow, it withers; I had seen Rene that Saturday morning and she was her usual cheerful self but on the Sunday morning, there she laid, not cheerful. Oh! how wicked art thou death! how heartless are you to take an innocent child.
And there, beside the child’s corpse laid her wailing and heart broken mother. I mustered courage, wrapped my arms around her neck, took her from the bed and sat her on the sofa beside the bed in an effort to console her; it was so surreal an experience. I put her head on my shoulders in order to cheer her up. There were 3 others in the room; 2 female friends of her’s (mon) and the gentleman who informed me of the misfortune. All of whom are members of our church. All I could say was ‘I am sorry for your loss. She began to ask serious and thought provoking questions.
“ Elder! So where is Rene’s spirit going? She asked.
To heaven of course, she was an innocent child I answered. “ Ei Elder!, so is there any heaven at all? Does God really exist? Is that God really Omnipotent? Elder, if indeed God exist, is he really Omniscient and Omnipresent? Such is the nature of the questions she asked. She continued: “Oh! by virtue of what has happened to me this weekend, I have settled for the notion that there is no God for if there was a God, HE should have prevented this tragedy or better still save my daughter- I am no longer going to worship this God and I am going to warn my son in Ghana not to serve the Christian God because He doesn’t exist”. With love and gentleness, I advised her not to question the sovereignty of God.
With the word of God and some Christian hymns, we managed to calm her down. Others from the church came pouring in after they heard of the passing of Rene. We had a devotion at the hospital based on the direction of our district pastor after which we all moved to the convention grounds in order to give the nurses the space to dress the corpse.
The final message of the convention changed in view of this tragedy. The regional Leader of our church used 1 Peter 1:1-7 and John 17:16 to console the bereaved family and the entire church after which he prayed with us.
The interment service is scheduled forJanuary 13th 2018 and preparations are going on smoothly. Members of the Church are showing their love in action. One family convinced the bereaved mother to spend some days at their house so they could see to her wellbeing. Members are frequenting the house each day to ensure that, the Child’s mom is occupied most of the time in order for her not to dwell on the tragedy much. Members have visited the bereaved family so much that one stranger asked: “how popular was this child?; I am not sure this many people will frequent my house if I died. Indeed this child was special”.
Any money I make from this write-up will be donated to the Family of Rene so don’t think twice to upvote, Re-steem and Comment.
Now! You still want to know how my Christmas festivities went? Really?
Tell you what, it wasn’t pleasant at all. It was a....
Nightmare on Christmas.
In loving memory of Rene.
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