Revised prayer request
Kasia July 3rd, 2008
I posted about this last night, then took it down this morning. I wasn’t sure about what I had written. I’m still not sure. BUT, if you have the opportunity…
There’s a local story about a woman who checked or was checked into the hospital (precise details vary according to the news outlet), bleeding heavily. She or her boyfriend (again, details don’t agree from source to source) said she’d had a miscarriage, but examination revealed she’d given birth to a six-month-old baby. She then said, apparently, that her boyfriend had thrown the baby into the trash.
No one has established yet whether the baby was born alive.
She is in the hospital in critical condition. Her boyfriend, after a period of being unavailable for questioning, is being interviewed by the police. Detroit police are combing the area looking for the baby.
At this point, the baby is almost certainly dead - even if it was born alive, between being a preemie, having gone almost two days with no food, and the reports that the mother put the baby into a plastic bag and asked her boyfriend to “get rid of it”, I can’t imagine how it could still be alive - though I suppose it never hurts to ask for a miracle.
As it happens, I know the boyfriend. Not well, but I do. He’s the brother of a close friend of a close friend of mine (didja get that?) - they grew up together.
I’d like to ask your prayers first and foremost for the baby. Obviously he or she is the ultimate victim here.
I would also like to ask your prayers for the mother, who as I think I mentioned is still in critical condition. And believe it or not, for the father too. Even assuming the worst (which isn’t really fair to assume based on the available information right now), even if the baby was alive and he abandoned it to die - truly heinous - he is still a child of God and in desperate need of prayer.
I know it’s hard to imagine praying for someone who may have done something so awful. Believe me, I do. But I also know a little bit about how this man grew up to be who he is,; and while respect for the privacy of the family compels me to not share details, I can assure you that knowing what I know makes it easier to pray for him. He should absolutely be prosecuted for any crimes he has committed, but he also is in desperate need of God’s mercy and healing.
Finally, please pray for his brother (my friend’s friend), for his brother’s girlfriend, and my friend and his brother, who will need grace to sustain them as they deal with this.
Thanks very much.
Consider it done, my friend. May God bless and protect all involved.
Stuff like this sickens me to no end. Lily was that age when born…if we hadn’t been in the hospital, she would only have lived for a minute or two. Her lungs weren’t up to the task of getting oxygen into the bloodstream.
It’s hard to pray for someone who would kill their child. Every fiber of my being wants to lash out, and call them monsters.
I have to pause, and try to calm down. It’s possible that she did have a miscarriage…or, more accurately, a stillbirth. Freaking out, not knowing what to do with the dead baby…they could have just panicked or acted in a dazed manner…I just don’t know.
I would have a very hard time praying for them if that baby was born alive. But that’s probably the most important time for me to pray for them. It’s easy to pray for friends, for family, for “good” people…it parallels forgiving people. What does it say about me if I can only forgive those who forgive me? What does it say about me if I can only pray for those who are “good”?
What does it say about me if I can only pray for those who are “good”?
Probably that you’re a lot like most people, honestly…that’s an area almost everybody needs to grow in.
First, I’m running on the assumption (perhaps overly generous, but hey) that the baby was probably stillborn. Based on what I know about him, I could readily see him not knowing what to do with a situation like that at the best of times, and with his girlfriend (presumably) bleeding all over the house…well, put it this way: I took a CPR class recently, and the teacher told us outright “You will not remember most of this in an emergency. Our goal is to drill the movements into your motor memory, so that you will hopefully bypass the panic and act automatically.” Things like “Call 911″ are supposed to be drilled into us for the same reason: when the poop really hits the fan, we panic and don’t think straight.
Second, IF the baby was born alive…well, I agree 100% that the human instinct is to recoil and write him off as a monster. It’s easier for me to fathom praying for him even so, because as I said, I’m privy to more information than most people. But it’s still hard. I can’t deny that.