This post first appeared at Beauty For Ashes
Paul and I have just returned home from the funeral of a most precious little girl. Lydia’s smile could have lit a room. Now it reflects the glory of God the Savior for all eternity.
. . .
It is now exactly two weeks since we got a phone call….well, let me back up. Over a year ago a new family began attending our tiny church. A husband and wife with nine kids – six biological, three adopted from Liberia. They were a lovely family, the children polite and well behaved. They home-schooled. That’s how they found our church actually. They belonged to the same home-school organization as our pastor. Anyway, the wife was one of the, kindest women I’ve ever known. Anytime there was a gathering of the church she and I would often find ourselves off somewhere together, talking quietly until it was time to leave. Her warmth was a soothing thing. No two people could be more different than she and I, and yet there was a sweet comfort in our times together. We’d been to their house a few times for church related functions, and once just Paul and I were there, for dinner. We ate shepherd’s pie, and the children were a delight. They showed us how to milk their goats. The husband also had always taken time to reach out to Paul, who in person is extremely reserved and tends to be overlooked, and so Paul was fond of him as well.
After about nine months they decided to leave our church. They had just completed our series of membership classes, so their change of heart came as a bit of a shock, and a disappointment. As I understood it, one of the reasons for their leaving was that the husband had a strong disagreement with a doctrinal stance of our church. He insisted that Christians could achieve total sanctification (a state of sinless living) in this lifetime. We heartily disagree. We actually believe that is an un-Biblical and unhealthy teaching which can lead to any number of problems – in particular legalism and perfectionism. When no agreement could be reached, he determined to find a church more in keeping with his position. I was so sad, because I’d grown so fond of my friend, and also her little adopted girls, especially little Lydia, who always looked at me like I was some kind of miracle.
It has been maybe six months since they left, maybe a bit more. I saw them once after that, when we went to their house to pick up a bookshelf they gifted to us, twice if you count the time we chatted with the father and a few of the kids in the parking lot at Costco. Then Saturday night, two weeks ago, we got a phone call. Little Lydia was dead. Her older sister, Zariah, was in the hospital in critical condition. The other seven children had been placed in foster care and both parents were in jail – accused of murder, and child abuse.
