Our Prayers are with the Drews Family

Marsha Drews and her husband David lost their youngest son tonight.

Christian, whom Marsha adoringly referred to as Dozer, is now in the arms of our Father.

Marsha is the Assistant Director of Operations for Heart of the Matter Online.  Christian was one of her three sons, a sweet little boy who was excited about starting pre-school this year and had been dealing with losing his blankie.

The HSBA ladies had a business meeting/chat scheduled last night.  I logged into iChat a little early, and started chatting with Amy S., one of the co-founders of Heart of the Matter.  I remembered that the HSBA chat was supposed to be through Yahoo Messenger, so I logged in there, but kept my Google chat window with Amy open.

The HSBA ladies were just getting organized when Amy asked me if we were all together in the chat.  I said yes, and she sent me the urgent prayer request for little Christian.

Although we gathered to chat about HSBA business, I think God brought us together at that time for a different purpose.  We immediately began to pray, and then sent messages to our church and homeschool support groups, and via Twitter.  One of the ladies commented that she didn’t think it was accidental that I logged into the “wrong” chat.

The news of Christian’s passing is difficult to bear.  Throughout the evening I kept thinking of my own three year old, my daughter, Lily.  I went to my girls’ room, and held Lily while I prayed and ached for a mother who would never hold her son again.  I needed to feel her weight, her warmth, her breath.  To smell her hair.  To wrap myself around her as a shield to protect her from harm, while praying to God to shelter her, and me from such pain.

A memory came to me from last week: I took the kids to the pool one morning.  I wear the pool keycard around my neck so that the kids can’t get into the pool area before having sunscreen applied and floaties for the two youngest girls.  While unloading our pool stuff, I turned and saw Lily jump into the pool.  She sank, bobbed to the top, and then went under again. My 17-year-old-son jumped in, t-shirt and all, and grabbed her.

It was quite a scare, but fortunately we were all standing there and saw her.  She’s only three, so she didn’t notice any difference between jumping into the pool with or without her swim sweater (floatation device).

Please pray for this family.  Today’s post at Heart of the Matter gives additional details, as well as an address for sending cards or correspondence.