Prayers for Friends

I met Sam Jackson at a sparsely populated park in the fall of 2005, our first fall living in Durham. Our boys were weeks apart. Our wives were both home, pregnant with second children, both girls. They were due a handful of weeks apart. He was attending the same church my brother was at the time. Our boys hit it off. We both loved C.S. Lewis. We exchanged phone numbers.

Many months later, having run into one another perhaps once or twice, we ended up at the same church that they had just recently started attending. Thus began a friendship between two families that has deepened and grown over the past two years. Our little Zoe was just months old. Their little girl, Eliza, was just a few weeks younger, and was not well.

Eliza was born with holes in her brain. This caused uncontrollable seizures. She had basic brain stem function and that was it. She was in a vegetative state. There was little hope that she would live beyond her first week. But she did. They sent her home at ten weeks from the NICU to die. She didn't. Sam and Daniele and Luke loved on her and cared for her and celebrated her through to first birthday. And then, unfathomably, to her second.

The doctors always said that it would be the flu or pneumonia that would probably cause her body to be overworked to the point where it gave up. After nearly three years, that finally happened. Little Eliza Jackson went to be with the Lord today. She is finally free of a body that was never fully functional. Her first steps were in paradise.

Please join me in praying for the Jacksons. While this has been "coming" for nearly three years now, it's still hard, sad, and the grief is heavy.

To read more fully about this tremendous family and how they have labored in faith, hope, and love to care for this little girl, take a look at their blog: dixiejax.