I recently had the opportunity to help tell the story of two of my friends named Jeremy and Nicole.
I won’t write their whole story here, because you can and should watch them tell it in the video below. But just to convince you to press play, I’ll get things started. To say Jeremy and Nicole have had a challenging few years would be an understatement. When their first son, Toby, was born, they discovered he had something called GRACILE syndrome. He struggled to survive, and sadly they lost him at two months of age.
They also discovered that, because GRACILE was a genetic disorder (an extremely rare one at that), each of the rest of their children would have a 25% chance of having GRACILE. In the video they share about their decision making process to try again, giving birth to a healthy child named Levi. Once more they decided to try, but their third son, Lucas, was also diagnosed with GRACILE syndrome. Despite knowing this 3 months into pregnancy, they chose to carry Lucas to term and give birth so they could meet him, if even for a short time.
It’s a tragic story, but one filled with God’s grace. How they can trust and love God through times like this is beyond me, but perhaps they can help you understand in this video:
It is a great reminder that no matter what you go through, God can grant you peace and offer you His presence. Jeremy put it this way,
“We started out the journey just wanting God to heal Toby. That was it pretty much, that’s who God was in that situation to us. He has to come in and heal. By the end of the journey, we felt like we could see God completely clearly, being right there with us, standing with us as Toby died. We came to know that God was there and that God is good, even in a situation like that.”
