To lose a child....

Keira's down for a nap and I've been just drinking my coffee and reading and reflecting while I have a few minutes.  As I sat on my couch, I was asking the Lord to teach me through Keira.  As a child of God and now being a parent, I am seeing in a new way the love that God has for us as our Father.  Ever since Keira was born, I randomly get these horrid thoughts of things happening to her or her getting hurt.  I hate when I get them and immediately have to ask God to take them away because if I think about them for too long, it scares me to death.  I don't know where they come from, but I hate it when I get them.  I think it's shown me how deep my love for my daughter is even just 4 months into her precious life.  Pete is going to a funeral today of a student and asked me the other day if I would rather lose a child when they were very young, knowing that they would go to heaven, or lose them when they were older, having been able to live life with them, but also potentially not knowing if they would be in Heaven if they didn't choose Christ.  I literally couldn't even think too long about that question because the thought of losing Keira right now makes me sick to my stomach.  In the last 4 months, I've just seen how she is so apart of me and that little girl has worked herself into the core of my heart.

Anyways, all that to say, as I sat on the couch, I was wondering what God thinks when He loses a child.  When one of his children die without having chosen Christ, I can imagine it breaks his heart!!  He has formed us and made us from his own image and created us to live a life with the fullness of Christ, but when we choose otherwise.....  I've just been thinking about this student that died and while He once lived for Christ, the last few years of his life (from what I've been told), he rejected Christ and walked his own path...and now his life has been taken from him.  I can't even conceive of having to go through that as a parent.  Even writing this right now and thinking of that happening puts a terrible knot in my heart and a sick feeling in my stomach.

My job as Christ's ambassador is to share with others God's love for them.  I know Jesus and the power of his death and resurrection and God needs me to be a tangible voice for Him to others who don't know.  I don't want to ever lose a child and I know that He doesn't either.