Thank you for praying.
Candice arrived home July 7, and improved slowly but surely. We were hopeful, and on the mend. It was your prayers that held us up through that time.
Then, during a routine pre-natal appointment last Friday, we heard the news that many of you have heard, and that nobody wants to hear. Our little baby had passed away in the womb, at 15 weeks. We are heartbroken.
God’s plans are always good, but sometimes they’re really hard. This was something God had planned, and our little child’s days, every one of them, was written in His book. And now, I believe, he is safe in the arms of the only One who loved him more than we did, his Creator. His passing seems unrelated to Candice’s hospitalization, that the Lord had brought him home a different way.
Candice bravely delivered his little body into the world on Monday. Samuel Timothy Scatliff was 4 1/2 inches long, and weighed just a few ounces; a beautiful creation of God, knit together in his mother’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully made. We named him Samuel, because his conception reassured us that God had heard our many, many prayers. Timothy is in honour of my dad, who also happens to be one of the most valiant defenders of the unborn that I’ve ever met.
Please pray for Candice’s healing. Spiritually, we’re clinging hard to the Lord, and being cared for and prayed for by our amazing brothers and sisters in Christ. Emotionally, we’re battered. And physically, Candice’s body is still recovering, but she’s still experiencing a good deal of pain and we’re asking for God’s mercy in preventing complications.
And please pray for our hearts on Tuesday, as we lay little Samuel to rest in the ground.
We’re going to take some time to recover, grieve, and heal. We covet your prayers, and thank you for bringing us to the Lord so often over the last few weeks and months.
God bless you all. I’ll sign off with the verse that has been our solace, Psalm 139:13-16:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
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