Grief Relief : Scriptural Guide Book To Recovery After The Death Of A Child

Born in 1961, Rebecca, whose nickname is Becky, was born into the most dire of circumstances. The fifth child of poor parents; whose marriage was already at the point of collapse. Becky was critically premature; her mother Barbara’s most difficult delivery; and only breach birth. In all, her mother would go on to have seven children. Barbara struggled while working for seventy-five cents an hour, at a nearby dry cleaners. Her father Loyd worked less and less as the years went by, due to the most extreme form of chronic alcoholism.

While living in the ghetto and enduring the harshest depravation imaginable, God sent His messengers with The Good News of Jesus Christ. Becky faithfully rode the church bus with her elder siblings, starting at around the age of two years old while carrying her own spare diaper, in a brown paper bag. Her mother would instruct, “Don’t dirty your diaper while you’re gone.” The story is told that she never did! Becky refused to be left behind, and grew up cherishing the Bible stories she was taught at “The First Church of the Nazarene,” in Rock Island, Illinois. Becky also attended regularly at Grant Elementary; her public grade school, a Bible study that was held after hours in the school cafeteria. The truth is, Becky never fully perceived until now, what God had indeed predestined for her, and that is why He saw to it that she knew His Holy Word from the start. She readily acknowledges, that if she hadn’t experienced the steadfast love of God early on, that He would have never been able to do the miraculous for her in 1990, when her doctor crudely informed, “The top of your babies head is missing!” The cataclysmic discovery that her baby was suffering from the disease of “anencephaly,” was rendered just two weeks before she was due to give birth for the first time at the age of twenty-nine.

Indeed, God’s hand has been upon Becky her entire life, but was never more providential than that fateful day on May 12, 1990, when her precious Melissa Ann was born, and returned straight back to heaven from whence she was sent. Melissa beat the odds by being born alive, and lived for three rapturous hours and eighteen glorious minutes upon this earth, cradled all the while in her parent’s adoring arms.

Afterwards, Becky spent vast hours alone in her prayer closet seeking God’s divine help and guidance. She needed to know what He had to say about all that was happening to her, as many more complications and obstacles were involved a