Mending the Heart
(excerpts from the book written by John Claypool)

In 1968, John’s daughter Laura Lue was diagnosed with ALL at age eight and died when she was ten. The quotes below are from the chapter, “The Wound of Grief.” These quotes are based on his experience in the loss of his daughter.
As he struggle with his grief, his pain, and his anger, he remembered a lesson his mother taught him. “When something belongs to you and it is taken away, you have a right to be angry. But when something is a gift and it is taken from you, you use that occasion to give thanks that it was ever given at all” (page 65).
“It came to me,” Claypool writes, “that Laura Lue had been a part of my life in exactly the same way. She was a gift, not a possession…”
“That was the moment I decided to take the road of gratitude out of the valley of the shadow of grief, rather than the road of resentment. To this day I believe that gratitude is the best of all the ways through the trauma of loss rather than a spirit of entitlement. It does not in any way eliminate the intense pain and frustration that always accompany the work of rebuilding one’s life in an entirely different context, but it does take away the feelings of anger and the conviction that a terrible injustice has been done, and it opens the way for thanksgiving. Gratitude also deepens our sense of trust, for we begin to believe that the One who gave us the good olds can be trusted to give us the good new days as well.” (page 66)
Earlier he wrote, “I realized at that moment a choice stood before me. I could spend the rest of my life in anger and resentment because she had lived so short a time and so much of her promise had been cut short, or I could spend the rest of my life in gratitude that she had ever lived at all and that I had the wonder of those ten grace-filled years.” (page 63_

Pastor Mike