Bethany Love Klevenski
Lori FloydThis Thanksgiving is definitely the worst I've ever had, and yet we still have so many reasons to be grateful.
The day before Thanksgiving we dropped the boys off at a friend's house and spent the day with Keith's brother Quentin and most of the rest of Keith's immediate family. Tragically, Quentin lost his beautiful 28 year old wife Bethany earlier that week and we joined together in prayer and weeping at her funeral that day. Bethany left behind three boys, Andy, Luke and Spencer who are 5, 3 and 7 months, respectively. Quentin is struggling not only with the loss of his wife and mother of their children, but with medical and other problems. It was so sad to see how much he's deteriorated since we saw him last, almost a year ago.
We didn't know until we arrived in town for the funeral that Keith's middle sister Lori had been admitted to the emergency room the night before and was in critical condition. After the services we went together to the hospital to visit her and pray for her recovery. Today, now the day after Thanksgiving, Lori is still unable to be stabilized and has multiple organs which are shutting down. The doctors said she needs a miracle ... and we are praying for one.
Last night when I put Johnny to bed, he taught me something about prayer. Typically, he will think of a handful of things to be thankful for and most relate to what is currently going on in his life. Last night however he must have come up with no less than 50 separate reasons to be thankful and prayed non-stop thanking God for an amazing array of blessings. Some of the things I remember Johnny thanking God for were our friends, our family, our health, that we have a house to live in and don't have to live on the street with a piece of plastic for a blanket, for the sunshine and the rabbits and squirrels and every kind of animal, for all plants that give us oxygen to breathe, for our sight and our curtains that keep the sunshine out when we want to sleep, for our food and our toys and our ceiling fans and doors (etc.) and that I would live for a long, long time as long as I could and when I finally couldn't live anymore and had to die that he would be an adult by then so I wouldn't leave him all alone with no one to be with him.
We had just told Johnny about his Aunt Bethany that morning and it obviously really had an impact on him, even though he didn't really remember who she was (he had last seen her 2 years ago when he was 3). But the beautiful mind of a child in the midst of all the hurting and loss was able to think of endless reasons to be hopeful and thankful. In a way, I felt like God was reminding me through Johnny's prayer of all of our blessings that we so often take for granted. Life's challenges test our resilience and sometimes feel like more than we can take. We pray for the best, and remember *everything* we have that is good.
Lori Floyd
