Dear Addy,

It will be 5 years this Sunday that you left this earth for Jesus' arms. You left before I held you in my own. Your death sent me into a righteous anger I had never known as I learned that your death could have been stopped with an IV and antibiotics.

Many people do not understand why after 5 years I still cry over you, a child I never held in my arms. I don't have any words to tell them. I just have a whole in my heart where you were suppose to sit while I braided your hair and sang you lullabys.

Most days I don't think about the pain. In fact, I have buried it pretty deep...so deep that I often think it is gone. But then days like today come and the scab is torn off and the blood of my wound flows strong again!

The short time that you graced my life with yours is what birthed the calling your daddy and I have given our lives to. God used your short three years and your tragic death to call us to Addy's Hope. Somedays, I wish we had never known you...never started this crazy ministry....but then I think of the other "Addy's" out there. The little boy that came home to the US through Addy's Hope that had major medical issues that the limited medical care in Liberia would never have picked up. He was skin and bones, sad, no smiles, sick. Now, he is a thriving little boy full of smiles playing football and surrounded by the love of a Christian family that he never would have known if not for the role you played in his life...like a pebble thrown in a pond, your life continues to ripple even five years after your death.

I love you, my preciuos Addy Joy! Someday I will hold you! Until then, I picture you being rocked to sleep in the arms of Jesus as angels sing you those lullabys I never got to!

Love,
Mommy