Baby Sarah

Since I started my blog last year, I have gotten in the habit of reading several blogs. The Gregersen blog got me started as I wanted to keep up with their work in Africa. At the end of September, they started blogging about "baby Sarah." Baby Sarah was born to an HIV positive 16 year old girl who died during childbirth. Her short life is a testimony to how God shows his love even through human tragedy. No one in Sarah's family wanted her, so she was dropped off at the Haven in Namwianga by her grandmother when she was 2 weeks old. She was a month premature and sickly all her life. Several things about her story have touched me. At the Haven, while babies are cared for by several people THEY choose one to be their "mother." How and why a baby makes such a choice is amazing to me. Baby Sarah did not immediately choose a mom, but when she did she chose well. A young woman named Lauren became her "mom" and nutured her. Just a day or so ago, I read about Sarah's first laugh. At 5 months old, what a victory after so much struggle to live! This morning when I was checking my blogs that I normally read, I came across the news that baby Sarah had died. This comes on the heels of the news I got yesterday that one of my good friends who has been fighting cancer for three years will be starting the next round of chemo because the last PET scan shows a new hot spot in the lymph node near her pancreas. Sometimes life is uncertain, a struggle, and full of grief. But baby Sarah died with a special smile on her face. That smile gives me a lot of hope. Her story is worth reading at Lauren Beth in Africa.