Say A Prayer

One thing they don’t tell you when you sign up to write books is that you should be ready to get your Paris Hilton on. You know Paris, right?

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The Queen of Self Promotion? I don’t tote around my own Chihuahua, though I do carry a 20-pound toddler with a runny nose. And I don’t own hotels. Not even one. However, I am expected to self promote when it comes to book selling. Operation Bonnet comes out February 1, and I should be mentioning it to you roughly every eighteen seconds. I should be telling you about the launch event (Downtown Central Library in Des Moines, February 7, 6:30 p.m.!) and asking you politely to attend. (I might get less polite as the date approaches.)

And I will. I’ll do my best to be a book floozie in the near future.

But not today.

Today I want to tell you about Clara.

Clara is a sweet, inquisitive, friendly six-year-old who fell down on the school playground shortly before Thanksgiving. When her doctor started poking around her bruised belly, one question led to another and Clara and her family discovered she has cancer.

Here’s Clara (far right) with her sister and her mom at the Nutcracker days before she fell.

I know Clara’s mama and her grandma. I ache to even write these words because I love these women and their babies, too. How do you hold your little girl and tell her everything is different now? How do you brush her hair and not weep as it begins to fall out in clumps? How do you encourage your child to stand firm in the knowledge her God loves her with a boundless, impermeable love when your own knees are wobbly, weak and worn?

Please pray for Clara. For her sweet mama, Rachel, for her daddy, Brian. For her brother, her sister, her Nonie, her grandpa, for all the people who are surrounding her with love and grace to cushion this fall. Pray for her to regain her appetite, for her smile to return, for these next precarious months to be surprisingly calm and sweet as her body wars with itself.

I have every confidence God is writing a great story with Clara’s life. But there’s nothing quite like the fervent prayers of those praying for a child.

Thanks, dear ones. I’ll let Clara know you’re walking alongside her.