My own Cinderellas

I have been sitting here blessed beyond measure while the girls watch their favorite show Word Girl. I checked the FIAR boards to catch up on the latest posts and saw a comment about Steven Curtis Chapman's family.

As many of you know, this gifted artist and his family is suffering an unspeakable tragedy as they try to make sense of the death of their five year old Maria. Maria was one of two inspirations behind his popular song Cinderella and while I have been reading stories of this family, I have been blessed -- blessed to see how this family loves their Lord and how they are handling this tragedy in light of their intense faith, and blessed because tragedies like these only help you to realize how fragile life really is, and how possible it is for one of my own Cinderellas to be taken from me in an instant.

Since these posts have blessed me the last thirty minutes, I wanted to link to them here for anyone else who might be interested in learning more about this amazing family and to send their condolences.

The first is a blog by Kerry Hasenbalg, who is in ministry at Shaohannah's Hope with the Chapman family. She has several posts about her own tragic loss in January, how the Chapman family comforted her then and how she was able to use her suffering and the words of healing they gave her then to attempt to comfort them now. Warning -- get out your Kleenex. . .the post entitled A Weekend Remembering Maria, and reading about the whole "shoeless" thing really got me.

The second is the Shaohannah's Hope website, where you can learn more about Maria, whom they adopted from China four years ago, the same birth country of Shaohannah and Stevey Joy, whom the Chapman family had adopted previously. The mission of Shaohannah's Hope is listed on the top of the page, "mobilizing the Body of Christ to care for orphans." On the site, they have an entire section called "Remembering Maria" that shows pictures from the memorial service, tells her story, and has a link to donate to Maria's Miracle Fund, which is what the family is asking for in lieu of flowers.

And finally, from that site they link you to a blog that was set up for condolences for the family and shows an adorable video of Steven singing and washing dishes with Maria. She was truly a beautiful little girl!

May you all be blessed and hug your own little ones a little tighter! They are the most amazing gifts from God, aren't they?