Heaven Has Two New People This Week

Our world has lost two wonderful people this week. Our loss, but Heaven's gain.

The first person, that I'm sure many people have heard about, is Ruth Graham, Billy Graham's wife. She went into a coma yesterday, and died earlier this afternoon. I really didn't know much about her, but I'm sure that being married to a famous minister could not be easy. They were married for 67 years, you have to give anybody credit nowadays for being married that long.

She was born in China on June 10, 1920, to two American missionaries. As a girl, she dreamed of becoming a missionary... but instead she married the evangelist Billy Graham. She had five children, wrote or co-authored 14 books, and founded the Ruth and Billy Graham Children's Health Center.

The other person that the world lost in the last week was a little 7 year old girl named Rachel Hanson. You can read about her at the Caring Bridge web site.

Rachel was born in April 2007 (I'm guessing) in Minnesota. She contraced Ewing's Sarcoma (a form of cancer) when she was 2 years old. For five years she bravely fought to get better. In the end, she did get better, just not in the way that anybody hoped. She lost her earthly battle with cancer in the morning on June 8, 2007.

Today was her funeral/celebration of life. I don't live anywhere near Minnesota, but I wore pink, her favorite color, for her today.

I never met either of them. I learned about Rachel through a prayer thread for her when she was about 3. My family has prayed for her almost every day, and I've followed her story through her mom's journals. Losing her was like losing a friend. She may not be as famous as Ruth Graham, but she's famous in my eyes.

If anybody is reading, please pray for their families. They both were saved Christians, and I believe that someday they will reunite with their families... but even with the promise of seeing a loved one again, I'm sure that they will be missed. Losing a loved one is always hard.