Our household has been filled with sadness the past few days. My husband is a firefighter in Bentonville, and on Tuesday morning at 2am, in his words he “pulled 5 dead babies out of a burning house”. Never have I seen my husband wracked with sobbing tears of pain. It has been so hard to be unable to comfort him. Of course I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to experience that. It’s made me cry just to hear the story, I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to see the bodies of the girls. My dear sweet husband was put on the triage team, which means that, after the bodies were brought out and laid on the ground, he had to make sure they were dead. I’m sure he was praying with all his heart that a faint heartbeat would be heard, a breath would be taken….it was only after watching the 10:00 news (which I tried to discourage him from watching) that he learned that they were all girls, 5 close-knit sisters that did everything together, including dying. This hit him even harder, as we have 4 daughters ourselves. I cannot imagine what it must be like to lose all of your children at once. I don’t think I could survive it…
I’ve assured him that these girls are frolicking merrily without a care in heaven, enjoying the sunshine, swimming with dolphins, eating all the chocolate they want, and never having to brush their teeth again (this is gracie’s version of heaven). I know that they have no knowledge of how they died, of their suffering, of their terrible lives up to that point, but none of this is any comfort to my husband now. He only sees children that suffered and died senselessly.
Please pray for Jim, as well as the other firefighters and police officers who are suffering still. Put fresh batteries in your smoke detectors. Do NOT use space heaters in your home. And hug your babies extra tight tonite.
