Father of 6-year-old New Jersey girl who died of head trauma after a freak accident involving a badminton racket on the last day of a family vacation shared her daughter’s faith and the hope she retained amid tragedy.
Jesse Morgan, whose 6-year-old daughter Lucy died suddenly following a badminton accident while playing with her siblings, shared with Fox News Digital about his daughter’s continuing faith family of six.
“There is no doubt in my mind that in her imperfect understanding of life, she loved Christ and loved God,” Morgan said. “And that God welcomed her into heaven.
“It was incredibly huge,” he added of Lucy’s faith.
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Lucy Morgan, 6, during a family vacation in Maine, days before her fatal accident. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Lucy Morgan wrote in her prayer journal that “God is so amazing and He is the true God and He created everything and He died on the cross for our sins. » (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
“In her imperfect understanding of life, she loved Christ and loved God…”
Jesse said that after the family returned to their New Jersey home after Lucy died at a hospital in Portland, Maine, a friend dropped off Lucy’s backpack, which contained the beloved journal of the 6 year old little girl.
Lucy’s prayer journal became a bright reminder of the family’s darkest days.
“She got it a month before she passed,” Jesse said. “It was my wife’s idea. My wife is a journalist and she said to me, ‘Hey, you can use this to write stuff, write to God if you want.’ She also wrote some spelling words there.
Photos from Lucy’s diary showed the 6-year-old’s thoughts. She wrote: “God is amazing” and “He created everything and died on the cross for our sins.”
Lucy wrote in her prayer journal “I love Jesus” with hearts. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
“She’s a child, and part of our concern is we want our children to know God,” Jesse said. “This was not a fear-based thing, nor a demand or compulsion. We want to convincingly show the love of Christ to our children so that they imperfectly see the love of God reflected in us and we want more and want to pursue it.
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Morgan said witnessing Lucy’s childlike faith was “one of the greatest gifts.”
“I think she had the faith of a mustard seed.”
“I think she had the faith of a mustard seed,” he said. “And Jesus calls children to come to him. Even though her understanding was limited as a child, one of the greatest gifts (was) to open up and see the things that she wrote, the things that ‘she was drawing.’
Lucy was taken by medical helicopter to a nearby pediatric hospital and then transferred to a hospital in Portland, Maine. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Jesse, pastor of Green Pond Bible Chapel in Rockaway, New Jersey, prioritizes sharing the gospel of salvation with his four children.
“We explain the gospel to our children every day,” Jesse said. “This was not a one-off event.
“We view this as an ongoing conversation with our children, all the time, but doubt sets in,” he said. “Did I say it right? Did I do it right?”
Jesse shared that he and his wife struggled with whether they had properly explained the gospel to their 6-year-old daughter before she died.
“Was I good enough as a father, as a mother, to explain that Jesus died for you, that he loved you, that we need his love, we need his death and his resurrection,” Morgan wondered.
Four days later, Lucy died from her injuries, the family said. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Lucy’s father said he turned to her blog, New Creation Living, as a “simple cry for help”.
“The first message was simply a cry for help to people who I knew would pray for us, and it was a way for me to unpack the trauma I was holding in my body,” he said. declared. “I have continually found it to be a helpful process, for my process of grief, confusion and anger.
“I think God was just happy to use him, and it was overwhelming. Yet I continue to strive to just be myself and be authentic.”
Jesse said people keep telling him they were amazed by his family’s faith during the heartbreaking death of his young daughter, but he explained it’s not that simple.
“We didn’t want to get hung up. A big part of us wanted to be done with God,” he said. “And we just couldn’t do it. It just wouldn’t happen.”
Lucy and her mother, Bethany, and her sister. Jesse Morgan said he and his wife were reading and relaxing when the badminton accident happened. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Jesse shared that he believed God placed circumstances in his family’s lives to prepare them for Lucy’s death.
“God put all these things in our lives to, I feel like, prepare us for this,” he said. “I don’t even know what that means in God’s plan, and I don’t want to try to do divine math and understand it and explain it.” .
Jesse said that two days before Lucy’s unexpected death, the family sang “He Will Hold Me Fast,” by Christian singers Keith, Kristyn Getty and Selah.
“It can be summed up in one of the first lines: ‘When I fear that my faith will fail, Christ will hold me fast,’” Jesse remembers. “I’ve never really felt that, and I’ve felt the prayers of millions of people, thousands. of people. I don’t know how many people are praying and helping us. And that was it.
Lucy’s prayer journal also contained drawings of family and the Bible, her father said. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Jesse said he wanted people to see the “miraculous” amid his family’s suffering.
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“It is Christ alone who sustains us.”
“It is Christ alone who sustains us,” he said. “I don’t want people to be speechless at the tragedy. I want people to see the miraculous. God didn’t do a miracle and bring her back, but God did a miracle,” a- he declared. “And that’s what I want people to see, that in our hearts we still trust Him.”
Lucy’s brothers stand by her side in the pediatric intensive care unit. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Lucy died of head trauma after a freak accident involving a badminton racket on the last day of his family’s vacation to Maine.
Lucy was hit unexpectedly when the handle of the racket, which was being used by her 10-year-old brother, broke and flew into her skull.
“Due to a freak accident with a racket breaking during a downward swing, a sharp piece entered Lucy’s skull while she was sitting on the sidelines and caused catastrophic injuries “, explained Jesse in a series of articles on his blog, New Living Creation. “She was still breathing but unresponsive as I held her with Bethany crying out to God.”
Lucy was taken to a local hospital before being transported to a hospital inPortland, Maine.
Lucy with her three siblings while on vacation in Maine. (Jesse Morgan via New Creation Living blog)
Four days after the accident, Lucy succumbed to her injuries.
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“After extensive and even more repeated testing to be sure, brain death was declared at 1:32 a.m. on June 5 and his heart stopped beating around 4 a.m.,” Jesse wrote.
“Lucy was with Jesus.”