She buried two children before she turned thirty-five.
Hit the heart. ❤️ Restack it.
The first one was a boy. Eddie. He ran fevers that wouldn’t break. The doctor came. Prescribed a warm bath. That was it. A warm bath for a dying child.
She held him while his breathing turned to groans. Between seven and eight o’clock, spasms shook his little frame. Then the cries stopped.
And his spirit left.
She wrote a poem about it. Because that’s what you do when you can’t scream anymore. You write.
Blessed child, dear child, for thee Jesus is calling.
A few months later, God gave her another baby. A girl. Bessie. Perfectly beautiful. Dark hair. Dark blue eyes.
The birth nearly killed the mother. She was bedridden for weeks. Couldn’t hold her own baby. Finally begged the nurse to let her hold the child. The nurse placed four-week-old Bessie in her arms.
Elizabeth wept and held her for hours.
The next day the baby had a fever. Then red, swollen blotches on her face. Then the blotches turned black.
By eleven in the morning, the lesions were black.
She crawled on her hands and knees to the nursery. Found wet towels strewn about. Empty medicine bottles on the floor. Frantic whispers. And the moans of a dying infant echoing through the house.
Her husband carried her back to bed. Made her promise not to go back in.
She lay there repeating one phrase over and over.
God never makes a mistake.
At half past six, someone came to her door and said: “Yes, she is dying. The doctor says so. She will not live an hour.”
She fell from the couch. Crawled back to the nursery. Snatched the baby from the nurse’s arms.
In just a few short hours, that angelic face was cruelly marred by the pitiless disease.
At seven o’clock, they were left with only one child.
Empty hands. Empty hands. A worn-out, exhausted body. And unutterable longings to flee from a world that has had for me so many sharp experiences.
God help me. My baby. My baby. God help me. My little lost Eddie.
Her name was Elizabeth Payson Prentiss.
Her husband George was a pastor. They ministered in Lower Manhattan during a cholera epidemic. Less than a mile from the epicenter of the disease.
She was sick her entire life. Chronic illness. Anxiety. Depression. Sleepless nights. And now two dead children.
One evening, coming home from the graves of Eddie and Bessie, she broke.
She told George: The night is dark and I am far from home. What are we to do now? Just sit silently while our home is broken up and our lives wrecked? I don’t think I can stand living for another moment, much less a lifetime.
George said something that changed everything.
God loves us all the more when we are broken. Just as we love our children more when they are sick. Suffering is not sent by God as a disciplinary measure. It is here to be used and mastered for His glory.
Then he said this:
The more we love God as we know Him in Jesus, the more His healing miracle takes place in our own hearts.
She sat alone that night. Opened her Bible. Then opened a hymn book. The melody of Nearer, My God, to Thee drifted through her mind.
And in the meter of that song, she wrote her own prayer to God.
More love to Thee, O Christ. More love to Thee.
Hear Thou the prayer I make on bended knee.
Once earthly joy I craved, sought peace and rest. Now Thee alone I seek. Give what is best.
Let sorrow do its work. Send grief and pain. Sweet are Thy messengers. Sweet their refrain.
More love, O Christ, to Thee. More love to Thee.
She wrote it on a scrap of paper. Thought nothing of it. Stuffed it in a journal.
It stayed hidden for thirteen years.
When she found it again, her husband asked to share it. She said no. It’s unfinished. He insisted. She added a few lines and let him print copies.
One copy found its way to William Howard Doan, who set it to music.
The song went global. Translated into dozens of languages. Sung in revivals across America. Beloved in China. So beloved that when Elizabeth died, a Chinese congregation crafted an exquisite fan with every word of her hymn written in Chinese characters and sent it to her husband.
A song born from the worst night of a mother’s life became the anthem of a generation.
Here’s what I can’t stop thinking about.
She didn’t write that hymn for an audience. She wrote it because she was dying inside and the only thing left to ask God for was more love.
Not more answers. Not more comfort. Not more understanding.
More love.
“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” — Matthew 6:20-21
When your love is directed toward heaven, what you value most is absolutely secure. Death can’t touch it. Disease can’t rot it. The grave can’t hold it.
But when you set your affection on what’s confined to this world, your course is set to disappointment, brokenness, and pain.
Elizabeth knew this. Not because she read it in a commentary. Because she crawled on her hands and knees to a nursery and held a dying baby with black lesions on her face.
And still said: God never makes a mistake.
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P.S. I listened to this story from a podcast called Forgotten. The host, Ronnie Brown, told it in a way that stopped me cold. I sat in my truck and didn’t move for ten minutes after it ended. Elizabeth Prentiss lost everything and her only prayer was more love. That’s the kind of faith that makes me feel like I haven’t even started yet.
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