Below is a Thank you e-mail I received from Jared to everyone who has prayed for him and the family during this time of loss in their lives. I am posting it so that those of you who have prayed for them can read his expression of appreciation. I too, want to say thank you for your prayers on their behalf. God Bless you each and everyone.
To everyone,
October 2nd I had a delivery just 15min away from Mena, AR. Well, what’s a guy in love supposed to do, the woman of his dreams was getting off work in just a little bit. I, of course, drove the fifteen minutes out of my way to surprise her as she was walking out of the bank. I was in my unmarked delivery van so she had no idea it was me. In fact, she told me she was thinking, who is this moron, don’t they know we are closed? When she saw me she got the biggest grin on her face and asked, “what are you doing here?” We got to spend a little over an hour together that day, which was the last time I would ever see her conscious.
God is so merciful. It feels weird to say that when I just lost the most precious and dearest person in my life. I feel lost, but at the same time, I feel like I am full of purpose.
On October 5th at 7:20am I was startled awake by the phone ringing. Kayla doesn’t usually call me quite that early and it scared me. I sat right up in bed and grabbed the phone. It was Krista, Kayla’s sister. She said that Kayla had woken up in pain and when she went to use the restroom she had collapsed and started having seizures. When they had called an ambulance Kayla stopped breathing. They ended up having to resuscitate her twice in Mena. I ran into my parent’s bedroom yelling that Kayla was in trouble and bad sick and we needed to go. It’s a 2-½ hour drive and I was impatient. Dad jumped on the computer and sent out some emails for prayer while mom was in the shower. We left and only got about 45 minutes down the road when Bob, Kayla’s dad, called and said her condition was bad enough that they were moving her to Little Rock. They where just waiting on the fog to clear up so they could fly. We got to the hospital around 10am and her helicopter got to the hospital around 1pm. I sat in the emergency room with her for an hour or so praying and they told us they were moving her up to ICU. They told us she had 2 huge blood clots in her lungs that had blocked both of her main arteries. She had, had 3 heart attacks and had to be resuscitated 3 times, that they were scared of brain damage. I sat with her for as many hours as family would let me. I held her hand in to the wee hours of the morning talking, singing, praying, and hoping that God would do the miraculous in the way I thought He should.
By Wednesday night I had only 3 or fours of sleep, and most of that was sitting by Kayla or in a recliner. I was exhausted to say the least. But I didn’t want to leave the hospital for more than just a few hours. She just wasn’t responding the way the doctors said that she should. Well, when the nurse that night was cleaning out her lungs Kayla made 4 attempts to cough, which she hadn’t done up to this time. This was a big deal that put lots of hope in my heart and gave me a kind of peace. Mom talked me into going home to get some sleep so I went home earlier than I had, and slept about 10 hours or so and got back to the hospital around noon. She hadn’t tried to cough again, and that scared me. When I went into her room at 12:30pm or so I put my hand on hers and it was cool, I felt her arm and it was also cool, as was her shoulders and forehead. Even her feet were cold. I felt her feet and they were cold so I put a blanket on her and sat down next to her knowing that this was probably the last day or two we would get to spend together.
I had shed a ‘boat load’ of tears up to this point and was sitting there in shock. I couldn’t believe that my life was lying there on that bed slipping out of my grasp. I had prayed so many prayers and hoped beyond hope that this would change. While I believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God could raise her up and heal her, I really felt like he wasn’t going to. At the same time I was so scared to feel that way, I thought it lessened my faith. I just had to trust God that he was doing what was in our best interest.
The doctors had told Bob and Sharon they were going to have to make a decision in the next few days if they wanted her to be on life support or not and we were all in agreement that no one wanted to make that decision. We started to pray that God would make that decision for us. If He were going to give her back to us that He would raise her up, if He weren’t that He would take her. It was Thursday now and the doctors said they were running one more test. It would take about 2 hours to conduct and for us to get something to eat or just relax. We all went down to the Cafeteria and everyone was pretty solemn. We came back up and sat around a while when the nurse came out and said the doctor wanted to speak to the whole family and for us to gather in one room. He then told us that there was no increase in brain activity and what he feared was true. She had actually declined quite a bit in the last 48 hours and there was only a small part of her brain working. He told us that as of 4:40 on October the 9th 2008 the state of Arkansas was declaring her brain dead, which is the same as death. We were all so shocked, we felt as if some one had let the air out of the room. Most of us started crying and when I left the room it really started hitting me again. We walked in her room to say goodbye and I could hardly stand. I don’t know how to express the pain I felt. I’m not going to even try.
Bob and Sharon, Krista, Mom and Dad, Pastor and Sister White, and myself were in the room that afternoon weeping. We weren’t just crying we were weeping. All of us, no one was trying to be strong we just wept!!!
Her funeral was today, Monday, October 13th, and it was so beautiful. There was so much pink, Kayla’s favorite color. There were around 450 people there, and Pastor White and my dad did such an awesome job. They had a slide show that everyone cried and laughed through. It is amazingly hard to look, what you thought was your future, in the face and say “I’ll see you up there.”
Kayla was the most amazing woman I have ever met. She was very giving, loving, selfless, and just incredible.
When I was about 17 I started praying for my future wife. I prayed very specifically. I mean very specific. She literally filled every, and I mean every, area that I had prayed about. She was perfect for me!!! She kept me in line. Our love seemed unusually strong we felt like we could go through anything together. We had already come through some tough situations and felt like God had given us the victory over those; we had fought some spiritual battles that only our parents know about.
It’s hard to say goodbye, but then again, I didn’t, I never told her goodbye, and I won’t. I will do exactly what she wanted me to do. I’ll preach, and I will see people get the Holy Ghost under my ministry.
Kayla lived her life so she didn’t have to ‘get right with God’ before she died, she STAYED right with God. She lived her life as a testimony. She literally affected the city of Mena. The mayor and his wife were there. There were so many different kinds of people there at the funeral. Don’t wait getting yourself right with God. DO IT NOW!!! She didn’t have time to ‘pray through’.
I want to say thank you to everyone who has prayed for me and for Kayla and her family. You will never know this side of eternity what that has meant to us. Most of you have received thank you emails from my dad and sister but I wanted to thank you personally. There is no way I could respond, individually, to the MASSIVE amounts of support and prayers we have received. I had to take a week and a half off of work, so thank you for the offerings. I love you all, and please don’t stop praying now.
Jared C Doran
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