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Finding hope in the darkest days of grief

Aled meets young mum Louise Blyth who shares her deeply personal story of how miraculous answers to prayer led her to finding faith and hope in the darkest days of grief.

Louise and George were married in 2011 and felt like they had the world at their feet. But just four years later, when their youngest son was just eight months old, they received the devastating news that George had advanced bowel cancer. Louise observes:

鈥淚 don't think anything can ever prepare you for life-altering news. And I always say to people, the moment that my world changed was when George was diagnosed with cancer, not when he actually ended up dying of cancer. And that's because our old lives and our old perspective on life ended in that moment.鈥

George died in November 2016, aged just 34.

In the days leading up to his death, as he lay in a hospital bed in dreadful pain, a sequence of remarkable events began. A friend of a friend offered to come and pray with Louise and George. Neither were religious but they agreed. Louise describes what happened next:

鈥淲e said these prayers, and I was sat there thinking, 鈥榯his is really great and really nice, and I really want to believe in this. But this just surely can't be real.鈥 But at that moment, George puts his hand out and asks this woman to come and sit closer to him. And then there was just this feeling in the room of peace, of lightness of clouds 鈥 And he just said to me, all of the pain, all of the pain I've been feeling has gone.鈥

Louise was speaking to Aled at the start of Holy Week when Christians around the world prepare for Easter and ahead of Bowel Cancer Awareness Month in the UK.

See more on Songs of Praise 鈥淔inding Hope鈥, Sunday 28th March at 1.15pm and on iPlayer

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Duration:

6 minutes

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