Praise & Pray: Alayna's 99 Days to Heaven

By Jared Taylor

Her parents called her Alayna Bug because the decorations in her nursery were covered in lady bugs. But God had different plans for her first nursery. Streets of gold, pearly gates, and angels suited her better.

Praise & Pray is the story of a tiny little girl and a great big God. Born one pound, twelve ounces, Alayna Taylor lived her entire life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Through their daily blog posts, Alayna's parents expressed their faith throughout the ninety-nine-day journey, encouraging their followers to not only pray for things but to also praise God throughout the process.

The journey inspired her father to share her story and his faith. Whether you're interested in the narrative, have questions about eternity for children, or wonder how to comfort someone that has lost a child, Praise & Pray will help you navigate those challenging waters. Alayna's story will encourage you to diversify your faith portfolio with two equally important investments: praise and prayer!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886440386

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter 1: When God Made You

Chapter 2: Life Moves Pretty Fast

Chapter 3: I Saw God Today

Chapter 4: Hang On

Chapter 5: Pray

Chapter 6: Answered Prayers

Chapter 7: Broken

Chapter 8: Praise

Chapter 9: Miracles

Chapter 10: Something New

Chapter 1: Hold onto the Cross1

Chapter 12: Going Home

Chapter 13: Praise & Pray

Chapter 14: Blessings

Chapter 15: WHY?

Chapter 16: What Now?

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Praise and Pray

Alayna's 99 Days to Heaven

Jared Taylor

ISBN 979-8-88644-037-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-038-6 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Jared Taylor

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises.

—James 5:13 (NLT)

Introduction

Do you ever wonder why we face some of the trials in life that we face? For most of my life, I've never really worried about much. Until I was twenty-six years old, I think the biggest trials in life that I faced were my grandfather's passing in 1993, losing the South Carolina High School state championship in baseball in 1999, and whichever failed relationship was fresh on my mind at any particular time in my life. Other than losing my Papa Herbert at eleven years old, none of those seem like a big deal, and in hindsight, they really weren't. Unfortunately, growing older and wiser doesn't cause our trials to stop.

I do not consider myself an author. There are a lot of great authors out there, some of whose words will be quoted throughout this book. I am also not a pastor, evangelist, or theologian. I am a simple man. I try to never get too high or too low. I am a small business owner in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I grew up in the town of Jonesville, South Carolina, which is a small town about thirty miles southeast of Spartanburg and about ninety miles northwest of the state capital in Columbia. I was raised in church and attended West Springs Baptist Church in Pauline, South Carolina, most of my life. I have had the honor of serving as a deacon and a Sunday school teacher. I also participated in a ministry at the Department of Juvenile Justice as well as an international mission trip in 2014 to Nicaragua. I could never have asked for a better church family. It does make it easier when most of your church family is…well…your family.

Although I was raised in church, I never fully grasped the concept of what it meant to be a Christian. As a child, I honestly thought that when you were old enough, you walk down to the preacher, tell him you want to be baptized, and once you were dunked, you were a Christian. So at the age of eight, I went down and told the preacher I was ready to be baptized. Sadly, this was in direct relation to my best friend Blake going down the week before. Blake always seemed to have a better grasp on church than I did. That is probably why he is the minister for Adult Discipleship at a large church in Charlotte, North Carolina, today, and I am in business for myself. It wasn't until four years later when I really realized what being a Christian really meant.

When I was twelve years old, a professional fisherman named Terry Chupp came to speak at our church on Baptist Men's Day. Terry came into the Sunday school class for my age group and shared Jesus with us. For whatever reason, this day, I realized that what I had done four years earlier was just a show. What I felt on this particular day was the real deal. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It was the huge weight of sin that Jesus lifted off me and put onto himself. When I think about that day, it brings a smile to my face because it is a day that I will never forget. I followed through with everything and was baptized again a few weeks later. This was the single most important day of my life because on that day, I came to truly know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Another day I will never forget is the day I became a father.

This book is not only an attempt to tell my story but more so the story of a little girl and a great big God. When I say little girl, that could very well be an understatement as you'll see as you read further. This is the story of my daughter Alayna who was born premature in January of 2009. I will go into more detail, but I'm sure you can imagine the trials that we faced during this time. This book will outline the ups and downs of dealing with a premature baby as well as the faith that held us together through a situation like this.

I want to begin by telling how this book came to be. I have several passions in life, and when I am passionate about something, I go for it. I never really thought that writing a book would be something that I would want to do. After all, I hate reading, and I have to force myself to sit down and read a book. I've never found myself passionate about reading unless it is something about Clemson University football or baseball. I am a huge Clemson sports fan, and I can read about football or baseball all day long. Other than that, I have a hard time finding anything else that will keep my attention and keep me from falling asleep while I'm reading it.

I decided to write this book after my mother-in-law, Renee, had her first book published. When I started writing this book, it was her only book, but she now has others. You see, Renee has been able to do several things in her life that I also have wanted to do. I consider them to be bucket list items. You know, those things that you want to do before you kick the bucket. Some people dream of getting married, having kids, having grandkids, jumping out of an airplane, or bungee jumping. You get the idea, right?

Renee has had an opportunity to do several of these type things that some people only get to dream of. At the age of twelve, she and her five sisters recorded a southern gospel album and toured around the area singing at churches. When I first met Renee, I thought that was one of the coolest things in the world. Since I was about ten or eleven years old, I have been a country singer. When I say country singer, I don't mean just any ole country singer. I mean a bedroom-door-closed, baseball-bat-for-a-guitar, cassette tape, a capella song, recording country music star. I would sit in my room after school and write out song lyrics. I even sent a few letters to record companies to find out how to get my songs published. I'm pretty sure some of my lyrics can be heard in hit country songs of the nineties, but I haven't been able to locate copies of the songs I sent off. Let's just say that if I had not sent out some of my lyrics to Arista Records, Brooks & Dunn might have one less hit song in their career. I was always too scared to take the next step and actually try and find someone to put music to my words, though. After all, I was fourteen years old when I sent those letters, and should any of my friends find out I was writing country songs, I would have been a laughingstock of Jonesville High School. I still know where those song lyrics and recordings are too. There is only one other person who knows where they are, though, so don't plan on ever seeing or hearing them until I am dead and gone.

So after I found out that Renee had recorded an album, I really admired her. In 2010, I finally recorded my first country album. Granted the songs on my album aren't the songs that I wrote at age fourteen, but you would definitely recognize most of the songs because most of them were on the radio. It was really just karaoke inside a recording studio, but it was a lot of fun, and it was all I could ask for. You may never hear me on the radio, but that's okay because I had a blast doing it. To be honest, it's probably going to happen again sooner rather than later (it's 2022 now and still no new album).

After I found out that Renee had published a book, you guessed it, it made me want to write a book too. Then Lacy's dad, Joel, wrote a book as well and that really kept me wanting to do it myself. Because of our journey, people had told me before that I should do it, and I just replied with something along the lines of You think so? knowing that I had no intentions of writing a book. However, one Saturday in February 2012, my wife Lacy and I were on our way to a baby shower in Columbia, and Lacy was reading her mom's book. I told her while we were driving that I thought I might want to write a book sometime. She replied to me that I had already written one. She was referring to several months' worth of journal entries I had made on the CaringBridge.org website that we had set up for friends and family to get updates on Alayna. I had forgotten that I had written 104 pages of journal entries throughout the time we spent in the NICU. This was also why people had suggested this to me before. For whatever reason, Lacy's comment is really what got the wheels turning in my mind, telling me that not only could I do this, but I already had most of the book written. I just needed to put it all together and add a few other thoughts.

So here I am trying to put into words what is on my heart. Writing this book has not been a quick process. I began in 2012 and finished ten years later. Now that I am forty years old, I don't aspire to be the next great country or Christian singer. I don't aspire to be the next Billy Graham or the next great author of Christian books. What I do aspire to be is more like my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I hope to live a life that is pleasing to him. I want to go and make disciples. I want to be the best husband that I can be; the best father that I can be; and the best son, brother, and uncle that I can be. I want to be the person who tells my children about Jesus and I want to be the one who leads them to come to know him. This book may not allow me to be or do any of those things that I want. But if one person should read this story and gain a glimmer of hope from it, then it's worth my time to write it. If one person finds comfort because they see that there is someone out there who cares for them, then it is worth the time. More importantly, if one person comes to know the Lord Jesus Christ because they read this book, then it is absolutely, positively worth every single minute.

Chapter 1

When God Made You

As I sat there at the red light, I remember thinking to myself, Wow! I hope the girl in the car behind me is the one I am supposed to meet. She's beautiful. She told me that she would be driving a white Dodge Neon. This was not the car of her choice but the one the rental car company gave her while her car was in the shop getting repaired. This beautiful lady in my rearview was also driving a white Dodge Neon, and I could tell she had dark hair, which just so happened to be the same color hair as the girl I was supposed to be meeting. The light turned green, and she turned right into the O'Charley's parking lot where I was supposed to meet my date. I didn't see where she parked, but when I got inside, there she was. She was there waiting on her date, Jared Taylor.

Lacy and I had never actually met. We first spoke to each other on the website MySpace—yes, I said MySpace. For you, young folks, out there, MySpace was Facebook before Facebook really became Facebook. MySpace was originally a website designed for aspiring musical artists to post their music for people to hear. It turned into an online meeting place. Another cool feature was you had a top friends list. If you were listed in someone's top 6 or top 9 friends, then that meant you were important to them. People would get upset if they weren't on your top friends list. This was also a time when websites like eharmony and Match.com were still in the infant stages; and Tinder, Bumble, or Farmers Only didn't even exist.

When I first saw Lacy on MySpace, she only had one picture on her profile, and she will tell you it was just a plain picture of her. I thought she was cute, so I sent her a message to see if she would chat with me. She replied back, and we talked back and forth for a few days. Then the first week of May 2006, Lacy posted a picture from her nursing school graduation, and I was floored by it. She posted several pictures actually, one of which was of her and her soon-to-be brother-in-law Josh. This got me wondering if she actually had a boyfriend and hadn't told me about it, but she cleared that up pretty quickly and all was well. It was this picture, though, that told me I better ask this girl out, and I better ask her out fast before some other MySpace guy saw that picture and started trying to chat with her too. The first picture was cute. This picture was more Wow! She is gorgeous!

It wasn't popular to meet people online at this point, and if you did, then it was considered odd and frightening to some, or weird even. Even Lacy's dad had told her to watch out for those weirdos on MySpace. She wasn't too concerned about me since I was very good friends with one of her high school buddies. Not to mention the fact that my boss, with whom I worked very closely every day, was in the same Sunday school class as her parents. We never really told anyone that we met on MySpace. Anytime anyone would ask, we would say we had some mutual friends, which was the truth, but not the whole truth. So if you are one of those special people that aren't feeling special right now because you never knew we met on MySpace. Surprise!

The date was great as we had dinner and discussed all the different things that you discuss on a first date to try and get to know each other. Lacy found out more about what I did for a living, and I found out all about the nursing profession. Lacy also found out about my Clemson football passion, and I made sure real quick that she was a Clemson fan too. Had I found out she was a South Carolina Gamecock fan, I don't know if there would have been a second date. That might have been a deal breaker. That may sound silly, but I believe when you're in a relationship with someone, you should be in fellowship with them in all aspects, even sports fanhood. I wasn't looking for a house divided as I had been there, done that, and wasn't planning on doing it again. After all, the Bible tells us not to be unequally yoked, right? Okay, maybe I took that verse out of context. The Bible does say that a house divided against itself will fall. I know, I did it again. Let's just say, I wasn't looking for divided loyalties when it comes to college allegiance.

Our first date led to many more throughout the next few weeks, and she agreed to go steady. I laugh as I type that because no one says that anymore. We began to date exclusively. We became boyfriend/girlfriend. Refer to it however you like. We were official. What it really meant was that I had officially outkicked my coverage. Now if you're not a football fan, you may not understand what that term means. In football terms, when you kick the ball to the other team and you kick it too far, too fast, or too low, you don't allow your teammates enough time to run down the field and tackle the person catching the ball. You leave them too much room to run the ball before someone arrives to tackle them. You want to kick the ball far, but also very high so that your team can get to the guy catching the ball before he has time to run with it. If you kick it too low, then you have outkicked your coverage. Basically, what that means is, you have kicked it too good. In dating terms, you have been deemed to have outkicked your coverage when you engage in a relationship with someone much better looking than you, smarter than you, or of higher social class than you. You've basically found yourself with someone out of your league. I definitely did that.

Later that first month of dating, I had a previously scheduled Memorial Day trip to Texas to see my cousin Mark. Mark lived in a small town called Fall City, Texas, which is about forty-five minutes south of San Antonio. The entire time I was there, all I could think about was Lacy. I think we talked on the phone half the time I was there. On the Saturday night of the trip, we went into San Antonio to go to a George Strait concert. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel to eat on the way to the concert, and I was so smitten that I took a picture of myself with my cell phone in my cowboy hat and sent it