Father of 6-year-old killed in badminton accident recalls holding her, 'crying out to God' (2024)

Earlier this month, the unthinkable happened to New Jersey pastor Jesse Morgan — his 6-year-old daughter, Lucy, died in a badminton accident while his family was vacationing in Maine.

Over the course of several heart-wrenching and spiritual blog posts about the grief of losing a young child, the father details how a much-needed sabbatical became a parent’s worst nightmare and how his faith guided him and his family through their struggle.

The accident

In a May 14 blog post, the New Jersey native and father of four writes about how this break from his work as a pastor of worship and discipleship at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Rockaway, New Jersey, was meant to last until early August. The family had intended to spend time at several locations in the Northeast.

“My personal goals are for soul rest, recalibration, and reorientation of my calling here at Green Pond,” he wrote. “Something happens to a pastor when duties are taken away, and you really have to focus on the question of ‘who am I’ when you’re simply living as a human being instead of a ‘human doing.’”

In a June 1 blog post entitled “Lucy’s Story: Calamity Strikes,” Morgan seems in disbelief. It was the family’s last day at a beautiful lakeside cottage in Limerick, Maine, and the children had decided to try badminton in the front yard around lunchtime. Suddenly, Morgan and his wife Bethany hear screaming.

“Due to a freak accident with a racquet that broke on a downward swing, a sharp piece had entered Lucy’s skull while she was sitting on the sideline and caused catastrophic injury,” he wrote. “She was still breathing but unresponsive as I held her with Bethany, crying out to God.”

Lucy is taken to a local hospital before being flown to Maine Medical Center in Portland where they remove part of her skull to relieve pressure on her brain, Morgan wrote. Health care professionals in the pediatric ICU soon tell the family that it is unlikely Lucy will survive.

The family is in “incomprehensible pain,” and Morgan’s thoughts are scattered, he wrote. He reflects upon the fact that, in a twist of fate, the subject he talked about in his final adult Bible study class before going on sabbatical was grief.

“Am I willing to submit to my own advice? Right now, holding her hand, I’m not sure, but I want to,” he wrote.

Beginning to tackle their grief

In a June 2 blog post, Morgan says he and his wife are struggling to explain the situation to their other three children.

“Last night we never slept. We dozed here and there holding each other in a hospital recliner. We knew what the morning brought,” he wrote. " ... Walking into the hospital room that the staff generously gave us were three little humans sleeping soundly. It hit us so hard at that moment that there were only three not four, and the incompleteness felt so profound as we watched them sleep.”

The couple tries to break the news as gently as they can, but explaining to a 4-, 8- and 10-year-old that their sister will likely die soon is not a conversation anyone wants to have, Morgan wrote.

The three children react differently, with 8-year-old Shiloh breaking down immediately and explaining that she can’t imagine sleeping alone in her room. Four-year-old Atticus, also known as “AJ,” just wants to be held, but soon starts asking questions in his “typical machine gun” style. Silas — the eldest sibling at 10 years old — tries to “hold it in as the tough guy” but eventually bursts out crying, “I don’t want to be a family of five!”

Soon, the doctors remove the fluid drain from Lucy’s brain because her brain has swelled so much that the drain is useless. Both Morgan and his wife’s biological and spiritual families are now at the hospital to provide support, but “putting hope in brain and heart monitors is maddening,” he wrote.

As Morgan groans at his daughter’s bedside, he can’t decide what would hurt more — giving up on Lucy’s recovery or continuing to hope in the face of terrible odds.

“We started today in such anguish, asking, ‘What about this ‘peace’ people talk about in suffering? Are we not spiritual enough?’” he wrote.

The agony of waiting

By the third day, Morgan is struggling with his relationship with God more than ever, but he maintains his ardent faith in the face of medical developments that confirm his worst fears — Lucy’s brain injury is as severe as the doctors had posited. She’s showing signs of brain death and will likely be dead within a day, he wrote.

“If there is any good news in this, it’s that she hasn’t felt any pain over the past few days,” he wrote. “We will keep waiting on the Lord, getting second opinions and exhausting every possible avenue while crying out to God for a miracle.”

While the family reads Psalms to Lucy, Morgan reflects on what he can learn from the different ways his family is handling their individual grief. His wife has “plunged deep” into her relationship with God but struggles to eat. Four-year-old AJ shifts between standing at Lucy’s beside and taking a break by looking out the window. Eight-year-old Shiloh is expressing her sadness creatively by making things for Lucy, and 10-year-old Silas is giving out endless hugs and kisses.

“We have taught them to only take what they can handle, which involves everything from just standing outside the room to kissing her. Sometimes all they can do is stand from afar, and that’s ok,” the father wrote.

Morgan and his wife are also now contemplating mistakes they made as parents while raising Lucy and confronting them head-on. Ultimately, they just feel grateful for the time they had with their daughter.

He ends the blog post by responding to people who have told the family to “keep fighting” for Lucy, asking what it is they think he has control over other than his pleas to God for her recovery.

Lucy’s death

Morgan begins his final blog post by reflecting on how his wife’s groans of grief on the day of Lucy’s death sound similar to the groans of pain she voiced while giving birth to their daughter nearly seven years ago.

“I am so proud of how she bore this impossible burden these past few days by God’s grace,” he wrote.

The day itself is a blur. The couple wakes up crying after little sleep, but soon faces impossible decisions that they make with the help of medical professionals, Morgan wrote.

Around 10 p.m. on June 4, Lucy’s family sings “He Will Hold Me Fast” before saying goodbye, Morgan wrote. On June 5 at 1:32 a.m., Lucy is declared braindead. Around 4 a.m., her heart stops beating.

In the wake of Lucy’s death, Morgan tries to find “God’s grace” in both big and little things: an endless supply of fast food, the kind hospital staff, the support his family has received and the way his children have become closer to their extended and spiritual family through this experience.

“Like gold at the bottom of a deep dark well, there was and is evidence of God’s grace in this utter tragedy, we just had to be willing to plumb the depths to see it,” he wrote.

Coming home

But the car ride home to New Jersey is painful. Morgan and his family feel “a gaping hole in the fabric of our lives” made worse by having to do things like order food from Wendy’s for only five people, he wrote. Afterward, he imagines Lucy eating chicken nuggets in the backseat of the car.

The family comes home to steps lined with flowers and a fridge full of food, but they can barely bring themselves to go inside, Morgan wrote. AJ describes their home as “the worst place on Earth,” while Shiloh and Silas ask how it is possible the family could ever be happy again.

“We just sat on the front steps for a while crying until I finally mustered up the courage to open the door. We again collapsed in a pile on the kitchen floor crying harder as a family than we ever have,” Morgan wrote.

It’s then that Morgan gets the idea to ask his children what they think Lucy would want them to do. After some thought, he wrote, the children decided she’d want to play a video game called “Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm.” The family then begins to reminisce about the way Lucy mispronounced words with the letter “R,” including the “horn” part of “Oceanhorn,” and AJ suggests that right now, she’s asking God to play the game with her in heaven.

“Of course, the most famous of Lucy’s words that feature the letter ‘R’ is the word ‘fart.’ We then commenced a theological discussion about what Lucy’s farts would smell like in heaven,” Morgan wrote. “God’s goodness and mercy were following us, even there on the kitchen floor as our pressure cooker of deep grief burst out the release valve into hilarity and joy.”

Lucy’s final gift

Morgan confesses that he hadn’t “been present” a few weeks ago when Lucy had begun worrying about whether she would go to heaven. His wife is worried that their daughter, who likely couldn’t fully understand religion, wasn’t able to shake her fear and doubt.

But the grieving parents soon find an unexpected gift in the form of Lucy’s prayer journal, which they’d given her a month ago. Morgan shared pictures of the journal in a blog post, including an entry entitled “God and Lucy.”

Lucy’s handwritten, 6-year-old writing essentially reads: “God is so amazing and he is the true god and he created everything and he died on the cross for our sins.” The entry is accompanied by hearts — a visual theme that she continues on subsequent pages.

“This was one of the biggest gifts of grace and mercy God has given us. To see her heart, to know her love for her Savior, and to rejoice in her mustard seed of faith that had begun to bloom was what we needed,” he wrote.

A GoFundMe campaign has been created to benefit the Morgans. As of Wednesday morning, it has raised over $135,000.