Despite losing his 6-year-old daughter in a freak accident involving a badminton racket, a New Jersey pastor has been blogging about God’s grace in the midst of tragedy. 

Jesse Morgan, the worship and discipleship pastor at Green Pond Bible Chapel in Rockaway, New Jersey, was on a vacation with his family of six at a cottage in Maine when the “freak accident” occurred, according to his blog New Creations Living.

On June 1, Morgan’s kids were playing badminton when a racket broke during a downward swing and a sharp piece entered his daughter Lucy’s skull while she sat on the sideline. Lucy died four days later.

“The only reason we can even still stay sane is the grace (God) shows to us in bringing us this far,” the pastor wrote in a blog post on June 7. “We know what he’s done, where he’s brought us, and where he’s bringing us. It’s the path that is unknown and often terrifying. Yet, even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us.”

Morgan said his family is seeing God’s grace in new ways despite their suffering.

“Like gold at the bottom of a deep dark well,” he wrote. “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.”

Morgan said that on the day of the accident, he and his wife heard screaming coming from the front yard. There, they discovered that Lucy had a “catastrophic injury,” Morgan said, adding that Lucy was breathing but unresponsive.

Morgan said he and his wife held Lucy and cried out to God while waiting for emergency medical services to arrive.

Medical officials took Lucy to a local children’s hospital and where she was then care-flighted to Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine. However, after four days in the hospital, Lucy did not regain consciousness and passed in the early morning hours of June 5.

“No blog post today,” Morgan said on social media. “Lucy Lynn Morgan passed away this morning around 4 a.m. She now sees Jesus face to face. Thank you for all your love poured out to us.”

Since her passing, the pastor has shared how he has seen God continue to sustain the family.

He also explained he’s seen God’s grace in other ways, such as when he shared the gospel with hospital staff or watched his children draw “even closer to their aunts and uncles and grandparents.”

Additionally, when his family came home after Lucy’s passing, he found a house stocked with food and filled with flowers, he said.

However, entering the house was difficult, Morgan said. One of his children described their house as “the worst place on earth” and added that they “want to go back to the hospital with Lucy.”

Two other siblings asked how the family “could ever be happy again,” Morgan said.

Morgan said he and his family “just sat on the front steps for a while crying until I finally mustered up the courage to open the door.” After they entered, the family “collapsed in a pile on the kitchen floor crying harder as a family than we ever have,” he said.

In that moment, the family decided to play one of Lucy’s favorite games on the Apple TV, he said. Despite their tears, the family found laughter while playing it, he noted. One of their children remarked that “Lucy is probably in “heaven asking God to play” the game right now.

“God’s goodness and mercy were following us,” Morgan wrote. “Even there on the kitchen floor as our pressure cooker of deep grief burst out the release valve into hilarity and joy.”

The pastor told Fox News that he turned to his blog as a “simple cry for help” and a way to process. Now, though, he said he has seen God use the blog to impact others.

“I think God’s just been pleased to use it, and it’s been overwhelming. Yet I continue to seek to just be myself and to be authentic,” the pastor told the news publication.

Pastor’s daughter accepted Christ weeks before her death

In his blog, Morgan also shared how Lucy gave her life to Jesus a few weeks prior to her injury. His wife had explained the Gospel to her daughter at that time and Lucy then went into her room to privately ask God to be her savior, he said.

However, because his wife wasn’t with Lucy during the prayer, he said his wife had felt some doubt about their daughter’s salvation.

After her death, the couple opened Lucy’s backpack and found a journal that reassured them both.

“We opened her backpack and found her prayer journal that Bethany had given her a month ago to the day of her passing,” Morgan wrote and shared several pictures of its pages. “Only read it if you want to cry because you will be wrecked afterwards,” he added.

In the journal, the 6-year-old Lucy wrote, “God and Lucy. God is so amazing and He is the true God and He created everything and He died on the cross for our sins.”

Morgan said that “it’s almost as if God was writing with her, drawing her to Himself. How a six-year-old journals like this is beyond me.” On the next few pages, Lucy drew pictures of Biblical stories, Morgan said.

Since Lucy’s accident, a GoFundMe fundraiser has been set up to provide financial support for the family. The fundraiser has already raised more than $124,000.

Lucy’s memorial service will be held on June 15 at 11 a.m. at Green Pond Bible Church and will be livestreamed at www.greenpondbible.org.

Freelance journalist Liz Lykins writes for WORLD Magazine, Christianity Today, Ministry Watch, and other publications.