“In the long run, I honestly found out he’s just as broken as me, but he just knows Jesus,” Hayes said. “He needs Jesus. Every morning he wakes up, he needs Jesus, and Jesus is a light through him. And then, it was an awareness. I began to look in the mirror and just look at simple things.”
Hayes said that Cooper was never pushy about his belief in Christ, but that he would simply answer his and his wife’s questions.
In 2018, the Hayes’ seventh child, Oakleigh Klover Hayes, was born, but died shortly after birth due to a uterine rupture, which almost claimed Laney’s life as well.
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After burying his daughter, Hayes recalled that he almost relapsed, but he relied on his friendship with Cooper, “who really, really allowed the Lord, through him, to love on me through some nasty, nasty stuff. And I’m talking about stuff where most people would be drawn away” from someone.
Hayes said, “He’s a brother. I mean, I can’t say anything. I love Craig. I love his vulnerability. And again, I had never experienced unconditional love of Christ through another human until I met him.”
