In order to fight for healing following the death of my daughter, I had to take the word of God and hide it deep within my heart.
In the early days of my journey through grief, I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to pray for one of the Mercy Teams at Victory World Church during a staff prayer meeting. Usually, this wouldn’t be a cause for anxiety, but the Mercy Team the Lord prompted me to pray for was Victory4Life, the ministry that serves women that have lost children through abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth or in early infancy.
Yeah...it was going to be tough to get me out of my seat and up to the microphone.
He was patiently persistent in His prompting, and I finally obliged. I don’t remember everything I prayed, but I do remember praying that the babies would live and not die in Jesus’ name! Later that evening during my personal time studying scripture and praying, I ran across this verse in Psalm 118:
17. I will live and not die,
and I will tell what the Lord has done.
I felt that it was confirmation that I was supposed to pray earlier that morning.
A brief 2 weeks later, we found out we were pregnant with our son, and I adopted Psalm 118:17 as the scripture I would confess over him daily for a safe pregnancy and delivery.
On the morning of June 9, 2015 I woke up super early because I was scheduled to deliver my son that morning at 10am. I opened up my Bible App to a Devotional by Youth for Christ for Youth Leaders. It’s a 30-day devotional, and I admit, I had been reading it for way longer than 30 days. However, I was near the end and on that day I read one entitled “Confronting Impossible Odds.”
Fear had been creeping into my spirit in the weeks leading up to June 9th as I never made it past 34 weeks with my daughter. The morning of his delivery at 38 weeks, I felt like I was facing an impossible odd, and the devotional was RIGHT on time.
In it, the author says, “God has not checked out of this business. He never tires of delivering. He still does the impossible. Bring Him the ashes wet with tears. Bring Him the jeering. Bring all of it. All things are possible...yes, all things. Especially today.”
Along with the scripture references, God made it clear that He was going into that operating room with us and that my son would live!
I relay the details of the devotional because in the operating room later that morning, my doctor’s words echoed loudly throughout the room before I heard my son’s first cries: “This is a miracle! Someone grab a camera!”
After a bit of commotion, I heard the cry of my beautiful son, then my doctor explained the miracle she had just witnessed:
As she was performing my c-section, when she got to the point of cutting my uterus, it was already wide open! My son was protected in my stomach by the amniotic sac alone with no extra support of my uterus, which in her estimation had been open for quite some time. Had I gone into labor on my own with my water breaking, with no enclosed uterus to support my child, both he and I would have died within minutes.
Do you see the importance of the devotional?
Beginning at 8 weeks pregnant with my son, I began seeing both my obstetrician and a fetal specialist to ensure my child would be born without circumstance. However, it was God’s sovereign hand that ensured his safe delivery because even with twice weekly appointments, the ultrasound never showed my open uterus... It’s a miracle that we’re here today!
God is in the business of miracles and he will always exchange beauty for ashes. Though the enemy tried to steal the life of both my son and I, God has honored my request that we live and not die to tell what He has done! He alone declares our beginning and our end.
To all who mourn in Israel,[c]
he will give a crown of beauty for ashes,
a joyous blessing instead of mourning,
festive praise instead of despair.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks
that the Lord has planted for his own glory. -Isaiah 61:3 NLT
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