Miracles, Medicine, and Men

I have always been a woman of faith. My first pregnancy experience caused that faith to get radical, and I say that unashamed! When we lost Eden after the TTTS surgery, my first response to the news was, “God can raise her. My baby is not dead. I don’t accept that.” From the moment the doctor told us we lost her, to the moment I delivered the girls, I wholeheartedly believed that God was going to raise her to life again. He had raised Lazarus (John 11:1-44), the daughter of Jairus(Mark 5:21-43), and the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:8-37), not to mention Jesus was resurrected from the dead; so why couldn’t he raise my daughter? Though resurrection was not the outcome of Eden’s story, I STILL believe that God is the same God today that He was back then. He is still in the miracle-working business. Miracles are still taking place on this earth in the present time! So I stood firm and my family believed with me. Once I accepted God’s will for Eden to stay in heaven with Him, I sensed He was raising my faith to see Asha through the NICU journey. If I could believe Him to raise Eden from death, then surely I could believe in Him to complete, perfect, and protect Asha, who He had chosen to give life to. That faith came into play the moment the doctors would report something negative. The day Asha turned two weeks old, we arrived at the hospital expecting to celebrate her mini birthday. The doctor came in and told us to have a seat, so I had a feeling we were in for news we didn’t want to hear. She informed us that Asha had not urinated all morning, and that they were concerned that her kidneys had shut down. The doctor informed us that Asha needed to urinate or else irreversible damage could take place. At that moment we were both punched in the gut, but something rose in me: a faith and boldness I couldn’t explain. I told Trey I was going to the lobby to get my mom, and as I walked down the hall to that lobby, I told the enemy I wasn’t playing this game. God had given us the promise He made. Asha was our miracle, she was our reward and inheritance, and I was NOT about to let the enemy just take that from us. I grabbed my mom and told her it was time to pray, and it didn’t have to be a quiet, cute, polite prayer. We had been praying the whole time, but out of respect for the other patients, we kept it at a pretty low volume. This was not the case on that day, this situation called for a bold war cry kind of prayer. We went to Asha’s incubator and prayed ferociously and even prayed in the Spirit in our heavenly prayer language. We didn’t care who thought we were loud or strange, we were calling on heaven for a miracle! No man or medicine could move upon Asha to urinate, but we weren’t relying on men or medicine, we were trusting in Jehovah Rapha! I didn't know it at the time, but while I was at Asha’s bedside with my mom, Trey had gone outside to call his parents. His mother immediately cried out to heaven; she wailed so hard that Trey’s dad told him they would call him back. Trey then went to the car and cried out to the Lord himself as well. We were calling on heaven like never before. The Lord spoke to my mom and told us that it was time to start praising and thanking Him, the same battle strategy he gave Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles, so that is what we did. Yes, we shed tears, but even with tears falling from our eyes we began to thank God and sing praises. I went to take a brief break in the waiting area and then went right back to Asha’s bedside, this time joined by my sister, and started singing worship songs over her The initial meeting with the doctor was at 2 pm. Our next touch time was at 7:30 pm, and at 8 pm when I opened Asha’s diaper, it was full of urine! A MIRACLE ONLY GOD COULD PERFORM! The doctor told us her kidney could “possibly” revive in a couple days, her words were “We just have to hope and pray. We’ll see.” What she didn’t know was that hope and prayer were more than just words to us, they were our lifeline. Our hope in the Lord and our prayers to Him were the only thing that would get us through. I asked the nurse if I could keep that dirty diaper, and we deemed it “THE VICTORY PAMPER!” I know it sounds gross, but I kept that dirty diaper in a ziploc bag until I couldn’t keep it anymore. On the days that the doctors brought up concerns that made me uncomfortable, or the days the enemy tried to deceive me into thinking we wouldn’t make it, I would stare at that diaper or carry it around with me. It was my reminder that God was always in control and still working miracles.It was my reminder that He always had a solution, even when the doctors didn’t. It was my reminder that His will always was and always is to heal.