Day 28

A Miracle Story

Hello Friends,

It has been a busy day of grilling and making a cake for my fifth child who turned 26 today. Celebrating Aaron’s birthday always takes me back to his birth and my subsequent blood transfusions, two weeks of pain, hospital stays, and two emergency room visits. Without going into so much detail that you click unsubscribe, I will share that about seven hours after my son was born, I experienced sudden and extreme abdominal and pelvic pain. While the medical staff worked to determine the problem, I begged the Lord to take the pain away. I knew that my husband was on his way up to the hospital with our other four kids and my mom, and I did not want them to see me in such agony. Besides, it hurt like the dickens.

The nurses tried several remedies and even gave me a shot of pain medicine in my hip, but nothing helped. I was soaked in sweat, miserable, and suffering pain like I had never before experienced. Meanwhile, baby Aaron was crying in the bassinet, and I told the nurse I could not feed him. If you knew me, this fact alone would have told you how miserable I was. (Me with all my babies: “Don’t you give my baby formula!”)

As I thrashed on the bed and begged the Lord over and over to stop the pain, I did not understand why He didn’t. I knew He could. So one more time I determinedly prayed, “Jesus, please take this pain away.” And in an instant, the pain was gone. I sat up and told the nurse (who was on the phone with the nursery telling them to come get the baby), “I can feed him now.” I remember her saying on the phone in a halting, disbelieving voice, “She says she can feed him now.” Right after that, my family walked in the room and visited and held Aaron. After a little while, I told my husband that I wasn’t feeling very well and that they should probably leave.

The rest of the evening was a blur of semiconscious moments and hearing snippets of conversations between members of the medical staff. When I heard them say that they had notified my OB and then when he arrived at the hospital, I felt at peace.

I had two procedures during the night, the first one unsuccessful as my husband reported later that in recovery my doctor watched my abdomen fill up with blood again. They then determined an artery had ruptured, so they embolized it and the blood loss stopped. However, I had two large hematomas that still caused extreme pain.

That week I received seven units of blood and stayed in the hospital four or five days. A few days after I went home, I developed a rash and a fever and returned to the hospital where they did further tests, including an abdominal CT. An infectious disease specialist even visited me, but drew no conclusions. After a few days they sent me home. The following Monday I had my two-week checkup with my OB who had been out of town the previous week. He determined that I needed surgery to remove the hematomas, one of which was about the size of my hand right under my rib cage. He could do the surgery on Wednesday and that would give me time to store up milk for the baby. But on Monday evening I began bleeding profusely. Back to the ER with me!

After my doctor examined me, he left the room to view the CT scans that were done the previous week. While he was out of the room, I prayed, “Jesus, please. I don’t want surgery. I just want to go home and take care of my baby.” When my doctor returned, he told me, “You don’t have to have surgery. They are not where I thought they were.” And just like that, I got to go home. I also did not have to take another pain pill because the hematomas went away.

There were other miracles during that time—obvious answers to prayer as well as other blessings that could have come no other way. I don’t know why the Lord allowed it all, but I do know He was with me through it all. I also know that he answered my prayers according to His knowledge, wisdom, and character, and in His goodness chose to deliver me from pain at just the right moment, as well as from surgery and its subsequent recovery.

When I began this post, I was just going to write, “He knows. I don’t. The end.” But I thought, why not share my miracle story? Our God is not only the God of miracles, but He is also the One who knows exactly which miracles we need. His wisdom and knowledge, along with His power to perform beyond what we can ask or imagine, are cause for extravagant, everlasting hope.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

— Ephesians 3:20-21

In Christ,

Janice