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In the fall of 2007, half way through my wife’s pregnancy, we found out that we were going to have our second daughter. Then came the news that we never expected to hear. The ultrasound showed that our daughter had a life-threatening condition called Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.
The doctor gave us grim statistics about our daughter’s chances at survival. She was given a 20% chance of surviving her birth and a 1% chance of living a healthy, normal life. We were devastated.
We knew that we couldn’t deal with this alone. So we shared the news with our families, friends, and even strangers through our family blog and we asked people to pray. We also began attending this church and asked people here to pray. During the next three months we were contacted by people we had never met who were praying for our unborn daughter and the people of this church rallied around us.
We received encouragement in ways that God could only have orchestrated. First, my wife ran into a friend of hers from high school that now attends Boise First Church. My wife learned that within the previous month her friend’s unborn daughter who had also been diagnosed with the same condition had miraculously been healed within the womb, something her doctors admittedly had never seen before. This conversation lifted our spirits.
Next, we were contacted by a couple who had a daughter who was also born with the same condition. She had overcome the odds and was living a healthy, normal life. Like us, Matt and Carla were also Christians and coincidentally were living in the place that we had previously called home, Bellingham, Washington. We talked on the phone for a couple of hours and they prayed for our unborn daughter. Again, our spirits were lifted.
In the days leading up to my daughter’s birth I read a book by a former pastor of ours. I was struck about the timeliness of one sentence that said, “…when you’re in the ICU with one of your children and you wonder if he or she is going to make it – at any given moment of weakness, you can be tempted to think that God is not good.”
March 25, 2008, will be a day that we will never forget. Beating the odds, our daughter, Jillian Olivia, survived her birth. Unable to breathe on her own, she was immediately hooked up to several machines and had a ventilator placed down her throat and then was carted down the hall to the NICU at St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise. That day I was miraculously filled with a confidence that I had never had before. I knew she was going to make it through this. And I knew that this confidence was due to people praying for us that day. We learned later that our new friend Carla in Washington woke up in the middle of the night during my wife’s labor and prayed for us. We heard from a couple other friends that woke up early that morning and also felt led to pray for our family.
We learned several weeks later that our daughter’s doctor looked at her first x-rays and thought to himself that Jillian had “little to no chance to survive” due to the size of her right lung and what appeared to be the lack of a left lung. He was amazed that six days later he had the opportunity to operate on her to place her organs in their correct places and patch the hole in her diaphragm. Even more amazing was that Jillian was able to breathe a week later without the assistance of a ventilator. The next five weeks she continued to progress, both of her lungs developed significantly, and she was able to come home on Mother’s Day.
The next nine months were filled with many doctors’ appointments and special care for our daughter. Jillian had some feeding issues that required her to undergo a second major surgery in January 2009. Although that day should have been extremely stressful, we again had many people praying for our daughter and for our sanity. As part of that surgery, Jillian had a feeding tube installed and is still receiving much of her nutrition through it.
The past six months, Jillian has made great strides towards living a normal, healthy life. She now runs and climbs everywhere like her big sister. She has a large vocabulary and a wonderful personality to go along with her big smile. She is eating more solids and we expect her to have her feeding tube removed within the next year or two.
I know that many of you sitting here today are thinking about how you lost a child or a loved one even after praying. If so, you may have seriously questioned God’s goodness. I can relate. I lost my mother to cancer when I was 14 years old despite praying for her recovery. While I cannot fully explain why God allows these types of tragedies to occur, I do know that miracles cannot happen without prayer. I wish I could tell you that two years ago my wife and I had 100% confidence in God that our daughter would survive and live a healthy, normal life. But we didn’t. We needed others to pray, too. I am convinced that Jillian is with us today because the people of this church and many others took the time to seriously pray for her.
When I became a Christian years ago, I believed that my life would be a smooth ride with God at my side. But I have learned that that’s not how this life works. In Jesus’ own words, we are told in John 16:33 that in this world we will have trouble. Romans 8:26 says that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. And I find it reassuring that the most repeated command in the Bible is “do not be afraid.”
We are all broken people on a journey through this life. When times get tough, we can decide to rely on our own strength or we can rely on God and carry each others’ burdens. I chose the second option and I hope that you will do the same.
Thank you for listening to my story.
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