A Treasury of Miracles for Women (7 page)

Bo, their five-year-old, nodded his understanding. “Like when I had the flu?”

Ben smiled sadly. “Yes. Only much worse. The doctors said that she might die before she's born.”

The child's eyes grew wide. Ben continued. “We're asking Jesus to help us and whatever happens we know that he will be there.”

After that, every night the couple would pray with their young sons in their room and the children would pray for their sister.

“Dear God, please make my sister be fine,” they would say. “Please don't let her die.”

Sunday came and after the service Ben and Angie went in front of their church family and asked for prayers.

“It seems there's a very serious problem with our un born little girl,” Ben said, his voice cracking. He pulled Angie closer to him and blinked back tears. “The doctors think she'll die before she's born and that Angie should have an abortion.” He tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

Angie smiled at him through watery eyes and contin ued for him. “We told the doctors that if the baby dies we'll deal with that. But she won't die at our hands. It'll have to be God's decision.”

A sob escaped her as a flood of tears spilled from her eyes. “Please pray for us. Pray that we will have strength to handle what God has in store.”

Throughout the congregation people were crying with them, their hearts reaching out to Ben and Angie and their uncertain future.

The praying began immediately.

That afternoon a group of grandmothers at the church made the Bauers' unborn baby their top prayer concern. They contacted other women they knew at other churches in the Windsor area and the prayer chain grew.

In addition, Ben's parents and Angie's parents prayed constantly for God to work a miracle and heal the tiny girl so she could survive the pregnancy. Over the next few days, the despair that gripped Ben and Angie and even their sons began to dissipate. They were not sure what God would do but they trusted him and believed he would help them han dle whatever came their way.

Six weeks passed and Angie and Ben returned to Cleveland for another appointment with the specialist. This time the atmosphere during the ride up was com pletely different. The couple was calm and strangely peace ful. Ben shared anecdotes about the students he worked with. Their unspoken thought was that one day the anec dotes might be about their own daughter.

If she lived that long.

Angie was scheduled to meet with the doctor first and then have an ultrasound done. When he was finished ex amining her, Angie sat up and looked intently at him.

“You didn't tell us the odds,” she said quietly. “What are the odds that this baby will survive?”

The doctor leaned against the wall and folded his arms.“There is less than a 1 percent chance that this child will survive the entire pregnancy. If she does, there is maybe a 50 percent chance that she will survive the delivery and the surgery involved to remove the fluid around her neck. The odds get worse from that point on.”

Angie could feel the blood drain from her face. The peace she had been feeling vanished and again she was gripped with sorrow as she considered the child inside her.

The doctor saw her reaction and responded in a gentle voice. “There is still time to terminate the pregnancy, Mrs. Bauer. But it has to be your decision. I could have it sched uled right away. This afternoon.”

Angie looked at her husband and shook her head quickly. “No. Her chance may be almost nothing but I can't take that chance away from her.”

The couple left the office and headed toward the room where sonograms were performed. Ben waited in the hall way while a technician turned down the lights and began scanning Angie's abdomen. Images appeared on the screen and Angie wished she could tell what she was looking at.

Minutes passed and Angie began to wonder why the test was taking so long. She moved, trying to get comfort able, and the technician looked at her curiously.

“Do you know why you're in here? Why you're having this ultrasound?”

Terror streaked through Angie's body.
There's some thing worse,
she thought.
They've found something worse.

“Well,” Angie began, her voice unsteady, “my baby has cystic hygroma and apparently there's a lot of fluid building up around her neck in a series of sacs.”

The technician nodded absently. “All right, I'm going to take these pictures up to my supervisor and we'll check them over. Stay here until I get back, just in case I need to continue the examination.”

Angie nodded and watched the woman leave. Alone in the dark room, she let her eyes wander to the machine that held the captured image of her unborn child. There were dark areas and fuzzy white areas and assorted lines. But there was no way for her untrained eyes to make sense of what she was seeing. She felt tears stinging again and she wondered what else could have gone so wrong that the technician would want to take the pictures to her supervi sor.

Silently she began to pray, repeating scriptures that promised hope and peace and telling herself everything would be all right. Even if it didn't feel that way.

Ten minutes later the technician returned.

“Okay, you can get up,” she said pleasantly. “We won't need any more pictures today. Your doctor wants to see you in his office as soon as you can get there.”

Angie studied the woman. If the news was worse than before, the technician certainly was hiding it well. For a split second, Angie allowed herself to hope. Perhaps the news wasn't bad. Maybe the news was actually good. Maybe the fluid sacs had stopped growing.

She explained what was happening to Ben as they walked down the hallway and rode the elevator to the doctor's office. After they were seated, he strode into the room smiling, his face beaming.

“I have good news,” he said, his words tumbling out in excitement. “Something has happened that I have never seen or heard of in my years as a doctor. The fluid sacs have regressed and disappeared almost completely. The fluid is being redistributed throughout her body in a normal man ner. At this point the sacs are nearly empty. Your baby will definitely live through the pregnancy.”

Angie released a cry and collapsed in Ben's arms, happy tears filling her eyes.

“Thank God,” Ben muttered as he held his wife and grinned at the doctor.

The doctor hesitated. “There is no medical explanation for what has happened here. I thought you should know that.”

Ben smoothed his hand over Angie's hair and smiled. “Doctor, we've had hundreds of people praying for this little girl. Everyone from a group of grandmothers to our young sons. What has happened is a miracle.”

The doctor shrugged. “Well, we can't really define it that way medically. We can only document her case and state that there is no medical explanation. Those things happen.”

His expression grew more serious. “There is one prob lem,” the doctor interrupted. “She will probably still have Turner's Syndrome as a result of the damage that was done when the sacs were filled with fluid and she will still have to have surgery when she's born. In other words, she will most likely still have mental retardation.”

Angie pulled away from Ben and smiled as she shook her head. “No, Doctor. God doesn't do half a miracle. The baby will be born fine.”

“Don't get your hopes up,” he said. “The damage has already been done, even if the fluid has somehow regressed from the sacs.”

The doctor suggested that Angie have amniocentesis done to determine information about the baby's chromo somes.

“Then we'll know for sure what we're dealing with,” he said.

“There's a risk of miscarriage with that procedure,” Angie said calmly. “Would there be something that could be done to help the baby if the condition is found?”

The doctor shook his head. “No, it would just help you prepare.”

Again Angie smiled. “We'll prepare by praying about it, Doctor. I don't want the test done.”

“Okay, but do this for me. When the baby's born, have her tested and make sure the results are sent to my office.”

When they left the hospital that day, Ben squeezed Angie's hand and grinned. “God heard our prayers. He's going to let me have my little blonde, blue-eyed angel after all.”

“Honey,” Angie teased, her voice filled with mock warning. “Don't get yourself worked up about a blonde, blue-eyed girl. Look in the mirror and ask yourself if your daughter could have anything but your beautiful dark hair and dark eyes.”

“Never mind,” Ben said, teasing in return. “You can be a doubter but I know she's going to be a blonde, blue-eyed little angel.”

Weeks passed and then months. At the end of Angie's eighth month of pregnancy, another ultrasound was per formed and this time the results were perfect.

“There is no difference between your ultrasound and that of a perfectly normal pregnancy,” she was told. “Surgery will not be necessary.”

Angie and Ben were not surprised. The prayers contin ued.

Finally, one morning, a week before Angie's due date, she went into labor. Although the baby seemed normal on the ultrasound tests, Angie had been warned she would probably still have a long, arduous labor. Instead, Maggie was born May 17 at 8:01 A.M.—just forty minutes after ar riving at the hospital. Tests were done immediately and her physical examination proved her to be completely healthy.

Two weeks later the blood work came back. Maggie's chromosomes were completely normal. When the doctor received the results, he held one final meeting with the couple.

He played with Maggie's tiny fingers and tickled her under her chin. Then he turned to Ben and Angie.

“I want you to know,” he said, his eyes misty, “Maggie has changed the way I'll advise patients with this disorder in the future. I agreed with the specialist about aborting the pregnancy. If you'd followed my advice …” His voice trailed off. “I just thank God you didn't.”

As Maggie grew, the only sign that remained of her or deal in the womb was a slight thickening at the base of her neck where the sacs had once grown, filled with fluid that could have choked her to death.

Once, when Maggie was five, Angie was doing up the buttons of the little girl's blouse and she found herself strug gling with the top button. She smiled then and studied Maggie's face.

“You'll always have a hard time with those top buttons because your neck is a little thicker than some,” she said. “That's God's way of reminding you that you were a mira cle.”

Maggie nodded. “God looked after me when I was in your tummy, Mommy,” she said. “Daddy says I'm his mira cle baby.”

Angie pulled her daughter tight and smiled through her tears.

“Yes, honey.” She tugged lightly on the child's blonde ponytail and looked intently in her deep blue eyes. “You're our little blonde, blue-eyed miracle baby.”

Whatever It Takes

O
n Sunday, July 24, Olivia Riley looked at her wrist watch and saw that it was exactly twelve noon. Time to pray for Laura. She found a quiet place in her house and for the next thirty minutes—sometimes with tears in her eyes—she spoke to God in hushed tones, pleading with him to spare the life of Laura West.

When thirty minutes had passed, Olivia's husband, Brad, began praying. He, too, had committed himself to take a shift praying for Laura.

The hours wore on and the prayers for Laura contin ued.

Sandy Billings: 1:30 P.M. Tricia Rosenblum: 2:00 P.M. Earl Stockton: 2:30 P.M. Rita Hayden: 3:00 P.M.

Sunday evening came, and with it Scott Schwartz and Robert Trenton at 7:00 P.M. Alice Tyson: 7:30 P.M. Ruby Jansen: 8:00 P.M.

Night turned into the wee hours of the morning and still there was constant prayer. Tom Mendoza: 1:30 A.M. Greg Harrison: 2:30 A.M. Jason Waters: 5:00 A.M.

And so the prayer chain for Laura West continued. All across the town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, the people of Hope Community Church kept up the chain: twenty-four hours of continuous prayer uttered in thirty-minute segments by forty-eight people who had willingly signed up earlier that morning.

Never had the church prayed so consistently and so fervently for a single life. But this was more than a normal emergency. After delivering a healthy baby boy, Laura West, thirty-eight, was at the University Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fighting for every breath of life. The night before, doctors had told her husband she was dying.

“There's nothing more we can do,” one of the doctors had said. “It's between her and God now.”

Prayer was the only way Laura's church family knew to help. Not just for Laura, but for her tiny newborn baby as well.

On Monday morning Sheri Robinson picked up the chain at 7:00 A.M. Cindy Cummins: 9:00 A.M. Shana Rus sell: 11:00 A.M.

These were Laura's friends, the people of Hope Com munity. And they knew how badly the Wests had wanted this baby. It shook them to their core to imagine this newborn son never knowing his mommy.

A few years earlier, Laura West's daily prayer had al ways been the same: that her husband, Jake, spend more time at home and that his faith grow stronger.

“He loves God and he loves us,” Laura would tell friends. “But the truth is he loves himself more. A lot more. I keep asking God to reach him. Whatever it takes.”

At that same time, Jake and Laura desperately wanted a third child. They had two beautiful sons, Cody and Carl. But their dreams of raising lots of children dimmed when Laura seemed unable to get pregnant.

Then, three years after Carl was born, Laura finally conceived. But what seemed like an answered prayer be came instead a sorrow-filled time when Laura lost the baby in her fifth month of pregnancy.

Searching for reasons why God would allow the death of their third child, Laura privately wondered if perhaps God was using the pain of losing their baby as a way of get ting Jake's attention. She remembered her prayer: “What ever it takes, God. Get his attention whatever it takes.”

Not long after the miscarriage, Laura and Jake once again began asking God for another child, and in January Laura found out she was pregnant again. From the begin ning, Laura's body did not cooperate. During her sixth week of pregnancy doctors analyzed the results of an ultra sound test and discovered that she had a problem with her placenta, a condition that typically corrects itself by the fourth month but which can be potentially dangerous.