The young mother, bleeding heavily, was wheeled into an emergency operating room. One of the babies she carried had now miscarried and she prayed fervently to God that he would let this other baby live. She bargained with him that this child would be raised to know him, to love him…but first he would need to perform a miracle. Slowly as the medication relaxed her frantic thoughts, she drifted in and out of sleep.
Meanwhile, her concerned husband stood outside the emergency room doors listening as the doctor told him he needed to sign the emergency abortion papers or he would certainly lose his wife due to the amount of blood loss she was experiencing. Closing his eyes, and thinking of his three young children at home, he took the pen from the physicians hand and signed, giving permission to end the life of the tiny baby frantically trying to stay positioned inside her mother’s womb.
As the surgeons prepared themselves around her, the anesthiologist began to inject his medication into her IV. They stood back amazed when she sat up, asked them what they were doing and then insisted on being taken out of the surgery room. Under any other circumstance, this patient should have been sleeping pain free, unable to even open her eyes. Yet, she sat there as if she had never been given any medication. Even more surprising was the knowledge that this woman, four months pregnant, had stopped bleeding.
Each year from the time of my earliest remembrance, every December 18th, my mother woke me at 3:00 in the morning to retrace the events leading up to my birth. Sadly, my morning birthday calls ended in July of 1998. But,true to her word, when I was five years old, my mother and father found a church with a bus ministry that picked me up for Sunday School and Church. I rode this bus, faithfully, until I was sixteen years old and could drive myself. The reason for this I would not learn until later. But that’s another story.
