Eighteen months ago, I gave birth to my beautiful son. One of the happiest days of my life was countered by a traumatic delivery followed by nine months of surgeries, hospitalizations, and emotional and physical exhaustion. I remember weeping in the hospital over a breast pump as I desperately tried to maintain my milk supply on a diet of jello and popsicles. Each hospital visit and surgery took me away from my son and husband. My misery was complete as I could not escape my body. It is a strange sensation to feel as though your own body is alien territory. My body became my prison, a torture chamber. Each day passed in a breath of prayer, “Father, heal me. Father, heal me. Take me away.” I could not escape, and, at the time it seemed as though I would not heal.
Answered Prayer
I awoke on the morning of January 1st to a sunbeam on my hospital bed. As soon as I sat up, I knew. Joy and unspeakable relief surged inside as I gasped out a prayer of thanksgiving. My fourth surgery had worked. After nine months of praying, begging, weeping before the Lord, I was healed. Just as in childbirth where the mother’s hours of pain are immediately forgotten as her baby is placed in her arms, so too my months of agony were an immediate distant memory. The joy of the moment made the unendurable suffering seem insignificant.
In Everything Give Thanks
It has been almost ten months since that early morning sun awakened me. And I’ve changed. I cannot take anything for granted because I know the despair that accompanied my inability to pick up my son, to wash my hair, to have the energy to go grocery shopping. My heart overflows with gratitude to my Heavenly Father. How blessed I am to hug my husband, to play outside with my son, even to scrub toilets! “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus, “ 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. It was the will of God that I endure this trial, and I am truly thankful for it. I still dread trials and tribulations, but I face them differently. I pray that I will be faithful during the trial. I pray that I would honor and glorify God through my weakness. And as I suffer I know God is helping me to develop perseverance, maturity, and wisdom (James 1:1). What a faithful God we serve… and I’m grateful.