A Quick Praise

I just wanted to say a quick praise today!

9 years ago today, we brought our second born home from the hospital after a 3 month stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She was discharged from the hospital on her original due date, though she had been born in late July. We came home with an apena monitor so we’d know if her heart stopped, some medications, and lots of instructions on how to follow up with eye exams, weight checks, physical therapy, doctor visits, etc.

I say we brought her “home,” but in reality, we brought her to my mom’s house. She had been born in Memphis, though we lived in Virginia at the time. I had been visiting my mom that summer when the pregnancy deteriorated to the point of hospitalization in early July. And there in Memphis, we stayed for the next 5 1/2 months.

How wonderful for God to provide this place for her birth, where I had grown up and had a loving church family and friends to surround us, my family to care for my oldest while I was in the hospital the month of July, an OB/GYN as my mom’s next door neighbor who God used to save our lives, outstanding doctors, familiarity with where I was. We had been living in Virginia for my husband’s doctoral program at the university there, but we did not have this kind of network, and I actually am not convinced my daughter or I would be alive if the pregnancy had proceeded there where my doctor dismissed everything in this extremely rare, life threatening situation. He did not even want to do an ultrasound, and he wouldn’t have referred me to a high risk doctor. We weren’t even at the UVa hospital, but a lower level one called Martha Jefferson which could not have met our needs. And my doctor was ever reluctant to pass his patients off to anyone associated with UVa.

I see God’s provision in being at my mom’s house with this doctor who came by every day, understood the situation, and got me the care we needed.

I praise the Lord today for His kindness and mercy, for His love for us. I praise Him that He uses hard times, times of suffering, to draw us to Himself in ways we’d never do otherwise. I praise Him that He uses these things for His glory. I praise Him that He allowed my child to live, and I pray she will bless His name always and follow Him all the days of her life, loving Him with all her heart, soul, mind and strength.