Testimonies of Healings

by Matthew Chapman

 

 

There is no denying the fact that our God is a supernatural God. Anyone who belongs to Jesus knows Him and the Father and the Holy Spirit as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. We also believe the Bible, and both Old and New Testaments testify of the Lord's powerful works that at times transcended, overrode, interrupted, and otherwise dramatically changed the way things were in the natural order of human circumstances. And we also believe that He hasn't changed, that He is "the same yesterday and today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8, Mal. 3:6, James 1:17), meaning that we believe that He is both capable and willing to do the very same in our day as He did in those times recorded in the scriptures.

The following stories are simple accounts from my own life and journey in the Lord of wonderful things He has done in the area of healing, both in my life and in those close to me. None of them involved high-profile preachers in white suits swaggering across the stage while the audience is revved up to fever-pitch "in order to usher in an anointing." Instead these true accounts happened in the simplicity and naturalness of everyday life within the context of daily walking with a supernatural Lord.

We know that for reasons only He Himself knows, healing-miraculous or "natural"-does not always come to everyone whom we pray for, and this is simply something we need to trust Him about. He alone possesses all wisdom and understanding about all the factors and ramifications of each and every situation and context in light of His will and eternal purpose, and so He alone knows what is fitting for every instance and the lives of all involved. I say this so that none of you who read this will think that by writing this article I am implying a standard that everyone can and should be miraculously healed in every situation. More often than not, my body heals itself naturally, according to the ability the Lord gave it, but there are some things, like aches and pains from my years riding bulls in amateur and professional rodeo when I was young, that I now simply have to live with. Likewise, the Lord's provision in some areas of my physical health may be that I need to be a better steward of my body and thus be more diligent in the areas of nutrition and exercise, or perhaps seek the help of a doctor or some medication.

But having said all that, we nevertheless must still embrace the blessed reality that our Lord Jesus, who hasn't changed, still heals miraculously. May these testimonies encourage you and your children's faith, as they have ours, as you seek the Lord when such situations come.

My son, Benjamin's, mystery illness and Kevin's brain tumor

I'll begin with what has happened most recently. In January of 2003, and then again in the following May, some sort of virus made its way through our family. While most of us kicked these "bugs" in 36-72 hours, my oldest son, Benjamin, who was 12 at the time, wound up being sick with the first one for several weeks, and then the entire month of May with the second one. He was fine in June, but then beginning in early July, Benjamin got sick and was "down sick" through the end of September. He had a low-to-mid grade fever every day for three months (July through September), and was experiencing symptoms of extreme weakness and fatigue, nausea, and aching throughout his body. The month of October saw a little improvement, with some good days in the midst of the bad ones, but clearly he was still not fully recovered from "it," whatever "it" was (more on that in a minute).

In the early stages of this ordeal, we sought the Lord with much prayer, along with all the saints around us, and we gave him all the tender loving care we could. But as his condition persisted without change, we felt we needed to take him to see a doctor. In the weeks that followed, Benjamin was in and out of the hospital getting checked out, tested, x-rayed, and imaged by various doctors who were unable to find or determine anything. His red blood cell count was normal. His white blood cell count was normal. The mono tests, two of them, came back negative. They performed a small fortune's worth of cat scans and extensive x-raying of his entire digestive system and everything appeared normal and healthy. A local gastro-intestinal specialist, one who is highly respected but who does not take children as patients, did take Benjamin upon referral. He performed a colonoscopy and everything looked fine. In the end he literally shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what to tell us was the problem. So while we praised the Lord for all of this good news, and the fact that there was nothing visibly wrong (i.e., no growths, tumors, messed up organs, etc.), we still did not know what was causing Benjamin to have the fever, nausea, achiness, and extreme weakness and fatigue.

We then went to an excellent local pediatrician, Dr. Matthews, who harnessed all the files, records, and images from all the different doctors and sources, and sat down with us and listened to the whole long story and asked loads of questions. He had some ideas about what Benjamin is dealing with, noting that the previous GI specialist would probably not have know certain things to look for because certain things show up differently in children than they do in adults. Dr. Matthews wanted us to next see an associate of his, a pediatric GI specialist, Dr. Klish, from Children's Hospital in Houston who came in once a month to see patients there at his office. Dr. Klish would have more specialized expertise to evaluate Benjamin within the context of his age, going through puberty (he turned 13 in September), etc.

Dr. Klish first wanted to run a whole host of blood tests on Benjamin, testing extensively for everything from Celiac Disease to Crohn's Disease to Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) to checking for specific food allergies and even "hidden" food allergies, plus a whole gamut of other things. They drew a lot of blood from Benjamin, so much so that he felt very weak and faint by the time they were done. Some of the blood remained at the local lab for tests to be done there, while much of it was cold-packed and "overnighted" to a lab in California.

On Monday night, November 10th, just a little more than a week later, many of the men from among the saints here where we live were gathered together for a time around the Lord, and we were praying and waiting upon Him to see what He had for us that evening. One brother asked Benjamin, who, at 13 now, goes with me to men's gatherings, how he was feeling. "In all honesty, not very well," was his reply. The brother looked at the rest of us and said, "Guys, we need to keep praying." I certainly amen-ed that! So we all spent a significant amount of time waiting upon the Lord and praying for Benjamin, asking the Lord to heal him and restore his strength and stamina as he was significantly weakened from having been sick for so many months. After much prayer, including with the anointing with oil and laying on of our hands (Mark 16:17-18, James 5:14-15), we moved on to other things in our time together.

After about 20-30 minutes had passed, a brother named Kevin Stewart interrupted and, with his eyes closed, said intently, "Guys, I just have incredible faith in my heart for Benjamin, for his healing. and. well. could you just join with me in believing the Lord for Benjamin?" I could tell that Kevin was experiencing something genuine, and it immediately made me think of 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, which says:

I perceived that the Holy Spirit was manifesting faith in/through Kevin (something more than the measure of faith we all have and are to walk in/by all of the time). I could also tell that Kevin wasn't quite sure what to do with what he was experiencing, so I said to him, "Brother, would you go lay your hands on my son?" Immediately he did, and he prayed specifically, "Lord, would you cause the chemicals in Benjamin's liver to be balanced?" This led to another round of praying afresh for Benjamin. I took note that Kevin felt led to pray specifically for Benjamin's liver. All this time we have been focused on his digestive tract because that was where all the problems seemed to be showing up and so the need to pray for his liver never occurred to me. Later, Kevin told me that it was like he saw something white on Benjamin's liver, and that when he was experiencing that overwhelming faith, he knew that he was to pray for it. To ask the Lord to "balance the chemicals in Benjamin's liver" was the only thing he could come up with to pray that seemed to meet up with what he was sensing.

Before I go on with this story, I would like to give glory to the Lord and interject another testimony of healing that had happened just a few months prior in the life of this brother, Kevin Stewart, who was praying for Benjamin. He began to notice that when he laid in bed a certain way with the pressure of the pillow against the right side of his neck that it made the vision blur in his left eye. As Kevin wondered what could be causing this, he discovered a lump in the upper right part of his neck. Sure enough, when he would press the lump the vision in his left eye would blur, and when he stopped pressing it his vision would return to normal.

Kevin went to have this checked out, and the doctor was very alarmed. He encouraged Kevin to immediately schedule a biopsy and make an appointment with a specialist from M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston (a very well-known cancer treatment hospital). To the doctor's consternation, Kevin replied by saying he would consider it and get back with him because he wanted time to seek the Lord and pray. That evening, he called all the saints who live around here to come to his home to seek the Lord together in prayer at 9pm, after his children were in bed. As many as could came, and we cried out to the Lord and sought Him for His will in order to know how we should pray. We didn't get anything specific that night, but there was a very real peace and joy and a knowing that the Lord was with Kevin and his family and that everything would be okay.

In the week or so that followed, the tumor grew larger and became more painful. The vision in Kevin's left eye became constantly blurred due to the tumor's size and the resulting pressure from it. Kevin went back to the doctor and they x-rayed it and found that it was the size of a walnut and had offshoots that went up into his skull. The doctor scolded Kevin for not acting quicker to deal with this, saying that, in his professional opinion, this tumor was almost certainly malignant. Kevin again politely thanked the doctor for his work and told him that he would get back with him about scheduling the biopsy.

The following Monday night, many brothers were again gathered together and were praying for Kevin. He shared that he kept sensing the Lord speak to his spirit saying, "I am your physician," and that he had a real peace about this. As the brothers prayed more, Kevin noticed that the vision in his left eye was normal and the pressure and pain had gone away. He kept putting his hand over his right eye to test the left eye to make sure, and his vision was fine. Kevin then began to declare, "Brothers, the Lord has healed me!" Interestingly, he had scheduled that biopsy for the following day. The doctors were quite dumbfounded when they could not find any trace of the tumor even though they were holding in their hands the x-rays of it from Kevin's previous appointment. Praise the Lord.

So, coming back to the story about Benjamin, the following morning after that men's gathering where Kevin and the rest of us prayed for him, he woke up feeling GREAT, and he has been well ever since! Praise the Lord! But there's more....

Fast-forward several weeks, and we went in for our follow up visit with Dr. Klish on Monday, November 24th. Dr. Klish walked in with a stack of papers in his hands that contained all of the results from all of those different tests they had done on Benjamin's blood. He was pleased to see Benjamin looking so healthy and fit, and then he went on to tell us about the test results. All the tests for all the different diseases came back negative. All the tests for food allergies and hidden food allergies were negative. All the "markers" that they use to detect even the slightest inflammation anywhere in his entire GI tract came back negative, etc., etc., etc. The only abnormality to be found was that there was a certain enzyme count in Benjamin's LIVER that was high. When he told us about this, Maranatha, Benjamin, and I all looked at one another and smiled, and then I asked, "Dr. Klish, have you ever seen a liver (the actual organ) that had this particular problem?"

"Well, actually I have," he replied, puzzled that I would ask such a question.

"Would such a liver have a white look to it?" I followed up.

"Well, as a matter of fact, it would. It would be white-to-light-yellow in appearance." He went on to explain that this was probably indicative of Benjamin having had some "unknown chronic viral infection" but that he was "obviously well now." Dr. Klish went on to declare Benjamin to be "cured," saying that every test, exploration, x-ray, and imaging that could be done had been done, and he didn't know of anything else to do, but that we could call him if problems arose again. And, praise God, they haven't. We left the doctor's office thanking and praising the Lord, and Kevin was the first one I called to tell so he could rejoice with us and be encouraged in what the Lord had done.

Lay hands on "the sick"?

My first experience of seeing the Lord heal was a little unusual but very, shall we say, educational for me. I came to the Lord Jesus and was born of the Spirit in June of 1979, two days after my nineteenth birthday. About five months later, I went to work for a cattle company just outside of Tyler, Texas (where I was born and raised) and worked 12-16 hour days, six days a week. I say this to point out that I was still very much a babe in Christ during this time.

The owner of this operation was a hard man with an explosive temper who had very little tolerance for mistakes, having to wait, and things that didn't go his way. He always had a number of different cattle ventures going on simultaneously, and one of them was that from time to time he would buy around 500 bull calves at a time that weighed 180-200 pounds in order to feed them out to around 550-600 pounds and then sell them to feedlots in other parts of the US. Whenever he bought one of these groups of 500 calves, they would first all be shipped to a particular working facility of his where we would spend a long couple of days "working" them-castrating, dehorning, branding, giving them shots, etc. These steers would then be put on medicated feed for about two weeks and given time to heal up before being hauled to the pasture where they would graze and be fed until they were sold.

Due to the trauma of these nursing calves being prematurely taken off their mama (premature weaning), run through a sale barn, shipped to the new owner's place, and then worked-all within a matter of days-it was expected that as much as 5% would die. The boss preferred the trauma to be meted out all at one time rather than spread out. During the couple of weeks needed for them to heal up, I would check on them first thing every morning. The ones that I found that had died I would have to drag off to a nearby gulley and roll them off into it so that the buzzards couldn't drag their bones out onto the pasture when they ate them. The really sick ones I had to put in a certain barn lot away from the others so I could give them special attention, sometimes even feeding and watering them by hand.

Obviously, my boss wanted to lose as few calves as possible to better his profits, and from time to time he too would come by to check on them himself. One morning, he was there in the barn looking at the ones in the sick pen. He was in his typical bad mood and stopped and stood over this one calf that was unusual in its coloring. It was predominately black all over, but had a white star on his forehead, and white speckled spots on his sides and hindquarters. This calf was down on the ground and wouldn't get up, had thick green snot hanging out both nostrils (indicates infection), was holding its head down low because of fever, and was obviously dying. He gave it a very hard kick with the toe of his boot and said, "Aw, he'll be dead by morning," and then he left.

I'm not one of these animals' rights people, but I was grieved at the boss's cruelty and hardness. I felt for all "my" sick calves, and especially for this little calf he had just kicked. As the boss walked away, I just stood there in shock at what he had just done and began whispering a prayer, asking the Lord if there was anything more I could do for these calves. As I waited there and listened, the passage from Mark 16 came to my mind where Jesus said, "And these signs will accompany those who have believed: in My Name they will. lay hands on the sick, and they will recover." I knew the Lord primarily meant sick people, but since He just said "the sick," I thought it might could include "the sick" cattle He created as well. So I knelt down by that little black speckled calf that my boss had just kicked, and laid my hands on its head, and prayed and asked the Lord to make it well and strong. It was not an eloquent prayer to be sure, nor were there any intense or tingly feelings flowing through me. I just asked my Father if He would touch this helpless dying little animal. After saying "amen," I noticed all the other sick calves were looking at me in the quietness of that barn, so I went around and prayed for all of them too.

The next day, "the black roany," as I came to call him, wasn't dead at all. In fact, he was noticeably better, as was another particular calf-"the brown calf"-that had been barely hanging on to life. Within two weeks, both the black roany and the brown calf were ready to go out to pasture with the rest of the calves. My boss mentioned to me his amazement in how this little calf he had left for dead had turned around so quickly, and wondered aloud about what could have caused it. "I laid my hands on him, and prayed for him," I told him. "You did what?!!" he snapped with his eyes wide open. I then explained to him about that verse in Mark 16 and what I had done. He shook his head in further amazement, laughed and cussed, and went on his way.

During the months this herd of calves was out on pasture, both the black roany and the brown calf-ones that started out behind the others in almost every way, and had almost died at that-surpassed all the other calves in appearance, weight gain, and overall performance. If you looked over the whole herd, these two literally stood out as exceptional. Whenever my boss stopped by that pasture and had someone with him, he would always point these two calves out and tell them about how I had prayed for them and the amazing turnaround and growth they had experienced. It was quite a testimony to him. Several months later, my boss enlisted a few of his cattleman friends to help us go in on horseback, gather the whole herd of some 500+ steers, bring them out onto the highway, and gently drive them down the road to another man's farm who had the kind of corral and loading chute we needed to be able to load them into the double-deck semi trailers that would ship them to their new owner. As you might guess, the black roany and the brown calf were all the talk among the men.

As I mentioned, this experience made quite an impact upon my boss, not to mention how it affected me and encouraged my faith. In the months that I worked for this man before moving on in life, he up brought the healing of those calves on a number of occasions. I saw this as the Lord making an opportunity to talk to him, to whatever extent he was willing, about Jesus and his need to be saved. Some months after I had quit working for him and had returned to Tyler Junior College, he called me, crying and in crisis, and asked me if I would come immediately to his home as help him find the Lord and deal with the effects of sin's destruction in his life. I did, and he prayed to receive the Lord Jesus, and was baptized soon thereafter.

My severe asthma

Growing up, there were two things I continually had to deal with: severe asthma and very bad allergies. I was very active as a child even though I was often sickly with respiratory infections, but the asthma and allergies were always the harder trial for me. I could not run very far at all without getting thrown into asthma attacks that would leave me gasping for air. Because I learned early on that panicking during an attack (due to the feeling of suffocation) would only make it worse, I would often lay on the floor perfectly still, sometimes for as long as three hours, until I could catch my breath and return to breathing normally. I accepted this as my lot in life and these conditions persisted even into my young adulthood, though I was able to be hard-working and active and not allow these things to debilitate me.

In 1982, during the spring semester of my junior year at Baylor University, I listened with great interest to a Southern Baptist pastor who spent several weeks going through the scriptures and teaching about healing. One Sunday night after he finished, he invited any of us who had it in our heart to come forward and ask the elders to anoint them with oil and pray for them to be healed (James 5:13-16). He wasn't promising that everyone who was prayed for would be healed, but he was simply making a place for the Lord as folks acted upon what the scriptures said to do. After waiting a bit, I felt impressed to go forward. There were many who were being prayed for, but I saw an older deacon available to pray, so I approached him and told him about my asthma and asked for prayer. With others soon joining us, in simple faith and with no fanfare, they anointed my head with oil and prayed for me, asking the Lord to heal me of my life-long case of severe asthma. I didn't really feel anything other than peace, and when they finished, I thanked them and went back to my seat.

The next day, I put on some tennis shoes and tried running around the block to see what would happen. After jogging about ¾ of the way around, the same thing happened that always had happened-I began wheezing and coughing and choking and gasping for air. I went back to my apartment discouraged, and laid down on the living room floor very still, and spent time praying and "giving thanks in all things" while I waited to get my breath back. The next day I tried to run around the block again, and the same thing happened.

A few days later, I went to the mall with one of my roommates who was wanting to buy some new athletic shoes. The store we ended up at was having some kind of blowout sale with big markdowns on their prices to the point that I was even getting interested in buying a pair myself. As I was holding and looking at a pair of Nike running shoes (specifically made for jogging), a salesman approached me and asked, "Do you need a pair of those?" It was one of those moments that periodically come along in life where you get the sense that whatever you answer is very important and it feels as if all of heaven is watching and listening for how you are going to respond. "Need?" I wondered in those long few seconds before answering him. I sensed faith welling up in my heart. "Yes, I think I do. Size 10½ please." I tried them on and they seemed to fit more than just my foot.

The roommate I had been shoe shopping with was a brother in Christ who was my closest friend at the time and also happened to be from Tyler. So soon after our shoe shopping, we headed to Tyler for the spring break holidays. The next evening, we went to our old high school to go jogging on the track around the football field. I wanted to make another attempt at running with these new shoes I had bought in faith. We began running, and to my amazement I didn't start huffing and puffing and gasping for air. I ran, and I kept running. When we finished, for the first time in my entire life (I was almost 22 at the time), I had run a whole mile and there were no symptoms of the asthma I had dealt with since birth-I was only a little winded like any normal person who had just run a mile and wasn't conditioned to distance running. We shouted and praised and thanked the Lord. The next day, I ran another mile and again was just fine. I ran again the next day, the same thing! I was truly healed! In time, I built up my stamina and distance and was running nine miles a day.

An interesting footnote to this story happened later that same year, in the summer of 1982. I spent that summer preaching 14 back-to-back "revival meetings" in Southern Baptist congregations all over central and northern California. As was my custom at that time, I would go for a 3-3½ mile jog every night after I was finished and everything was over. One night, in a town called Yreka way up by the Oregon border, I asked an 18 year old young man who lived there and had been attending the meetings if he wanted to go jogging with me. "I'm not sure I can," he replied, and he then went on to tell me that he had bad asthma he had dealt with all of his life. I smiled and said, "Really? Well, let me tell you what happened to me," and I told him the whole story of what the Lord had done. He was encouraged by my testimony and asked me if I would pray for him. I did, and then we took off together for a run. This brother not only ran without any sign of asthma, he had so much "wind" he was able to talk with me while we ran for the entire 3½ miles! We shared the Lord and the farther we ran, and thus the more evident it was that he too had been healed, the more we praised His Name. By the end, we were literally singing worship songs as we ran.

Healing for a hernia

In early 1991, I injured myself and was experiencing a lot of pain in my midsection. Upon being checked out by a doctor, he informed me that I had pulled a hernia, that it would have to be surgically repaired, and that until then I was not to do any heavy lifting or strenuous work. At that time, Maranatha and I had been married almost three years, our first child, Benjamin, was an infant, and I worked full-time as a carpenter. I asked the doctor if I could continue doing my work if I tried to take it easy and he said no because there was simply too much bending, squatting, lifting, and climbing involved, and if I damaged it further it could potentially cause complications that I would have to deal with the rest of my life.

This was obviously not the kind of news a 31-year-old man with a wife and new baby wanted to hear. We didn't have any type of medical insurance and there was no way I could afford to pay for it out of pocket, nor did I believe I should go into debt to get the surgery done. So we took our dilemma to the Lord and sought His guidance. I let all of my carpentry work go and went to work for a brother who had a business retrieving golf balls out of the ponds on golf courses. I know that sounds like a funny business, but he had come up with a way to clean and recycle the balls, give each golf course back a percentage of the balls he had collected for resale, sell the rest himself, and come out making a handsome profit. Amazing. Anyway, we though this would be the kind of work I could do because I was a certified scuba diver and my work would be almost all underwater. When diving, you first establish buoyancy (i.e., weightlessness), and so I could work my way through the ponds and collect the balls without a lot of effort or strain, and my partner could do all the out-of-water lifting, so this seemed to fit within "the doctor's orders."

The diving work was harder than I thought but doable, though definitely nothing I wanted to make a career out of. It was still the cold part of the year, and so even with a wetsuit it was chilly down at the bottom, and I didn't enjoy scavenging around in zero visibility on cloudy days getting my hands nipped at by fish and crawdads. In the meantime, we continued seeking the Lord for how He wanted to take care of this hernia. One day, I felt the Lord impress upon me that scripture from James 5:13-16. That evening, as we gathered with the saints, I again felt the Holy Spirit leading me to act upon that scripture. But several "key" older brothers were not there that night, and so in my human evaluation I decided to wait until they were available so we could get some "real" prayer going.

Later the next day, the Lord reproved me for my disobedience and for putting my trust in men instead of Him. I cried out to Him in broken repentance and received His forgiveness, but I could tell the opportunity had been missed and that if I tried "calling for the elders" and getting them to pray for me that He would not heal at this time. I've always been one that if I am going to go through the suffering of being disciplined by the Lord than I don't want to waste it-I want to get out of it all there is to grow by (Heb. 12:4-13). I confessed my disobedience to the saints (James 5:15-16 in context!), and we began to seek the Lord afresh for what He now wanted to do.

Three weeks later, the Holy Spirit once again impressed upon me the James 5:13-16 scripture. I quickly called the appropriate men and we met together the next morning. They anointed me with oil and prayed and the hernia was healed. The pain left, I resumed full activity and strenuous work, and the perplexed doctor confirmed that I no longer had a hernia and everything was "miraculously" as it should be, to which I "amen-ed" and gave glory to God.

Maranatha's fifth pregnancy

In January of 2001, Maranatha and I discovered that she had become pregnant with our fifth child. Several weeks later, she happened to run into our midwife, Toni Kimpel, who immediately noticed Maranatha was "showing" quite a bit more than she should be for only being 10 weeks pregnant. Maranatha went in for an appointment, and Toni inquired again about the date of her last menstrual cycle, and sure enough she was at 10 weeks-exactly where she should be-but she measured to be 16 weeks along. She also checked Maranatha's blood pressure, which was on the high end of normal, and definitely high for what was normal for Maranatha. She then explained that these were all classic signs of a woman carrying twins and asked her to get a sonogram in order to find out for sure, since twin births are considered "high risk" in Texas and off limits for midwives and home births.

We were joyfully shocked and excited at the possibility of having twins, but the sonogram soon revealed only one healthy precious child-all five grams of her moving about the womb waving her arms and legs, and her little heart just beating away. The baby also measured to be 12 weeks old, which was exactly how far along Maranatha was by that time. But then the sonogram technician said the words that no one preferring home birth wants to hear: "placenta previa." This meant, as we already knew from prior learning, that the placenta was either fully or partially covering the cervix. In our case, it was completely covering her cervix. This meant that if Maranatha began to dilate and went into labor, the placenta would detach and be the first thing to be delivered, cutting off all oxygen and blood flow to the baby who would still be in the womb. Such circumstances are typically fatal for the baby and could also possibly cause the mother to hemorrhage to death if it is not dealt with immediately by emergency c-section. So unless this changed, this meant that a home birth was entirely out of the question and we would need to have a closely OB/GYN-monitored pregnancy and a scheduled c-section in the hospital.

But then bad news got worse. The sonogram also revealed some type of "mass" located in/on the uterus. It concerned the technician enough that she measured it with the computer several times saying, "I don't know what that is!" She even asked Maranatha if she had any pain in the area it was located as she gently pressed on it. Of course we began immediately asking questions, but the technician quickly backpedaled and refused to answer for fear of being legally liable if she said something that was inaccurate, which we understood and respected, though we would never sue her. She said a radiologist would review the video of the sonogram and issue an analysis within a week. The radiologist's report came back primarily stating the obvious information: "Viable pregnancy. One fetus. Fetus size and amniotic sac and fluid consistent with the baby's age. What appears to be a low lying fibroid tumor." The tumor's dimensions were listed-almost the size of a tennis ball-and no recommendations were made.

We soon went to see a local OB/GYN who was recommended to us, Dr. Ghattas, who had reviewed the sonogram and the radiologist's report, and he explained to us that this was "a very high-risk pregnancy." The fibroid tumor was growing in/on the uterine wall, and the two things that make these types of tumors grow the most are estrogen and a good blood supply-the very two things that are in abundant supply in the uterus of any pregnant mother. He then noted that because of the tumor's low-lying location and the likelihood it would continue growing throughout the pregnancy, it would keep the baby pushed up high into the uterus, which was why Maranatha was showing and measuring to be further along than she really was. In the end, he said, it would likely be an obstruction to the baby being able to drop down in order to be delivered vaginally. Though he held out some slim hopes for a normal delivery, he then mentioned he had yet to see a case like this end without a caesarian (C-section). In a worst case scenario, especially if the tumor got cut (accidentally or out of necessity) during the C-section and he couldn't get it to stop bleeding, he might have to perform a partial hysterectomy, removing the entire uterus but leaving the ovaries.

And then there was the added complication of the placenta previa. Because the placenta was attached directly over the cervix and right next to the tumor, and they possibly overlapped one another, the tumor could actually begin growing into the placenta, which would not be good for the baby. If this particular complication came about and were to get really bad, it could mean a premature birth, neonatal care for the baby, etc. The tumor could also cause bleeding during the pregnancy, which could also be a real problem because of the placenta previa and the cervix needing to open to pass the blood. Because of all this, we would be seeing the doctor frequently unless circumstances required even more care or hospitalization. But the good news was that the baby was perfectly healthy, and he said there would be no limits on Maranatha's activity for the time being.

So in just a few weeks' time, Maranatha and I went from anticipating our fifth child, to wondering if we had twins, to learning of "a very high-risk pregnancy" and having to embrace things like placenta previa, a hospital c-section birth, and a potential partial hysterectomy as real probabilities that we would have to face. As you can imagine, this was a very real and difficult trial, yet our hearts were of faith and our hope was in the Lord. We have given ourselves, our children, our possessions, and all that we are/have to the Lord Jesus ten thousand times over during the course of our marriage, and we know He holds us in His hands. Whatever the outcome, whether best- or worst-case scenario, or somewhere in-between, and whether the Lord would intervene with miracles or simply gives us His all-sufficient grace to walk through a very difficult time, we knew that He was with us, for we are in Him, and He is Faithful and True! So together with the saints here where we live, and many others whom I kept informed by e-mail, we began to pray and earnestly seek the Lord.

In late April, Maranatha was 20 weeks pregnant but measuring 29 weeks because of the tumor. It was also beginning to cause her to have pain in her lower back because of the pressure it was placing on her lower spine. Dr. Ghattas performed another sonogram to reassess everything, and the placenta had completely moved up the anterior (front) uterine wall and no part of it whatsoever was over the cervical opening anymore! So the Lord had graciously answered our prayers, and the placenta previa was no longer an issue! But even though it had moved up and was completely off of the cervical opening, the edge of the placenta was still right at the point where the cervical tissue turns into uterine tissue. So in the event of the [likely] c-section, the doctor would now have to cut through the placenta, which could endanger the baby and cause extensive bleeding for Maranatha, even to the point of requiring blood transfusions. Dr. Ghattas said we needed the placenta to move up just a little bit more in order to create a "window" for him to cut through without cutting either cervical tissue or the placenta. Our faith was so encouraged by how far the Lord had caused the placenta to move up that we felt confident that, as we kept praying and persevering in faith, He would create the needed "window."

This sonogram also allowed us to find out that our active little baby was a girl! Maranatha and I typically wait until our babies are born to find out what gender they are, but since this pregnancy was going to require so many sonograms, we opted to go ahead and have them tell us this time. We had strongly suspected it was a girl because shortly before Maranatha became pregnant, I had felt that the Lord had spoken to my heart one morning while praying that she would soon become pregnant, it would be a girl, and we were to name her Zion Hope. Dr. Ghattas did note one area of concern about the baby that the sonogram had revealed. Though he suspected it was probably nothing extremely serious, he showed us where her bowels appeared to have air in them when they should be full of amniotic fluid instead. This was not good for a number of reasons, and if it didn't improve we would need to begin to prepare to treat the effects of this when she was born. So because of this with the baby, the tumor, and the placement of the placenta still being an issue with regard to a c-section, Dr. Ghattas wanted us to see a specialist in Houston about four weeks later for an extensive "Level Two sonogram" examination.

Three weeks later, which was one week before our big appointment in Houston, Maranatha had another check up with Dr. Ghattas. Everything was about the same, though at that point, she was 24 weeks along, but measuring 34 weeks. The tumor was now baseball-sized and "completely obstructing the cervix," which "made it official" that a c-section delivery would be mandatory.

A few days later, on the Saturday evening before the Houston appointment on the following Monday, many of the saints who live in this area were gathered together around the Lord in the home of one of the families who lives just down the road from us. We had been there for a while, but Maranatha's back pain from the tumor pressure was getting to the "excruciating" level, and she had begun feeling dizzy and faint and was swelling up considerably, so I took her and the children home. Some 30-40 minutes later, Maranatha's father, Stan, came by to check on her. By that time she was feeling quite a bit better and the swelling had gone down. Stan told us that after we had left, the saints began to wait upon the Lord and pray, and that it was a significant time of Spirit-led corporate prayer. When he said this, Maranatha and I both bore witness that indeed something had been accomplished in prayer, though we didn't know what.

So a few days later, we drove down to Houston to see the specialist at the Memorial-Hermann Hospital's University of Texas Women's Health Center in Houston's medical district. Maranatha was now 26 weeks along, and the "Level Two" sonogram she was scheduled to have is a very detailed ultrasound examination performed by a radiologist instead of a technician. It requires the use of much more sophisticated equipment with lots of still-frame imaging and measurements and data taken that would be sent back with evaluations to Dr. Ghattas. As we went into the examination room and the very nice lady doctor/radiologist began doing the ultrasound, two other doctors immediately joined us. One was an OB/GYN who was a specialist for high-risk pregnancies. The other was a young doctor who was doing his residency in that particular specialty of practice. These doctors all knew from the paperwork why we were there but still asked us a lot of questions and we told them most all of the history and particulars of this pregnancy.

As the radiologist began the sonogram, the very first thing she told us was that the placenta had moved well up the uterine wall and was plenty far away from the cervix so as to make sufficient "window" for the c-section! Maranatha and I looked at each other and smiled and said, "Praise the Lord!" She then went on to examine the baby, and all three of the doctors noted many aspects of how healthy she looked, and they all concurred that her bowels "looked great." They said she was the healthiest baby they had seen all day, because all they normally see are cases with complications. Now we were really getting excited.

Then they began looking for the tumor. They looked from one end of Maranatha's uterus to the other and back several times over and they couldn't find even a trace of it! Nothing! IT WAS GONE!!!!! The OB/GYN who was the high-risk pregnancy specialist left the room for a moment and came back in with the head physician of the entire Memorial-Hermann/University of Texas Women's Health Center (whom they all immediately deferred to) and they sonogrammed their way around some more, talking quietly among themselves. It was a joyfully comical sight to watch these esteemed doctors from one of the major hospitals in the fourth largest city in the US all hovered around Maranatha's belly and the ultrasound viewing screen looking for this fibroid tumor and there was nothing there to be found! Finally, she (the head doctor) turned to Maranatha and me and said, "I don't know what you have been told, but the placenta is in a great location, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your baby, there is no tumor in your uterus. There is no reason why you can't have a normal vaginal delivery." After staying there with us for awhile, wracking their brains to figure out what was going on, each of them then palpated and measure Maranatha, and all of them said, "Hmm, you're measuring exactly 26 weeks, just like you're supposed to." I knew it would not be their preference since they were all doctors, but I asked them if there was any reason why we could not have a midwife assisted home birth. The chief physician said, "Well, no, as long as you have medical backup," and the others concurred.

Needless to say, Maranatha and I walked out of that hospital both speechless and elated. We praised and thanked our Lord all the way home for His kindness and mercy to us and this precious child-and cried not a few tears. This was not some medical mistake Dr. Ghattas made that got corrected. This was truly a miracle from the Lord's own hand. We saw the tumor at length during all the different ultrasounds performed by different technicians, who all examined and measured and took still-frame pictures of it from every conceivable angle and perspective. Dr. Ghattas himself had palpated and found it back at 20 weeks when it was tennis-ball-sized and gently grasped it in his fingers and turned to me and said, "This is it. This is the fibroid tumor," so I could feel of it for myself. The tumor was there at the exam 10 days prior to this Level Two sonogram, but then it was GONE! Maranatha and I knew that the Lord would walk with us through this trial, but I must confess we never expected this! Thank you, Lord!

Two weeks later, we went in for our next scheduled appointment with Dr. Ghattas. This was the first time we had seen him since the Houston appointment and discovery that the Lord had miraculously healed/removed the tumor. He appeared to be a little nervous as he came into the room, not making eye-contact with us and running down the current list of vital stats. "Blood pressure-good, blood count-very good, weight-Hmmm. You lost two pounds since your last visit (due to the missing baseball-sized tumor, I assumed!). Heart rate-good." And then he set everything down and turned around and looked at us and abruptly said, "Well, some things you just cannot explain! I mean, we know the tumor was there, but." I then said, "Yes, Dr. Ghattas, we know it was there too. But the Lord healed her." "Well, we must all believe in some higher healing power," he responded and then he went on to talk about the whole situation. He explained that the radiologist in Houston had called him on the telephone just to make sure he understood that her analysis and report from the level two sonogram was not a mistake-that there was indeed no longer a tumor there. Dr. Ghattas went on to say "Sometimes we doctors get to thinking that we are God and can explain or control or treat everything, and then something like this comes along to remind us that we're not all we think we are." Wow! How many doctors do you hear say that?

I then went on to tell Dr. Ghattas about how so many of the Lord's people had been praying, and especially the prayers that went up from the church that Saturday evening before the Houston appointment, and it turned into a really good opportunity to be a witness to him. After that, Dr. Ghattas talked about it some more, and then began wrapping up the appointment. Finally he said, "Any questions?" He looked intently at Maranatha and then at me and then back to Maranatha, and then he turned to me and said, "You have something to say!" and smiled. I then shared with him how much we appreciated his service to us, but that, in light of what the Lord had done, we were now "shifting gears" and were planning to have our baby at home with the assistance of our midwife. Dr. Ghattas smiled and then said, I knew you were going to say that, and I think that would be a very good thing for you to do!" In due time, Maranatha gave birth to our beautiful Zion Hope. [Author's note: Interestingly, it was the easiest and shortest labor of the now six home births we have had.]

 

In closing, there are many trials and difficult circumstances we must walk through that are a part of this life. Sometimes we walk through them and see the Lord perform wonderful miracles of healing, deliverance, and supernatural intervention like what happened in these particular situations I have shared. Other times, no apparent "miracle" comes to our situation, but the Lord supplies His abundant grace as we take each difficult step (Heb. 11:32-40). Whatever the outcome, we can trust Him. But as we walk through the process, let us not approach the circumstances of life passively. Instead, let us seek the Lord earnestly in faith-He is still a God of miracles!

 

 

 

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