God of Hope

I remember my son’s first cry clearly… because it was immediately followed by silence.

Neither of our birth stories went the way my husband and I had planned. I was in labor with our daughter for over 24 hours when her oxygen levels started dropping, leading to an emergency C-section. With our son, we had a scheduled C-section, but I went into labor four weeks early, so it ended up being another emergency operation.

I was laying on the table, trying not to worry, when our little boy came into the world. I heard his little cry and my eyes filled with tears because I had waited nine months to hear that beautiful sound. But then… nothing. The doctor held my shoulders down as I tried to sit up and see him while the anesthesiologist said, “It’s okay, honey. He’s just having a hard time breathing. They’ve got him.”

Several new faces rushed into the room, two trying to calm me down because my blood pressure was rising, and one urgently paging the pediatrician. My husband didn’t know which way to go. I kept whispering, “Go to the baby!” but as soon as he did, my machines would start beeping again, and he would rush back to my side. After about twenty minutes they took my sweet baby boy—who I had only seen once—out of the room, and my heart broke. I hated every second of being tugged on and stitched up while I knew my son was somewhere else fighting to breathe.

When they finally wheeled me back to my room, the pediatrician came in (without our baby) and told us that if things didn’t improve, he would need to transfer us to another hospital. As I sat there in the bed unable to move from the waist down and feeling helpless, God reminded me He was not helpless and that His glory would be revealed in my weakness.

Immediately, my husband and I began to pray. The situation was beyond our control, so there was nothing we could do except rest in the hope and expectation that comes from loving a living God.

I wrote down the prayer that my husband and I repeated over and over again that day, and I want to be faithful to share it, for His glory:

Lord, we lift our sweet baby to you and place him in Your arms. We ask that You would reach out and touch his lungs, filling them up with the breath of Your Holy Spirit. God, breathe life into him.

We are asking You for a miracle. You said in Your Word that the prayer of the faithful would heal the sick, and we are placing all of our faith in You, Almighty God.

We also pray for strong, calm hearts because we know that our baby is in Your perfect hands and that you love him more than we could imagine.

In Jesus’ precious name, so we can shout your glory from the rooftops,

Amen.

The minutes passed slowly, but within an hour, I was able to hold my little boy for the first time. A few more hours and they took him off of all the breathing machines, which the pediatrician called “a miracle”—the exact words we used in our prayer.

I am sharing his birth story because it reminds me every day, even in the trenches, that God is always faithful to uphold His Word and His children. All praise to the God of hope!

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” – Romans 15:13

*Photo taken by Justin Lowe.