The Shunammite Woman - A Woman Who Believed In Miracles

How strong is your faith? What is the object of your faith?

Lately I have come to understand a whole new dimension of my faith, or rather the areas of my heart that are still filled with doubt. I often ask Marshall, "Do you still think God can heal our little girl?" To which he always replies, "Yes I do." After I asked him this question one night, I told him that I was clinging to the hope that the doctors had given us a 1% chance that she may not have trisomy 18. He swiftly turned his head and looked at me and said, "Our hope is not in the 1% chance they have given us or that the blood tests could be wrong. Our hope is that God has the power if He so chooses to heal her. If she is born perfectly healthy we will attribute that to a healing from God, not a medical mistake." This took me by surprise as I began to examine my heart and realize I had more faith at believing there could be a medical mistake than that God could totally heal Margaret Anne. In that moment I was so ashamed of my feeble faith in the God I know and love. I think with my nursing background I am overly aware of the realities of blood tests and DNA testing. I felt that I could put my faith in medicine and when that allowed for uncertainty then I was allotted my 1% hope of error. Marshall sat there beside me holding me in his arms and gently said, "Even if the tests were 100% sure she has this, we still have 100% chance of God performing a miracle. He is not limited by medicine." At this my heart broke and the tears began to fall freely onto my husband's shoulder. How could I not have seen this mountain of doubt in my heart and mind? Marshall's last thoughts on the subject have not quit replaying daily through my mind. He simply stated, "You have been sitting in a one-legged chair hoping it holds you up when you could have been sitting in a four-legged chair. I don't know about you but I like my odds a lot better in the four-legged chair!" 

As I have thought about miracles and faith the last week or so, I have gone back to a small story I love in 2 Kings 4 about the Shunammite woman. I found this story in the Old Testament years ago and proudly proclaimed that I wanted to be a woman of faith like this Shunammite woman. How far I have to go! She is such a small character that we don't even get her name but her story speaks for itself. Elisha the prophet passes through a small town and this woman, full of hospitality and discernment, invites him to dine with them. Later, she tells her husband that she recognizes him as a man of God and she makes preparations in her house for him to stay there whenever he passes through the town. Elisha is so overwhelmed with her generosity that he wants to give her something in return. She was a woman of great contentment and the only thing she desired was a son but her husband was old and it seemed impossible. The prophet tells her within the year she would embrace a son. Just as with Sarah, the impossible happened and she had a son. When the child was older, he developed a strange illness and died suddenly on his mother's lap. She immediately saddled up her horse and tells her husband, "All is well", and goes to find Elisha and tell him what has happened. Just as she had recognized Elisha as a man of God, she recognized that her only hope in this hopeless situation was in the God whom Elisha served. He is God of the impossible. He is God "who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." (Romans 4:17) Eventually, Elisha returns with her to the house and brings the boy back to life. Truly, God performed a miracle that defied medical science, human understanding, or even 1% chances. 

The point of this story is not a name it and claim it miracle for Margaret Anne. The point of this story is the object of our faith (specifically my faith) and how even as a believer He continues to strengthen that faith. Even if Margaret Anne has trisomy 18 and does not live on this earth for long, the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, is still bigger and more powerful than medicine. He is greater than suffering, illness, and disease. His all encompassing grace is extensive enough for a young couple who may experience the loss of a child barely a year into their marriage. He is the only worthy object of ALL my hope and faith. I am so thankful for a strong, godly husband by my side for the journey who speaks truth into my life, holds me in my guilt and shame, and loves me enough to help me grow in my faith. Sometimes when Marshall looks me in the eyes I tell him I see the eyes of Jesus looking back at me. That night Jesus met me in my doubt and spoke tenderly to my heart through my husband. What a sweet reminder that our God is still in the business of miracles and that while we sit in the waiting room of His grace, He gives us a four-legged chair to sit in. 

"In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 
1 Peter 1:6-7

~ Mary Michael

Already Not Yet - Gospel Hope

I'm relatively positive I only had a day or two left before Mary Michael changed the name of our blog to www.mary.com.  In all seriousness, we have been amazed and humbled by the responses we've received since starting this blog.  We started it as a way to communicate to our family and friends updates about Margaret Anne.  It has far exceeded that to become a source of great encouragement to us, a way to put onto "paper" the lessons we're learning, and a way to experience afresh the Body of Christ as y'all have sent emails, texts, facebook messages, and cards.  So, thank you for caring about a single, unborn life... the life of my first-born daughter.  Mary Michael and I know that each individual reading these posts also has their own prayer requests, fears, challenges, and struggles.  It's so humbling to know y'all are joining us in ours, even in the midst of your own.

I have been tasked by my bride with providing the latest update from our most recent doctor's appointment.  Now, I don't yet claim to be a marriage expert, having barely reached the one year mark.  However, I have discovered a key secret to this crazy venture: do what I'm told and with a smile on my face and flowers in my hand.  So far so good; we are pregnant after all!  So without further ado...

As we entered our now overly familiar doctors office we were prepared and even expecting the worst. Somewhere along the way we've grown into this tendency.  Perhaps it's coping; perhaps it's cracks in our faith or both.  Regardless, we had been praying for some sort of good news.  Specifically, my bride had been praying for several things: that Margaret Anne's weight would still be on track, that her heart and kidneys would be without defects, and that her facial features would appear normal and measure correctly.

After enduring the typical wait, we were finally ushered back into the unnecessarily cold ultrasound room.  By this time, Mary Michael and I were both simply trying to maintain our composure, sweating with anxiety.  I had noticed that the machine they had us on was different than last time.  In a vain attempt at easing our nerves I asked the tech about it.  Her answer was priceless. We were on the "skinny girl" machine.  It was a relief we all needed.  Even pregnant, and despite her proclamations to the contrary, my bride was still considered medically skinny.

After a painfully long exam, Dr. Allen informed us that Margaret Anne was on track, or at least as on track as a T18 baby could be.  Her weight, although low, was technically in the "normal range".  Her heart was absolutely perfect.  Her kidneys were pristine and her face, as evidenced on the 3D images, was measuring and looking good.  She had hair on her head, 5 fingers on each hand and 5 toes on each foot!  Dr. Allen went on to explain that our girl still had 99% positive T18 tests and that she was still at serious risk.  However, there were no new complications with her physical development.

As you might be now, we too were wondering what to think about it all.  I was even frustrated, not now knowing what to think!  We were expecting more bad news, more positive test results, more evidence that our time with our girl was running out and drawing short.  Yet, God through your prayers, His goodness, and even my doubts gave us a kiss of grace.  I was prepared to yet again stumble out of the doctors office, fighting back the tears until I was safely inside our car.  Instead, I sat looking at my wife so very, very thankful, repentant for my lack of faith, and rejoicing that the bride I married believes in praying, and in praying a very specific prayer.

Margaret Anne still has the markers and DNA blood tests confirming T18.  Her little wrists are still bent.  A new development is that her amniotic fluid level is slightly elevated.  We remain at a very high risk (50% of T18 babies) for a still birth.  However, today I was once again given the gift of feeling my little girl kick.  Each of her movements is a token of God's grace to me.  In the smallness of Margaret Anne's movements I'm reminded of the grandeur of our Creator.  Each ultrasound is a chance to see the life with which God has entrusted to me.

Before going to bed each night I take time to press my face against Mary Michael's medically skinny belly and talk to, sing to, listen to, and feel my girl.  These moments are so precious, as I realize this could be my only time with her.  It's for time that I'm praying.  Be it a lifetime through a miraculous healing or for hours after her birth, I just want to know her and hold her alive.  I desperately want to bring her home to be her Dad.  

It's in these deepest, selfish cries of my heart that I'm confronted by my own theology.  Margaret Anne is not mine.  My hope cannot be in the doctors being wrong or even God providing a miracle.  The only hope we have is in the Gospel and the redemptive plan of God.  She is a gift, entrusted to my bride and me for a time.  The amount of time is not for me to decide.  God is good because He is ontologically good, not because He seems to be good to me and grants me time.  

I realize that I'm rubbing up against the already-not yet reality of God's redemptive work.  With Paul in I Corinthians 15, I look back at the cross in repentance, faith, and gratitude for being set free from my sin and alive in Christ.  Yet, I also look ahead to His returning with rejoicing and yearning when all things will be reconciled to Himself.  Sin and its effects will be no more as creation is restored and death defeated.  Trisomy 18 will be no more.  I'll embrace a healthy Margaret Anne and I'll hold her and know her more fully alive than I even am now.  In the shadow of Christ's throne my bride and I will worship the Creator alongside our daughter; her wrists stretched fully out in worship.  Until this time, we hold on to the hope that is within (I Peter. 3:15).  Restoration is just around the corner.  God is good!

"When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  'Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?'" (I Cor. 15: 54-55)

"Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." (Rev. 21: 3b-4)

~ MDDIII