Recently, one of my friends challenged her Facebook
friends to use three photos to tell a life story. Her story was full of
heartache and God’s healing from a tremendous loss and the bright hope she has
for the future. I have not suffered anything
that would even come close to her anguish, but loved the challenge, and immediately
had my mind’s wheels turning to think of which story I would tell, and thought
once again how ALL of our stories are His-story at work in our lives and the
triumphs tell us as much about Him as the tragedies.
The challenge to me is even further daunting, as here
I am in Africa, away from all my life-long collection of ‘Kodak moments.’ (oh there are a few very recent photos on
this computer that has been in my ownership for less than five months, but that
doesn’t provide much to work with for the previous 55 plus years.) Then, one
day, the story I want to tell came crystal clear in my mind. The nursing group I was working with was
discussing anemia and blood transfusions in our patients and our ship’s blood
bank supply, and as is typical of women, our minds being spaghetti – where every
thought immediately connects to another thought in a way that causes men to
just scratch their heads trying to figure the connection – next thing I knew,
the story of Laura’s day of birth, and the post-partum hemorrhage that I
suffered, that caused a physician to come to John saying ‘women still die in
1982 from post-partum hemorrhages’ was spilling from my mouth.
And then I knew it.
Three photos, Laura’s story. I
don’t have a photo of her day of birth but I have one of her as a very young
little toddler with her daddy. She had
it on the wall in her cabin. From before
her birth, God has had a plan for our ‘little girl.’ Jeremiah writes in 1:5 “Before I formed you
in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you
as a prophet to the nations.” If God
knew Jeremiah and had a plan for him to be a prophet before he was even formed in
the womb, He also has a plan specifically for Laura (as well as each of us.) I
recall thinking just prior to being put under the anesthesiologist’s medications
for surgery after Laura’s birth while I was bleeding away, ‘Lord, take care of
that daddy and his two babies if I am not around, but I would surely like to be
their mommy for a long time.’ I’m
writing this story today, as a certain affirmative answer from God for my
prayer!
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