“For I know the plans You have for me. Plans to give me a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11
You know the TV show that talks about the women and girls who had babies but did not know they were pregnant? I met one. In Darmstadt, near Evansville. Indiana. She had already been a mother of boys five times over when Jennifer dropped into the world in a toilet.
The story goes…. She had no weight gain, had an infection “down there” and had been to the doctor a few days before the birth to get some pain medication and antibiotics. The doctor did not catch that she was pregnant either. Husband did not know either.
She was home alone, and started having some major abdominal pain. So she took her pain medicine as prescribed and tried to lie back down. The pain drove her to the bathroom where, Plop. Out comes a baby, miraculously turned onto her back. She hit the base of the toilet not on her head or face down, but on her feet and back and slid into the water gently. Mom had had some good pain medicine, but she knew she had a tiny two lbs. one oz. baby.
She called the doctor’s office, asked politely to speak to the doctor and was told he was busy. She was still polite when she demanded to speak to a nurse. Finally, after a few minutes of waiting while holding an infant, who was very quiet in one hand, still connected to the placenta and umbilical cord, the nurse came to the phone. After explaining the situation, two people came driving fast to her house. They called the ambulance, kept the baby warm, called the neonatologist, and gave the baby little breaths and some infant CPR.
This is where the miraculous plans of God are revealed. The doctor said “tie off the umbilical cord with a clean shoe-string and wrap her in aluminum foil”. This family was poor. Really poor. The day before her husband had bought two shoe-strings but had only used one to replace a broken one, and she had a clean, new shoe string. Her mother had brought over a new box of aluminum foil the day before that had not been opened, and they had the baby blanket.
When they arrived at the hospital, they took the baby to the NICU for care and someone called her husband. Her daughter-in-law was also expecting and he argued with the person that had called him “you mean my daughter-in-law? Not my wife. She isn’t pregnant.” “Well no, she is not pregnant now, you have a daughter.” When the new mother called her father and told him, he said “Now honey, you must be having a nervous breakdown.” No one believed her.
The baby was in the intensive care unit for newborns for three months and was declared legally blind. She is 38 years old now. Drives. She is a Respiratory therapist. God had other plans for her and her family.
What miracle have you witnessed in your life? Do you look for miracles in the coincidences in your life? What ‘shoe-string’ and ‘aluminum foil’ in your life is unexplainable?