Prayers Part 2

The second time I remember praying was when my marriage was struggling and it seemed like things were coming to an end. I prayed in my head and asked for God to forgive me and help save my marriage and family.

About a month later, I was running to the bathroom to throw up, and I immediately thought “what is going on! It is like I am pregnant…”

A light bulb dinged or a flashback moment went through my mind of me praying for God to help my marriage. I knew that I knew in that moment that He had given me a baby to fix it.

I was not happy and neither was my husband. We were in a huge argument that morning and it was definitely looking like things were not going to last much longer. My best friend made my husband go buy a pregnancy test even though he thought it was a joke or a way to just stop us from fighting.

Then the PG test came back positive, and suddenly everything was different. I wasn’t a very happy pregnant wife, and it had to be the grace of God covering my husband, because no one normal would have been able to put up with me at that time!

Eight months later, I was on the couch eating a bowl of cereal, and I thought in my head, “I wonder what it will feel like to go into labor”, because both of my boys were induced labors. As soon as I had that thought it was like a powerful force just punched me with a massive head butt! It was excruciating pain, and I had to get to the hospital before the babysitter could even get to our house from a mile away.

Our beautiful daughter was born on March 14, 2007. She arrived three weeks early and she came so fast that the doctor barely made it! They were racing me down the hallway to get me to the delivery, and then telling me “whatever you do, don’t push!” The nurse had checked me and said that she had never seen anything like it. The baby had pushed so hard that she pushed right past the cervix which wasn’t ready for the birth yet.

When she was born they tried to weigh her, but the scales were broken. They ended up putting the wrong weight down and it was a big mess when they couldn’t verify her weight so we could leave the hospital. We had to go to the doctor every two days to make sure she was okay because her weight was so off when we wanted to leave the hospital.

We named her Grace Elizabeth and I never knew why that name was the only one that I would even consider naming her, but God told me a few years ago that He had named her and that she is a reminder of His great grace towards me. The fact that she arrived unexpectedly really early and then no one ever knew how much she actually weighed, were all part of God’s doing. He wanted me to see how his grace burst onto the scene when no one is expecting it, and no one can ever measure how great his grace truly is!

I didn’t mention that when I prayed for help, I had been going gambling every night, drinking and totally out of control. My marriage was failing because I was causing it, but God saved me with His amazing grace and that is a literal statement, because if it hadn’t been for our daughter Grace, my life would be completely different and not in a good way!!