I was in the midst of enduring my fifth miscarriage last weekend when Chris shared his sermon on prayer for healing. It had been an intense few weeks involving the excitement and uncertainty of a new pregnancy, the fear of something going wrong, the crushing feeling of having our fears realized at the lack of heartbeat at the first ultrasound, and then two weeks of the physical pain of what was becoming a complicated miscarriage process. During all of this, my husband and I had been trying and struggling to understand God's plan. Particularly, I had been feeling a complete absence of the Lord's presence at I time when I felt like I so desperately needed to feel His embrace. 

Following the sermon, I reluctantly decided to go down and receive prayer. Our friend, Shea, prayed for my body to be healed both presently and for any future pregnancies. As I started to walk back to my seat following prayer, I was suddenly aware that I was starting to bleed more than I had in several days. As the afternoon turned into evening, the bleeding had increased to the point of concern and at 8:30 PM, I went to the hospital. I was admitted immediately as it had become clear that I was hemorrhaging and within a few hours I was counting backward in the operating room.  

The whole day and night, as things progressed and many scary things happened and invasive and uncomfortable things were done, I wasn't feeling the normal sense of fear and self-pity that had been my companion in the past few weeks. Although when I had prayed for healing on Sunday, I had been thinking more along the lines of a "conventional" healing that didn't involve a hospital visit, surgery, and narrowly escaping a transfusion; for the first time in weeks, I was assured of God's hand in my situation and was aware that I was experiencing a supernatural peace. Truthfully, when I went up for prayer last Sunday, I didn't do so with any expectation that anything would change. Despite that, and despite the seeming opposite of healing that occurred, I do feel like God was able to break a barrier in my heart and be a source of strength and comfort for me in the midst of a very difficult circumstance - emotionally and physically.

I am still very sad about the miscarriage and that we will not be having a baby this July. I am going to continue to pray for healing as we would still love to extend our family and I am going to to continue to pray to see His presence, to feel His peace and strength, and for the faith and grace to fight against the fear and the self-pity that I feel constantly. I am sure that there are days that I will pray full of faith and expectancy, and there will be many more days that it will just be empty words passing from my lips. Even when He answers, or doesn't answer, my prayers in the way that I intended them when I prayed, and even when He feels distant and unreachable, I am comforted to know that God is so much bigger than me and my plans, and He is so much bigger than the faith that I have when I pray!