My story is a dramatic one. I hesitate to even tell it to you in fear that you will dismiss your own Say “Yes” to God story as not spectacular enough. Please don’t do that.
You want to know a secret? I said yes to God during this dramatic experience, but I struggle with saying yes to Him in the everyday stuff. I guess because during this experience all I had left to rely on was the supernatural strength of the Holy Spirit. But in the everyday? I still believe the lie that I have to do it on my own. The everyday stuff is the hardest to say yes to.
It started two years after we got married. I was an older newlywed – 34 years old – and after living fourteen years as a discontented single woman who refused to say yes to God, I was thrilled to be married. Even if my husband had a heart disease, Cardiomyopathy, that would eventually take his life if he was not miraculously cured or did not have a heart transplant. John was the one I prayed for all those years. He was my special gift.
After years of remaining fairly healthy with a heart defibulator and a regular diet of about ten different drugs, John’s heart began to fail. The only thing on my mind at the time was whether we would be able to have babies. I didn’t expect the news we got that day in the cardiologist’s office to come that soon. He would need a heart transplant.
So John, with his less than common blood type, was listed on the heart transplant list.
So we waited. We waited at home even though John was on a constant IV that he carried around with him in a pouch.
And he got sicker.
I knew the heart that John would receive was already chosen by God. I knew that He knew the events that would lead up to John receiving a heart donation. I knew that another soul was involved. And another family. So I did not pray for that heart to come quickly but for it to just come in His perfect timing, in His sovereign will. I prayed fully aware that John may die before a heart became available. I also prayed fully aware that his life is no more blessed than any other person’s.
But he got even sicker. We no longer could wait at home. After about two months John went into the hospital to stay as he waited for a heart to become available.
Two weeks after that there was still no heart. But there was a staph infection.
Hope turned hopeless as I signed the paperwork for him to be put on life support.
Weeks before I had imagined looking the enemy straight in the eye. I had had enough. “Don’t think you’re going to get me through this. Live of die, everyone will know God’s sovereignty and glory through John’s story. Lives will be changed for Him through this experience.”
Now I was standing on the seventh floor of Duke University Medical Center walking fast next to my husband’s bed as they rushed him down the hall to surgery to be put on life support.
As the hallway forked, John went to the right. I turned my head to look at him one last time, and there it was.
An indescribable peace that I will never be able to explain in words.
I made my way to the waiting room. The life support surgery would take about one hour, so I prayed, and I read Psalms, and I prayed some more.
“Lord, I love John so much. I begged for him for years, and you finally brought him to me. I need him here with me. I want him here with me. But I know he is not mine. He is your child. You may have reasons for needing him to come home to be with you today – reasons that I will never understand. But, Lord, I give him to you now. I lay down at your feet my husband. Do with him as you wish.”
I am here to proclaim God’s supernatural peace that surpasses all understaning is real. It comes from saying “Yes” to God.
And because I do not want to leave the best part out:
John’s heart stopped that day on his way to life support surgery, but they were able to rececitate him. He was on life support for three days before receiving a heart transplant. Today he is alive and doing wonderfully. We are expecting our first baby in October.
And we have a story to share that His peace is real when you say “yes” to Him.
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