
The next two months were hard ones for me. I prayed and I cried and I read Scripture-falling asleep in the middle of verses. I told God I would obey and follow Him, but it took a long time for my feelings to catch up. Then I heard a story about Glenn Cunningham, a famous track star of the 1930s who overcame a doctor's prediction when he was nine years old that he'd never walk again. This young boy clung to a verse his father had read to him-Isaiah 40:28. I went home, turned to that passage and happened to read on to the next chapter. There my eyes fell on verse 10. I reread it several times, for it encouraged me that God said, "Do not fear, for I am with you." I knew that God had chosen to give me this new child and would also give me the strength and help I needed.
But that wasn't the end of my trials that summer. On July 3, when I was three months pregnant, my heart began racing, just as it had seven years earlier. Dennis rushed me to the hospital-my heart was beating at 200 to 300 beats a minute.
As I lay in the coronary intensive care unit, my main concern was for the child within me. Now that I was excited about the child, was I about to lose it? I prayed simply that God would protect our baby and spare its life and mine. I committed my life into God's hands as I lay there growing weaker and weaker.
The doctors finally slowed my heart by using electric shock treatment. When the nurse told me the baby's heartbeat was strong, I was so relieved I cried for joy.
Six months later, Laura Victoria Rainey was born on a cold January night. She has added joy and smiles to our family and to my life. Dennis and I concluded again that God does know what He's doing.
That God will remind you that He is with you in every situation you face, and He knows what He's doing.
Discuss: What situations do you fear? Have you turned to God in those circumstances?
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