Breath of Life

We were a family in disarray, like a bunch of pickup sticks dropped to the floor. Our young daughter was seriously ill—again. Months before, she’d been rushed to Children’s Hospital, where her lungs finally opened up, allowing her to breathe freely after eleven hours of constant asthma treatment and a near miss admission to the ICU.

Six months later, she was sick again with another asthma attack, missing two more weeks of school as doctors searched for a solution. Again, we pleaded with God for an answer, relief, and help. If help was coming, it seemed long overdue.

God remained silent.

Some kind friends offered us the use of their beachfront condo for a long weekend. We wrestled with whether we should go, though our daughter’s condition had stabilized. Finally, after prayer, my husband and I felt strongly that we should go, no matter what.

On the way down the coast, I prayed, Lord, I can step forward in faith here. I don’t need to hear from you, but I’d like to.

I heard nothing. In my hour of need—continued silence. I prayed Psalm 35:22 back to God, “Lord, you have seen this; do not be silent. Do not be far from me, Lord.”

We took a new route, one my husband felt led to take because he thought it was safer, but it was certainly much longer. After some time, and long after dark, I felt pressure to ask him to pull over and ask for directions. He agreed, and we pulled into a highway-side Chevron in a dimly lit one-horse town.

Within seconds of my husband entering the gas station, two people flew out of the door, crying and gripping one another’s hands. I craned my neck to see inside the gas station. I could see no one. No attendant, no customers, no husband! All the heads I’d seen moments earlier had disappeared. I couldn’t leave my kids and see what was happening. We locked the doors. And we prayed.

An ambulance screamed up, and EMTs raced into the store. Through the window, I finally saw my husband. Next, a woman clutching a baby walked into the back of the ambulance. A moment later, my husband emerged from the store, and a young man in his early twenties pumped my husband’s hand before joining the two who had rushed out of the store and followed the ambulance.

“What happened?” I asked.

“As soon as I walked into the store, a dad held out his baby and said, ‘Can you save my daughter? She’s not breathing.’” The baby’s mother cried inconsolably. My husband, trained in CPR, knelt, gently extended the baby’s neck, then opened her mouth before treating her. At each moment, he felt the Lord guiding him. Soon, the baby’s feather breaths responded to my husband’s. By the time the ambulance arrived, the baby had cried. A crying baby is a good sign!

The father told my husband the baby had had a seizure while on a family trip, the first one the baby had ever had, and the first the parents had ever seen.

As we drove away in the quiet, the Lord spoke to me. “There’s your answer,” he said to my heart. I knew what he meant. He’d been silent, but not for long. He’d led my husband and me in answering our deepest concerns most compellingly.

There will always be sickness and sorrow, trouble, and problems in this world. But God knows the number of that baby’s days. None of them will be snatched from her before His appointed time. He made sure to get us there to keep her safe that night. In the same way, I can rest knowing God alone has appointed my daughter’s days too, and He alone will ensure she lives the full measure of them.

He led us to save that baby’s life. He will lead others to help my girl too. And He has.

Be on the lookout for the amazing, unusual ways God leads you to help others and simultaneously answers your prayers. When He does that, it builds our faith because we know there could have been no solution but Him!

A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way? Proverbs 20:24

–Written by Sandra Byrd. Used by permission from the author.