Read Online A Treasury of Miracles for Women by Karen Kingsbury - Free Book Online Page B

consistently and so fervently for a single life. But this was more than a normal emergency. After delivering a healthy baby boy, Laura West, thirty-eight, was at the University Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, fighting for every breath of life. The night before, doctors had told her husband she was dying.
    “There's nothing more we can do,” one of the doctors had said. “It's between her and God now.”
    Prayer was the only way Laura's church family knew to help. Not just for Laura, but for her tiny newborn baby as well.
    On Monday morning Sheri Robinson picked up the chain at 7:00 A.M. Cindy Cummins: 9:00 A.M. Shana Rus sell: 11:00 A.M.
    These were Laura's friends, the people of Hope Com munity. And they knew how badly the Wests had wanted this baby. It shook them to their core to imagine this newborn son never knowing his mommy.
    A few years earlier, Laura West's daily prayer had al ways been the same: that her husband, Jake, spend more time at home and that his faith grow stronger.
    “He loves God and he loves us,” Laura would tell friends. “But the truth is he loves himself more. A lot more. I keep asking God to reach him. Whatever it takes.”
    At that same time, Jake and Laura desperately wanted a third child. They had two beautiful sons, Cody and Carl. But their dreams of raising lots of children dimmed when Laura seemed unable to get pregnant.
    Then, three years after Carl was born, Laura finally conceived. But what seemed like an answered prayer be came instead a sorrow-filled time when Laura lost the baby in her fifth month of pregnancy.
    Searching for reasons why God would allow the death of their third child, Laura privately wondered if perhaps God was using the pain of losing their baby as a way of get ting Jake's attention. She remembered her prayer: “What ever it takes, God. Get his attention whatever it takes.”
    Not long after the miscarriage, Laura and Jake once again began asking God for another child, and in January Laura found out she was pregnant again. From the begin ning, Laura's body did not cooperate. During her sixth week of pregnancy doctors analyzed the results of an ultra sound test and discovered that she had a problem with her placenta, a condition that typically corrects itself by the fourth month but which can be potentially dangerous.
    “I feel great,” Laura assured her husband, Jake. “I'm sure everything will be fine.”
    Jake, thirty-eight, needed reassuring because his work took him away from home so often. He was a pilot with a major airlines stationed in Tulsa. His skill was widely known because of his years as a fighter pilot and his routes sometimes included international flights. During those jaunts he might be away from home for five days at a time.
    Weeks passed, and Jake was in the middle of a flight to Europe when Laura began bleeding. At first the flow of blood was relatively light, and as she checked herself into the hospital that day, Laura's concern was only for her un born baby. There were still more than three months left until her due date.
    Within hours doctors realized that Laura's placenta had not corrected its position. Instead, it had grown through her uterine wall, causing bleeding from her uterus.
    “The baby is fine,” the doctor told her. “But we're sending you by ambulance to the hospital in Tulsa. They're better equipped to watch you until they can safely deliver your baby.”
    Jake West didn't learn of the troubles with Laura until he landed in France on the afternoon of June 24 and tried to contact Laura. A neighbor friend was watching the chil dren and explained that Laura had been taken to the hos pital in Tulsa. Immediately Jake put a call in to Laura.
    “Honey, everything's okay,” she said calmly. “I'm having a little bleeding, that's all. They're going to keep me here just in case there's a problem.”
    “Do you want me there?” Jake was ten thousand miles from home, but he could be back in two days if there was an