God’s miracle happened before! To God be the glory!

When I tell the story, some respond in awe and praise God. Others scratch their heads, “Maybe He is real and still does miracles.” I’m holding my breath in awe, wonder, and trembling worship.

God has done a miracle in my life, twice now. I’m so humbled by His grace and mercy that I can hardly speak about it.

I wrote about the first chapter and His miracle, the messy middle chapter and its miracles, and my wrestling with what to do about a second brain surgery, literally one week before the valley began.

Now, two months after the surgery, it’s time to share about the lifesaving surgery. As with the first, we had no hope of any healing treatment. 

But how did a possible healing surgery even come into being?

Very similar to what happened with my first surgery in the 90s, this is God’s miracle!

God’s miracle happened before

Three months before…

my sagging brain and brainstem herniation’s symptoms began worsening on September 3, to the point where I often drifted in and out of unconsciousness, with intractable constant pain and extra bouts of electric shocks, unstable vital signs, going blind at times…

God put my MRI into the view of a famous neurosurgeon, outside of my hospital system. He knew he was “supposed to contact me” when he saw it. He then called me, “out of the blue!”

This is our great God…

One month before…symptoms took me into the valley of the shadow of death, 

the surgeon confidently told me he could use a new surgical technique to help me, then referred me to a neurologist to provide difficult but helpful treatment for symptoms in the remaining weeks of waiting.

A few weeks before surgery… 

we found out the surgeon is also a follower of Jesus Christ. 

One day before…

my husband and I met with him, reflecting on what God had done in the “miracle that happened before.” We marveled at how God works so powerfully and mysteriously when He purposes to do so. We talked about the role of faith, prayer, and our humbled dependence and complete reliance on God for healing in any medical treatment. 

God’s miracle happened before.

To God be the glory!

God’s miracle in the valley of the shadow of death

God also rescued me in that scary valley, doing heart miracles of deepest peace. He gently led me to the point of acceptance, able to release into “no matter what,” even “I don’t care” about surgery’s outcomes. In God’s powerful providence, as so many asked for healing along with “Thy will be done,” He had already miraculously acted, by sustaining and carrying me through scary symptoms. Peace flooded my whole being in the process. So close to death, so often, He protected me. God miraculously gave me these gifts, ones I will forever treasure:

the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:7 ESV).

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Rom. 15:13 ESV).

God had already done each of these miracles in the valley before the surgery ever happened. 

My peace-filled hope? I knew, without a doubt, that I would live with Him forever if He chose to heal me by bringing me home. 

That IS the miracle, to every believer in Jesus Christ!

Jesus Christ is our tangible, true, solid hope that helps us endure any possible earthly suffering. His big-picture hope kept me going, held in His gospel-love story for me, completely forgiven of all my sin and now reconciled to my Heavenly Father, no matter what the outcome of a day’s events.

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8 KJV).

Great things he has taught us, great things he has done,
and great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
but purer and higher and greater will be
our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.

(“To God be the Glory,” Crosby, F., 1875)

God’s comfort as the One who is in control

God’s miracle happened before.

My loving God’s full control over life and death comforted me. 

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn. 4:18 ESV). 

What a miracle. In and out of conscious awareness, He comforted me with truths of His upholding power and sovereign care for me as His beloved in Christ.

He tangibly provided His abiding presence with me, controlling every heartbeat and breath, every blood pressure dipping into shock, and calming me when I considered every moment of what could happen in the future for me and my husband.

Now, so held by this glorious God? Could I walk into anything in the future, with peace? Can you? Oh, what a miracle He would do in us as we suffer trials in this fallen world! 

I marvel at His powerfully faith-building “going before me” miracle in causing this “out-of-the-blue” medical provision of life-saving rescue to come into my life not once, but twice!

So, I’m praying I’ll forever remember this, and rest quietly with anything in my future:

God gave me songs of love and praise to Jesus

In the rapid decline through the weeks before surgery, I can also describe God’s miracle as His supernaturally coming near to me with floods of songs into my mind and heart, continually pointing me to His love and glory, always on display in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ for me on the cross. 

I will ask Him when I see Him face to face. Is this what He was doing? For it was certainly the outcome.

God’s miracle had happened way before, for these songs began to enter my life when He saved me in love and dwelt within me by His Spirit. Alleluia! Every song, sung anew to my weakening body, sang to His glory, often songs of praise to the miracle of His saving and transforming grace to every believer in Jesus Christ!

To God be the glory, great things he has done!
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son,
who yielded his life an atonement for sin,
and opened the life-gate that we may go in.

God’s miracle in giving purpose to our earthly lives, as we suffer

God’s miracle happened before.

It happened “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). I’m in awe.

I don’t know what those “good works” are to be now, but God does. What a comfort as I wonder about the future and what my body can handle. I know they’re each gifts wrought by His saving and sanctifying powerful grace to US, as His beloved in Christ!

Because it’s not just me – it’s you too, if you are His! He will empower us to “do” those good works, by that same grace, for He promises to do so.

For the last few months, I could not “do” except to abide, pray, and rest in Him. I couldn’t sing, play the piano, read my Bible or use my phone most of the time, so I often couldn’t even find my own playlists that I use and share with others. I was alone much of the time, in quiet, with Jesus Himself. Even that “suffering” was in His upholding, protective, powerful care, and control.

Jesus held me fast and never let me go.

So close, abiding, near, alive, compassionate.

Loved. Redeemed. 

Safe in the arms of Jesus.

O Love that will not let me go.

As many others who’ve walked the valley with Jesus have said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I know that the suffering itself, all our suffering on earth, has some redemptive purpose in His love story unfolding. That love story, His kingdom purposes, centered on the true gospel of Jesus Christ, is His miraculous story. 

My body is not “fully healed,” but I am alive and functioning so much better already, and His story continues to unfold in His purposed plan and by His grace and power alone. I must continue to share our true healing as we walk through the brokenness and pain of this fallen world’s suffering. For God so compassionately may choose to heal our bodies on earth, but we all need “by His stripes” healing of forgiveness and a restored relationship with God through Christ. And then? He gets us through anything, everything, when we know we belong to Jesus now and forever!

O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood!
To every believer the promise of God;
the vilest offender who truly believes,
that moment from Jesus forgiveness receives.

It’s all His miracle. To God be the glory!

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
let the earth hear his voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son,
and give him the glory, great things he has done!

What’s your story? Mine is ongoing, and so is yours! He’s working in our lives, sister in Christ. Sometimes, it’s hard to see it. I know. And I pray this encourages you to know He is doing redemptive work in your situation, even when it seems hopeless. 

Sister in Christ, once again, this is where it seemed I was.

But God’s miracle happened before.

So, as we both walk through any suffering to come, if you’d like a sister to walk alongside you, this week’s emailed prayer and playlist contains some of the songs He flooded into my heart in the day and hours prior to surgery. It is my absolute joy to share them with my hurting sisters in Christ through email, as we all sing Christ’s hope into our suffering, together. To God alone be the glory.

For weekly prayer and playlist of Scriptural songs to sing, with access to resource library, sign up here: 

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