I was struggling trying to figure out what I wanted to write about next. Then I was driving home from work the other day and had the most AMAZING worship session I’ve had in a long time. Sometimes just being in the car on your own, just you, God, and the music, it’s wonderful. No distractions, no worries, just singing along and thinking about all the things you have to praise God for. And then you get THAT FEELING. Do you know what I’m talking about? That overwhelming, deep down in your soul, GOD feeling. It takes over and you are so overcome with peace and strength and joy. When you feel that you realize just how much more often you are STRESSED than calm. The world will do that to you…so just remember where you came from and remember that YOU HAVE A PURPOSE. Don’t worry if you’ve made some wrong decisions in the past…You do not have the power to ruin God’s plan for your life. You may make decisions that take you a little off course from time to time but understand that you will always reach your destination in the end. Have you ever been using GPS and made a wrong turn? What happened? “Re-routing…” and you were one your way again! So never fear…He is still working in your life.
With that being said, I know what I want to write about today!
Lyric Cole…the one who changed my life.
For those of you who don’t know, I got pregnant outside of wedlock. I was not married and as I stated in my pregnancy blog, by the time my son was born I was a full-on single mother. I didn’t even know what it was to have a relationship with God nor did I really know much about God at all. I would pray from time to time but it was more like an afterthought and I didn’t really ever think anything would result from it. I didn’t know I was supposed to have faith…honestly I felt that if you were a good person, you were going to heaven. Boy, how wrong I was.
Bear with me because this may sound cliché but when my son was born, when they placed that little baby on my chest, something inside me changed and I just cried. It didn’t just move ME either…there was a medical student who had requested to be in the room and this was her first time seeing a baby be born…when I looked up, she was standing a few feet away with tears streaming down her face, too. She walked forward and thanked me for allowing her to be a part of such a special moment and left. There was just SOMETHING that happened that day…it was the first time I felt THAT feeling and I didn’t even know how to describe it or what it was. I just remember being flooded with one overwhelming thought: GOD… and the feeling of love that washed over me was like no other feeling I had ever had before. I looked up at my mom with tears in my eyes and said, “Mom, I feel like God has touched my baby.” Like I said, I had no prior connection to God, I was just a “send up an occasional prayer request” type person. But God knew what he was doing and that day…a seed was planted.
Fast forward about 6 months…the first time I ever took Lyric to church. I don’t know what made me go that day but I’m glad that I did. I went with my (now) mother-in-law (who has always shown such a strong faith and obedience to God and has also been an instrumental part of guiding me back to God). She is my witness…when we carried Lyric into the church that day, before we could even see the people, Lyric heard that music and immediately got so still, lifted his hand and looked upward. He stayed there so still for so long I was able to take a picture. When I looked at that picture, there was a light that seemed to focus on his upturned face and that sweet little baby hand. How he knew to do that, I still have no idea…but the awe on his innocent baby face told me all I needed to know…
He was HOME.
And another seed was planted. I am so thankful that the seeds were GODLY this time!
Skip ahead another 6 months or so, Lyric was a little over one year old. He was now sleeping his own room…well TECHNICALLY…but both of us were on the couch together pretty much ALL NIGHT every night. Lyric woke up every single hour every night to eat. He had been like this since he was born. Needless to say, it had been one of the most EXHAUSTING years of my life. I used to look at my friends with older kids and wonder how they ever survived this.
One night out of nowhere, Lyric did not wake up for several hours…I remember waking up once, checking the clock and thinking “Oh THANK GOD, sleep!” After the second time I woke up, I sat up quickly, all grogginess washed away in an instant by a mother’s fear! OMG what if something was wrong?! So I rushed into his room to check on him but there he was, in his bed sleeping like an angel baby. 🙂
So I kissed his forehead and went back to bed. A few more hours passed with both of us sleeping peacefully. Lyric only woke up one time that night. In the morning I felt so rested and thought wow…what a lucky night! But it proved to be something so much more than luck.
From that night forward, Lyric woke up only once a night, AT THE SAME EXACT TIME every night. 3:11 am. This went on for MONTHS. I just remember thinking about how crazy it was that it was at the same time every night…I racked my brain for months trying to think of what this could mean and one night, as he slept, I was overwhelmed once again by only one thought: GOD. The next day I text my mother-in-law and asked her if she could look up all the 3:11 scriptures in the Bible and tell me what they said. Her response: “Umm…do you know how many books are in the Bible?” Obviously, as I was not an avid reader of the Bible and, though I was more aware of God, I still didn’t really have a relationship with Him. So I did NOT know how many books were in the Bible. Instead of looking them up for me, she bought me my own Bible. As soon as I got it, I set to work looking up all the 3:11s…not all of them made sense or were relevant but there were a few that stuck out to me!
The first one was Ruth 3:11 – “And now, my daughter, do not be afraid. I will do for you all you ask. All the townsmen know that you are a woman of noble character.” With everything that I had been through by that time, this scripture brought tears to my eyes. It just showed me that no matter what anyone tried to say about me, the people would know the truth. 🙂 And it gave me such excitement about what else I would find it I kept looking. So on into the Bible I went.
The next one was it…the one that made this whole thing so amazing. It was 1 Samuel 3:11…before I tell you the scripture, I want to give you some background on the story of Samuel. In this story there was a older couple that had always wanted to have a child but never seemed to be able to. The mother, Hannah, prayed to God and begged for a son, saying that if she could just conceive one, then when he was old enough, she would send him to the church in service as a child of God. So God sent the couple a son, Samuel, and when he was old enough, Hannah stuck to her promise and sent him to live in the church. There, he had a mentor named Eli. One night, Samuel was woken from a sound sleep when he heard his name being called. So he ran into Eli’s room and said, “Here I am. You called me.” Eli said, “I did not call you. Go back and lie down.” This happened for the next two nights as well. On the third night, Eli realized that it was GOD calling to Samuel. He told Samuel to go back and lie down and if the Lord called him again, to say “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
So to the important part…1 Samuel 3:11 was the moment that THE LORD SPOKE TO THE CHILD and the child knew it was God. And what did God say to him? – “And then the Lord spoke to Samuel: “See I am about to do something that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle.” All I could think was, God is speaking to my son! And Lyric could hear Him! This was the moment I knew that God was reaching out to me. And He was waiting for me to hear and answer Him. I don’t know if you believe in signs but I feel like they are all around us and sometimes we just don’t see them because we are not opening our hearts to God. Open up…look and LISTEN, for He is trying to tell you something.
Of course this was the most important scripture I found that day…the game changer…the candle that lit my path to a growing relationship with God. This was the final seed from which the plant burst forth…and so began my journey 🙂
But there is one other scripture I found that was also really interesting to me during this research.
Job 3:11: “Why did I not perish in the womb?” Story time again!
In January 2008, I discovered that I was pregnant…within those first two weeks, I went through the crazy whirlwind of emotions about having a baby and finally rested on “this is going to be one wild ride to a amazing end.” And I was happy 🙂 Then one morning, I woke up and went into the bathroom where I realized there was so much blood. My heart fell into my stomach and we went to the emergency room. I cried all the way there and the entire time we waited for the doctor. I just knew that there was no way the baby could still be okay. And I was devastated. Even after such a short time, a mother’s heart FEELS and the thought of losing that feeling was a blow that almost knocked me off my feet. After several hours of the doctors taking blood, searching for a heartbeat, and doing ultrasounds they could find nothing. They even told me I didn’t need a DNC because it looked like my body had already cleared everything out. I just sat there, feeling nothing. I was numb. I barely heard them tell me to come back in two days for follow up blood tests.
In two days, I came back and did more blood work. The nurse told me they would call me within 48 hours to come get my test results and the doctor would explain the findings. Longest 48 hours of my life. When I came back, the nurse gave me my results and she pointed at the paper next to a number: 11. She said, “I’m not supposed to tell you what your results say, the doctor will call and talk to you about it later, but this 11 next to HCG means that you are pregnant! :)” OMG WHAT?! Of course, this nurse didn’t know everything that had been going on so she didn’t understand the immediate excitement and tears at her news! But she was happy that I was so happy…so I left and called my family and let them know what she said and I thanked God so many times.
A couple hours later the doctor called me to tell me what my results said. I didn’t want to get the nurse in trouble so I just waited and let him explain it. But the words that followed hurt me that much more because of what the nurse had told me.
The baby was gone.
But how could this be true? The paper said there was HCG in my blood. But the doctor explained it to me as my heart broke all over again. Two days before, during my initial trip to the hospital, my HCG level had been up over 100, and now it was only 11. If it had stayed the same or gone up, that meant the baby was okay, but it was going down…the baby was gone.Teary eyed I hung up the phone and cried for weeks. It was a level of depression I had never felt before, like the whole world had come crashing down on me and I had no strength or desire to pick it back up.
8 weeks later, I was still bleeding (like a never-ending cycle) and I was experiencing nausea and fatigue and finally I couldn’t take it anymore and went back to the hospital. I explained to the doctor what had happened 2 months ago and that I thought maybe I was still pregnant and something was wrong. The doctor looked at me incredulously and told me that my medical records showed the baby had been miscarried (I’m sure he thought I was a complete crazy person). He said “if you were still pregnant, you would have to be at least 11 weeks pregnant and we would be able to hear a heartbeat.” “Ok,” I said, “let’s check for it then.” Again, he looked at me like I was a mad woman but he humored me and pulled out the equipment. He moved that little probe around on my stomach for what felt like forever…and THEN THERE IT WAS! A tiny little heartbeat!!! The doctor looked at me in amazement! Then he pulled out some paperwork and started to fill it out explaining that we needed to schedule an emergency ultrasound as soon as possible to see how far along I was and check on the baby. The ultrasound was scheduled for the following week and it was determined that I was 12 and a half weeks pregnant! 🙂 What a blessing…later we found out that I had been pregnant with TWINS and I had lost one of the babies that day. The doctor explained that because I had lost one that threw off the HCG balance in my blood during the testing.
So this scripture had a whole new meaning for me. Although both beautiful babies didn’t make it into the world, for some reason, God still gave me my miracle baby boy…the one who changed my whole path…redirected me…opened my eyes…
The one who gave me life
Lyric Cole
October 16, 2008
7 lbs 9 oz
21 and a quarter inches long
Lesson Learned: LISTEN…For He IS talking to you.
My sweet angel baby…
…who continues to touch the world…
…one act of love at a time!
Thank You God for blessings.
brandilynnoliver 