As promised, here's my speech for those out-of-staters who couldn't make it! Call me crazy, but I had a blast speaking in front of over 500 women, even if I did cry most of the way through it. ;) Enjoy!
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Have you ever
noticed that moms know everything? If this is true for the average
mom, it is infinitely true for MY mom. To illustrate my point: two
full years before I even had feelings for my now-husband, Kerry, my
parents were visiting church one Sunday when she boldly approached
him and referred to him as, quote, “her future son-in-law.”
Mortified, I told her later she was “seriously ruining my life.”
Fast forward a few years: I was 10 weeks along in my first pregnancy
and my mom said, “You're definitely having twins. Twin boys. I'm
calling them Jack and Tom.” As if getting pregnant two months
after I got married wasn't a recipe for anxiety, the thought of
having twins definitely was, especially when you consider the fact
that, because my husband and I weren't planning to be pregnant right
away, we had not added me to his insurance. My due date was June
21st. We could enroll me for his insurance to begin on
June 1st and absolutely no earlier, said the insurance
representative. Twins usually come early, and if I was, in fact,
having twins and they did, in fact, come early, they'd be uninsured.
NICU bills with no insurance was not exactly something I was looking
forward to.
When it was
confirmed at 21 weeks along that I was indeed having twin boys, I did
what anyone in my position would do: I printed off bright orange
bookmarks containing 5 specific prayer requests and handed them out
to 150 people, thinking, “Surely God will listen to me now!”
The prayer requests
included:
That the boys would
be born after June 1st, 2010/37 weeks
That I won't have to
have a C-section
That they would each
weigh 6 pounds or more
That they would home
from the hospital after 3 days
That they would not
be in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
On April 30th,
2010, at 32 ½ weeks along, I had a C-section and delivered two
beautiful boys: Emerson, weighing 5lbs3oz and Oakley, weighing
4lbs8oz. They were in the NICU for 21 days.
Every one of my
prayer requests was denied. Every single one of them. They were
born almost 8 weeks early and nowhere near our June 1st
insurance deadline. They were less than 6 pounds and they were in
the hospital for 3 weeks, not 3 days. I was utterly devastated.
Until that moment in my life, I never had any problems believing God
was good. Prior to this time, I knew that He was good and, even
during difficult times, I didn't question His goodness. But now my
heart raged after God. I was angry. I was confused. I was
disappointed. I felt neglected, forgotten. I felt like God was
trying to “teach me a lesson” and used my firstborn sons to do
so. I felt embarrassed that I asked the whole world to pray with me
and God didn't come through. He let me down big time on one of the
most important events of my entire life and I really began to
question His goodness.
It was then that I
became very familiar with Psalm 42, what I affectionately refer to as
“The Depression Psalm”. Here are just a few parts of it: “My
tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me, 'Where
is your God?' Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you
become so disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise
Him for the help of His presence. .. The Lord will command His
lovingkindness in the daytime; and His song will be with me in the
night, a prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God my Rock,
'Why have You forgotten me? Why do I go on mourning because of the
oppression of the enemy?' Why are you in despair, O my soul? And
why have you become so disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall
yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.” Each day,
as I sat with my preemies in the NICU, in between finding time to
eat, pump, and entertain our visitors, I would read Psalm 42-- read
it and weep, that is. I could so relate with the feeling of being
forgotten by God, and I hated the sense of disturbance I had within
me. I regularly urged my soul, as the Psalmist does, to hope in God.
The boys had been
alive for exactly 5 days when I turned to my husband and said, “What
are we going to do?” He knew what I meant, which was, “How are
we going to pay for these bills?” In the end, those 21 days in the
NICU cost about $200,000. Now, that's a drop in the bucket compared
to our national debt, but to two young people with student loans and
a mortgage, not to mention a couple kids, it was an unfathomable
amount of money to have to repay. He replied, ever so faithfully,
“We will trust the Lord. I do not know of anything else.”
I thought to
myself, “Oh, that's just swell. Trust the Lord, who has proven
Himself soooooo incredibly good to us in the last few days?! Sounds
like a great plan, honey!” For those of you who know me, you know
that sometimes just keeping my mouth shut is quite the feat. The
fact that I only thought this and didn't say it out loud is more than
what I can say for other times of my life... :)
Literally minutes
after that conversation, my husband got a phone call. He answered it
and on the other end received congratulations from our insurance
representative, the one who told us over and over again our coverage
would begin June 1st no matter what. She said, “So, now
that your wife has delivered the boys, you qualify under what we call
a 'life-changing event' and we can insure Kayla, Emerson and Oakley
beginning April 30th, the day they were born.”
My internal
reaction went something like this: You have GOT to be kidding me. We
have definitely gone rounds with you guys about any possible way to
get us insured in case they were born early, and now you're telling
me it's as easy as that?!
Yep, it pretty much
was. The Lord took care of all the $200,000 in hospital bills in one
way or the other and we ended up paying only $1,000 out of pocket.
We didn't have to sell our house, take on a third job, or live on
rice and beans till it was paid off. God just wrote it all off and
said, “Don't worry... I got this.”
For the Lord to be
that gracious to a self-centered, unbelieving child such as I is
truly remarkable. He used my negative reaction to His choice to say
“no” to all my prayer requests to highlight His goodness--
“Kayla, I will take care of you, no matter what. No matter how you
feel or what you can't see, or if you believe Me or not, there is not
one single detail of your life that I am not concerned about. I am
Good and all My ways are good. Trust Me, Kayla. Hope in Me, Kayla.
I will NEVER let you down.”
I am one of the
Lord's redeemed- one He has redeemed from the enemy's hand. I thank
the Lord, for He is soooooo good! His lovingkindness lasts forever!
If you are wise, please-- pay attention to these things and consider
the Lord's acts of faithful love to me!
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