I didn’t know what might become of saying such a thing. I guess I may never totally know. But God was about to show us that trust is not something you do, but a power you unleash.
I walked into the room where Chris was waiting for me and talking with God. I told him I felt that God was asking us to trust him in this. He said he felt the same way. The doctor gave us the option of going home for a couple of days to digest what had just happened or to be admitted right away and deliver Luca immediately. Nothing felt right about going home and spending an agonizing few days with her still in my belly. “We’ll do it now,” we told him as we held each other. The baby we weren’t expecting for a couple of months was coming now. We couldn’t wait to see her. At the same time, it was going to be the most painful homecoming imaginable.
They took us to room 321 to fill me with contraction-inducing drugs and Chris and I looked at each other with the same thought. “The Trinity,” we said to each other. “God is watching over us.” Our trust swelled.
In time, friends and family, including pastors from our church, Rock Church in San Diego, came to cry with us, offer their words of encouragement and pray. Each time we prayed we sought God’s sovereign hand and could feel him responding with rays of his light from above, like bolts of joy, not sent to obliterate our sadness but to fill our tears with certainty that he was close and in control. The feeling was indescribable.
My attending nurse had watched it all. When we were alone, she took our hands and told us she was a Christian and had thought she was working on this day for no greater purpose than to get in a few more hours on her paycheck. She knew now that she had walked into her divine appointment. “I will be with you till the end,” she told us. For us, God had provided an angel.
Twenty-four hours later, it was time to push Luca into this world. Our nurse took our hands once again and prayed powerfully, inviting God into the moment, to fill the room with his mighty presence and give us joy. I was overcome with a palpable sense of God protecting me like a mama bird covers her young with her giant wing. I can’t tell you how grateful I was for her.
I closed my eyes, pushed and before I knew it, Luca was in the hands of the doctor. When I opened my eyes, there was a light in the room that I hadn’t seen before. The lights were brighter, yet the color was warmer as if the room had been set aglow. It felt strangely soothing to my eyes and my soul. For a few brief moments, I just let myself bathe in the light that I somehow knew was there for Luca’s arrival. And me.
When the doctor handed Luca to me, her hands were folded in the prayer position. I took her in my arms and looked at my little girl, black hair covering her petite, beautiful head.
“You’re here, my sweet girl,” I told her with my voice cracking. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t spend our lives together.” After more than a day of near constant crying, wouldn’t you know it, there were still waves of tears to travel on down to my gown.
They ushered us to room 777 to spend time with Luca. “Sevens,” Chris and I said to each other, managing to share a smile. We both knew that 7 is the number in the Bible for God signifying completion, perfection and rest. It was another bolt of light from above.
“Mommy loves you,” I told her as I stroked her hair in the quiet of room 777—my sniffling the only sound. “We will spend eternity together, you and me. We will have so much catching up to do.” Luca’s tiny mouth fell open as if she wanted to speak. There were no muscles to keep it closed. “You know, sweet girl, when I think about it, you got to spend your entire existence in the warmth of your mommy’s belly. Not everyone gets to do that, you know.” I prayed with my daughter, in my arms but with the Lord in heaven, light-years away.
I looked up and said, “Lord, I trust you now more than ever. This is your will.” Again they did not feel like they were my words. Something was going on, something was happening to me.
