Living On A Prayer...(Facing Death But God Was Faithful)

My daughters were invited to a friend's quinceanera birthday party.  This is when a girl celebrates turning fifteen.  My daughters wanted to wear new dresses for this party.  I found Megan a dress right away, but I still hadn't found Aimee one the day before.  While visiting Trenton at college, I decided to look for a dress at Branson Landing.  My son and husband were troopers as I maneuvered them through teeny boppers and strollers in search of the perfect dress.  It was an hour before store closings and a long walk and still nothing.  By this time, desperation was kicking in.  Have you ever seen the movie scene where the guy is walking through the desert in search of water.  He sees a mirage and eventually is crawling through the sand wearing his pants as a hat.  I felt this type of desperation.  I would get a glimpse of a dress, only to find it was a mirage and was actually a really long shirt.  I had a moment with God begging Him to help me.  This is when I spied  Maurices.  As I walked in, a cute young person led me to the perfect dress that even my daughter would love.  And the best part, it was on sale!  Answered prayer!  You may say it was just luck.  God wouldn't waste time on a dress, but that is not the case.  When we serve God and love Him, He wants to show us how much He loves us.  My son was looking for some important papers.  He had spent hours searching and was quite distraught.  I asked him if he had prayed about it.  He gave me a "mom, that's just crazy look."  I took the next moment and prayed out loud, "God, these papers mean a lot to Trenton, so I ask You to help me find them now."  I pulled a stack of papers out of a box, and they were the first ones I found.  We found the papers within 2 minutes of praying.  Several years ago, when Megan was having seizures, there was a particularly bad seizure that sent her by ambulance to the hospital.  We were in a small town on the way to visit my parents.  I watched them rush her back into the ER and heard the call to intubate her.  They placed me in a room by myself while I waited for my husband to return after dropping my other children off at my parents.  They were unable to stop her seizure after an hour.  They called Arkansas Children's to bring a helicopter to pick her up.  I watched her being strapped down, unconscious, with a tube coming out of her mouth.  Fear set in and all I could do was pray that she live.  Many prayed for her and after one day in the ICU, she was miraculously better and released the next day.  Later I found out that my mother went to church with the parent of a lady who worked in that ER.  We found out that when Megan entered the ER, all doctors and staff were working on her.  When they sent her to Arkansas Children's Hospital, they thought she would die before making it the 45 minutes to the hospital.  So what happened?  We prayed.  I have seen God perform so many miracles simply because I not only prayed, but I trusted Him to answer my prayers.  Did all of my prayers get answered the way I wanted?  No.  But it always worked out.  Many times, when I didn't get my prayers answered exactly the way I wanted, it was because God was using the situation that was bad to do something good in someone else's life.  Megan went through so many seizures, but the journey of surgery has opened so many doors to tell of God's goodness.  Through prayer and God's faithfulness, something good came out of something bad.  So today, don't be afraid to take your problems to God.  Trust that He loves you enough that He wants to help you.  Then have faith that He will never live you and will stay with you until you see the good come through in your life!

Have a great week high-heeled warriors!