It’s amazing how quickly things can change.

The Tuesday night before Benaiah was born Travis and I enjoyed a quiet night together. We went to bed around 10pm and as usual I tossed and turned a bit longer than him (I was almost 37 weeks pregnant at the time). By midnight I had moved to the couch with some aggressive heartburn, doing my best not to wake up Travis because he was just hours away from his 3-hour Nehemiah lecture. I spent most of the night vomiting and repenting of everything I had eaten in the last 24 hours to no avail. Over the next 3 days the heartburn and indigestion persisted, to the point I couldn’t even finish a glass of water. Up until this point I had had a fairly normal (and mostly comfortable) pregnancy so I just tried to push through and hope that the heartburn would go away.

Friday morning I was on the phone with a good friend and could hardly catch my breath to have a conversation. Thankfully she works at a hospital and demanded that I hang up and go see a doctor. That afternoon Travis and I hopped on the MRT (rail transit) to the hospital and the doctor couldn’t quite pinpoint what was wrong. She said it might be preecclampsia but she didn’t know for sure. She sent me home and told me to monitor baby’s movements and if he seemed distressed to come back right away. Of course that is the last thing you want to be tracking as an expectant mother and it just didn’t sit right with me (especially when your favorite Downton Abbey character died from preecclampsia). I contacted an OBGYN friend from the States and after hearing my symptoms she strongly suggested Travis and I head to the Emergency Room.

The next afternoon we went to the ER, simply hoping for some stronger antacids or medicine. But as we rode in the taxi I turned to him and warned him that if this was indeed preecclampsia we might be having a baby that night (3 weeks early). Within an hour of arriving at the hospital a doctor informed me after looking at my blood that the baby would need to come out as soon as possible. Preecclampsia and jaundice are both results of a malfunctioning liver and my liver was going crazy – and therefore produced both. My platelet levels were severely low and there was no way they could perform any procedure until they got them up. My blood pressure was consistently registering in the 160s and it wasn’t until the 4th platelet transfusion that they could get me into surgery.

As they wheeled my bed up to the surgical floor and I parted ways with Travis I had a strange peace that God was completely sovereign over the situation. I knew the risks were high for baby and even higher for me, but there was such peace in knowing that before I was even born my days were numbered and there was nothing I could do to change it. Even more humbling was the same truth that applied to my unborn son.

They wheeled me into surgery around 2:15am Taiwan time and Ben was born by 2:27am. I was put totally under anesthesia and woke up a few hours later with an empty womb and a good report that our healthy baby boy was already up in the nursery. From that point on things began to improve exponentially. Over the next few days my liver leveled out its production and my appetite returned and chest pains disappeared. Travis and I brought Ben home 4 days later and were astounded how quickly my body had healed itself.

When I finally turned on my phone a few days after the surgery I was flooded with messages of encouragement and prayer. It turns out our home church had all joined together in prayer at the end of the Sunday service – at the exact moment I was wheeled into surgery. We know several of our base leaders sacrificed sleep to be on their knees for us in the early hours that morning. We believe hundreds of prayers were raised on our behalf and in hundreds of ways we saw God answering them. I have come to believe so deeply in the power of prayer and God’s promised and revealed presence through it. He was so near to us during that whole week and we believe the prayers of our people brought Him even closer.

It took Travis and I awhile to come to a consensus on our baby boy’s name, but we both felt a peace about our firstborn being named after one of King David’s mighty men.

When I was in college a good friend gave me a book about facing fear called “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.” The author used Benaiah (pronounced ben-eye-uh) as the central character, perhaps one of the bravest men in the Bible (that most people have never heard of). There aren’t any long passages written about him in the Bible – in fact most of his mentions are simply endnotes in a list describing other warriors. But two of his most famous exploits are found in 2 Samuel 23:20 and 1 Chronicles 11:23.

In the first it simply states “he once killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day” as if that is a normal thing to do. And the second describes how he not only killed a giant, but he did it by stealing the giant’s enormous spear and using it as the weapon.

One thing I like about Benaiah is that in situations where most men would run as fast as they could in the other direction, he not only stayed but fought as if he had already won. He had full assurance that He was filled with God’s power and embraced adversity because of it.

As I’ve studied Benaiah I’ve thought how cool it would be to give that name to a son. Now I sincerely hope my son does not chase lions into pits on snowy days, but I hope he has the heart to run confidently towards things instead of away from them. That my son would be assertive, not passive. That he would walk in the confidence of his calling and do truly miraculous things. In a world of runners he would be a fighter. He would fight for justice and the oppressed, relationships and intimacy, the gospel and the nations. His middle name, Everett, means “brave as a boar” and we thought it couldn’t hurt to bestow a little extra bravery in his name.

Benaiah, our little mighty man. You fought your first battle before you were even born! Your mom and dad are excited to see who you become and we pray above all that you would truly know Jesus, that He loves you and has a tremendous life for you here on Earth and in eternity. Your dad and I will strive to make that truth known to you and pray that someday you will make the choice to surrender your life to Him and to chase lions and giants on behalf of the Kingdom of God. What an adventure your life will be!