So, it's been eighteen years and this is still my favorite Blue Monarch Christmas story. If you haven't heard it before, perhaps it will bless you this Christmas season. Sometimes we need a little reminder that prayer actually is powerful. No, really.
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My journey with Blue Monarch has been filled with wonderful memories as well as some painful bumps along the way. When God asked me to take this on, I had no idea what I was getting into. And when I think back, my expectations were so remarkably low. I just had NO idea…
This couldn’t have been clearer to me than when I witnessed the birth of our first Blue Monarch baby.
This couldn’t have been clearer to me than when I witnessed the birth of our first Blue Monarch baby.
It was 2003 and our program was brand new. As an artist with no social work background, I was just figuring things out as we went along. One of our first residents showed up pregnant. She hid it well because we didn’t know she was pregnant until her water broke, which was quite a surprise.
Chrystal was way too early to be going into labor, so she was rushed to the hospital for thirty days of bed rest. During this time, I frequently traveled to Chattanooga to visit her, bringing lots of reading material and trying to structure some kind of productive program for her under the circumstances.
One thing I noticed was that this young mother was beginning to develop a personal relationship with God – which seemed pretty remarkable considering she was alone in her room much of the time, confined to the bed with very little to keep her busy.
Short of the thirty days, she called me one day and said, “Miss Susan, you’ve got to get here. I have to have an emergency c-section!” (It has always seemed sad to me when I’m the one in the delivery room instead of a special family member. Little did I know, I would repeat this role a number of times in the years to come.)
So, I got suited up for the c-section, completely shocked they allowed ordinary people off the streets to witness this dramatic surgery. But when the doctor lifted her baby out, I was horrified because he looked like a little dead bird. He was black from the knees down and looked completely lifeless. Fortunately, the mother was not able to see what I saw on the other side of the curtain. They immediately whisked him away and we returned to Chrystal's room to wait for news. We waited…and waited…and waited. Three painful hours went by and not one person could tell us anything about the baby. Things didn’t look good.
Finally, the doctor entered the room and said, “We’ve tried everything to save your baby but we’re not going to be able to. So, if you want to see him alive, you only have a few minutes left.” I was taken aback by the doctor’s bedside manner in such a traumatic moment and immediately assumed he must be numb from seeing this scene so often.
As you can imagine, our world turned upside down in a split second. Chrystal was extremely upset, and the entire NICU cleared out so we could visit her baby in his last moments in privacy. This time he looked like a dead bird in a box hooked up to a million wires. He was pitiful and tiny and lifeless. Chrystal demanded to know why the God she had just met would let something like this happen. Honestly, I was asking myself the same thing.
The doctor pointed to a gauge overhead and said, “You see this number? This measures his blood oxygen level and should be over 90. But as you can see, it’s only 20.”
After an understandable emotional breakdown, Chrystal decided to go back to her room because she didn’t want to watch him die. But it didn’t seem right to leave him alone, so I stayed with her baby. Christmas carols were quietly playing in the background with Christmas only a few days away, which only made this moment even more surreal. What in the world was happening? I thought I was going to help women get jobs and I was about to watch a baby die. I was angry with God in that moment and felt he had not been up front with me about the assignment I had been given. “This was not in the brochure!”
I watched the dreaded number continue to drop from 20…to 16…and then all the way down to 11… In other words, it was completely hopeless.
All of a sudden it occurred to me that we needed to be praying for this baby! So, I got on the phone, called my daughter in the middle of the night, and asked her to call all her friends and start praying for this baby.
Even though I had grown up in the church, I had heard about “the power of prayer” until it no longer meant anything to me. I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly make a difference at this point, but it seemed like the thing to do, so I sat there next to the baby and prayed. I prayed hard, but I will admit, my faith was not even the size of a mustard seed.
Afraid of what I might see, I eventually peeked at the gauge and much to my surprise, the number had begun to rise. It was back up to 20. Wow! Maybe it moves around? I kept watching as that number gradually climbed all the way to up to over 90 again! It was unbelievable!
The nurses ran over to me and couldn’t believe what they saw. They quickly fetched the doctor and when he rushed over, he looked at me and demanded, “What did you do?!”
“I really don’t know. We just have a lot of folks praying for this baby.”
“Well, that’s one helluva prayer team you people have! I’ve never seen anything like this!”
Chrystal eventually named the baby, Trenton, but around the hospital he immediately became "The Christmas Miracle Baby".
I remember sitting there just soaking in the miracle that had just happened. It was overwhelming and there are no words to truly describe how supernatural it felt. Then it suddenly hit me - even if we never accomplished another thing at Blue Monarch, it would always be worth it because of this very moment. Anything after that day was going to be icing on the cake!
As I drove away from the hospital later that day, I suddenly realized - Blue Monarch wasn’t about getting women jobs. We were in the business of saving lives. What I didn't know yet, was that there would be lots and lots of Blue Monarch miracles. This was just the first.
*****
Through the years, as I have told this story many times, the first question has always been, "How is the Christmas Miracle Baby doing today?" Well, take a look. I would say he's doing great! Yep, prayer is powerful, indeed, even when things look completely hopeless. May we never, ever forget that.
