In November 2009, I was straying from God.

It was just three years earlier that I had re-dedicated my life to Christ. On that day I was alone in my truck, in a church parking lot, high on drugs and almost dead from my addictions when I asked Him to save me and promised my life to him. I believed he would save me and He did. Psalm 18:6 In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From His temple he heard my voice; my cry came before him, into his ears. Now, three years later, I was 39 weeks pregnant with my daughter Lylah. But I wasnt following through on what I promised my God when he saved me three years ago. I was living life for ME, for the earthly things, taking precious moments for granted, going through the motions. I was just straying from Him. Then, on November 7th I went into the hospital in labor. Lylah was under distress, her heart rate dropping with every contraction so the next morning an emergency c-section was performed. Then she was born, Lylah Rajel was born, so beautiful and pink and perfect. Psalm139:13-14 For you created my inmost being; you knit me in my mothers womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My God he has bigger plans that those I have for myself. I know God doesnt desire our children to be sick, he doesnt want us to feel pain, to hurt, or for our hearts to ache so much that it feels like its actually breaking inside our chest. But God allows things that happen to us, to change us, to transform us, to help us see that we need not rely on the things of this earth, that all we really need is a relationship with Him.. and he does all this if we just believe. I was wheeled to a recovery room and it was hours before I got to see my little baby girl. Hours. I knew something was wrong and worry set in but Philippians 4:6 states Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Finally when a doctor and my husband came to see me a few hours later they told me Lylah had a tumor inside of her and that she needed to be immediately flown from Alaska to Seattle Childrens Hospital. At this point, I wasnt thinking about God, I was thinking, why, why, why, why??? I just couldnt understand WHY. Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Trust, trust, with all your heart, it says. So, my whys turned to prayers and I choose to trust and believe. Two days, and what seemed like a lifetime after Lylah and her daddy flew to Seattle, I got on a place and met them there. Two days after that, my husband and I were met in the hallway of the hospital by a team of people all with badges around their necks that read, Hematology/Oncology. Minutes later, there we were in a private meeting room with a group of doctors we didnt know, all with tears filling up their eyes and then the words, and then the wordsyour daughter has cancer. Ladies, my story could end right here because you can take worst moments in your life (and this was one of them) and you can become bitter or you can become better. At that moment, I had a choice to make. I had a choice. I could have hung my hat up right then and there, lost my mind, cursed God, and chalked it all up as God and the world against me for all the wrong I had done in my life and let it eat at me and hurt me and destroy me, just as the enemy in that room wanted me to do. Or I could believe. I could believe that something much greater was about to happen, a much larger picture was being painted than I could even imagine

or comprehend, trust that a bigger power was at work in my life, if I held so tight and clung to his precious hand that was right there in front of me and just believed. Ephesians 6:10-11 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devils scheme. Eph 6:16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all flaming arrows of the evil one. I couldnt speak, but there beside me was the love of my life, my best friend and husband, filled with some amazing force that I could not even understand, asking every question I wanted to ask, but couldnt because I couldnt get the words out. He didnt break, he didnt hesitate, my husband sat there three seconds after being told that Lylah had cancer and that she might die and he asked those doctors what needed to be done to save her life. It was in that moment, because of my husbands words and actions (which I believe was the Holy Spirit at work in him), that I made my choice. I chose to believe. This is not to say my faith was not put to the test during the next three months. We are talking about the use of chemotherapies about to be used on a newborn baby for the first time in this hospital that had only been used on older kids and adults..and believing. We are talking about hard discussions about possible bleeds during surgery which may result in the death of our daughter, about loss of hearing due to the poison used to try to help save her life. We are talking about blood clots in the liver, needles going in dozens of time without blood coming out and being told that the only way to draw blood was from the veins in our babys head, discussions about a little girl who may grow up but never have children, about holes in her heart, jaw pain, a tumor so big she couldnt fit an 1/8 of an ounce of milk in her belly. But we choose to believe and what happened is all the work of God. Isaiah 41:10 states Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. You see friends, the moment we stepped out in faith and said, Okay, God, we trust you with our daughters life that is when he started performing miracles one after the other, showing us, firsthand, that we made the right choice. As if our daughter being born wasnt large a miracle enough, God showed us his mighty power right away. As I mentioned before, the chemotherapies used on Lylah were not tested on babies and almost 100% of the people (children and adults) who were given the Chemo medicine called Cisplatin got violently ill. Doctors explained to us that within hours of getting that medicine, Lylah would be sick, she would vomit and be irritable to the point that only drugs would calm her down. So we prayed, we put our hands on Lylah and we believed. The first round of chemo started. We waited and waited and waited. Not only did Lylah not get sick, her appetite increased and within 24 hours she was taking in more milk! The next day during our meeting with doctors and nurses there was disbelief about Lylahs response to the chemotherapy. When we heard the words spoken, we just cannot explain why she didnt get sick, its as if we didnt give her any chemotherapy at all, we knew, we just knew it was going to be okay. Another example of God directly putting his hands on Lylah happened during that first round of chemotherapy as well. Doctors met with us and explained that chemo was being administered for the

purpose of keeping the tumor on her liver at bay, to prevent it from growing even bigger until she was a few weeks older and they could perform surgery since they werent comfortable operating on a tumor that large in a baby only a week old. Doctors had no reason to believe that the chemotherapy would shrink the tumor. But we believed and God had a different plan. (God is the Almighty Healer). During the first set of scans after the first round of chemo we got to see on the images what God was doing inside our little girls body. That tumor which started out as the size of a small football, had shrunk and shrunk by a lot. Even non- believing doctors and nurses started to believe. There were times during our months living at the hospital that we remember feeling the presence of God. There would be doctors in the room, alarms going off from the several dozen lines that hung off of our daughter, humans trying to figure it all out and Joe and I would just look at each other and feel something bigger going on and we would remain calm. The toughest day was handing our daughter over to a team of surgeons who would perform an 8 hour surgery to remove 50% of Lylahs liver, her gallbladder and in turn all the cancer that invaded her body. For weeks we prayed for the surgical team and especially the head surgeon Dr. Pat Healy. But heres the thing: God guided his hand to keep it steady, he kept nurses and doctors alert and aware, he allowed everything that happened in that operating room that day, to run as it should have, according to His plan, His will and all because we chose to believe. I could go on and on about the miracles that happened in the following weeks and months, but I think you get the point. I have had a lot of people ask me how I didnt lose my mind, how my husband and I managed to stay married, how I didnt lose faith through the experiences we went through with Lylah and my answer is always the same: I didnt do it. God did. God carried me the whole way through and he still does. A dear friend told me when Lylah first got diagnosed, Summer, every time you start to worry, stop and praise God aloud for the moment you are in, for the air your daughter is breathing, for life she has lived so far, for the miracle of her perfect creation, for your life that he saved three years ago when you called out to Him. I lived by that advice and anytime we came across a bump in the road, I would rebuke the thoughts the enemy would put in my mind about giving up and giving in and I would say, I praise you Father God, I praise you Lord. Thank you for this moment, this struggle, this storm, thank you. It took me a long time to say this aloud ladies, because Satan tries to keep us from speaking the truth but the truth is: because of Lylahs struggles, her cancer, the trials we faced in the first months of her life, I am wiser, my marriage is stronger, my desire to love others and lead is burning and my relationship with Christ is full proof and my first priority. If there is one thing I want you to take away from this testimony, it is this: believing in Christ and trusting Him, especially when life seems to be crumbling down on you, is what will make the trials you face in your life seem doable. Little things wont bother you, you will learn to get up and brush off the dust without thinking twice and when you know a trial is ahead, you will be able to say, Okay God, what you have in store for me now?

James 1:12 reads Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.