Before You Call...

Before they call I will answer; 

while they are still speaking I will hear.

Isaiah 65:24

When my first born was 6 days old, she went into respiratory failure - a fact that my husband and I did not immediately recognize.  We finally caught on the next morning that something was really wrong, and I took her to her pediatrician.  He instantly recognized that she was in severe  trouble, and sent us around the corner to the hospital, where we were whisked upstairs to the Pediatric ICU.  Sitting around the nurses' station in that ICU was every single specialist that would be needed in the next hour to save my child's life - just sitting around yakking and having a cup of coffee.  My daughter's arrival threw them all into action, and every one of their specialty skills were available without having to make a call or send out a code.   Respiratory, cardiology, surgery - they were all an arm's length away.

 

Last night this same child, now a grown woman, was sitting at her desk eating a late supper, when she suddenly was hit with a wave of dizziness, faintness, and a pain in her left armpit.  Because of her heart history, she immediately decided to go to the Emergency Room and see what was up.  She had received a cardiac exam two years ago at the huge heart center in town, but that was way too far away from her office.  Another preeminent university hospital was close by, but has lengthy wait times before being seen.  She chose a smaller teaching hospital a few blocks away that is known for very short wait times.  A quick EKG assured that she was not having a heart attack.  Because of the lateness of the hour and the number of tests that needed to be performed, they admitted her for the night.  This morning, when she was wheeled in for an echocardiagram, a doctor was waiting there for her - an international specialist in congenital heart defects, who had heard about her childhood cardiac history and decided to take over her case.  She could have chosen any of a half dozen other hospitals, but she went to the one that had the expert authority that she needed.

 

Coincidence?  No - you could never convince me of that.  It was not a coincidence when she was a newborn, and it is not serendipity now.  Before we knew we needed Him, God was already in motion.