Free A Treasury of Miracles for Women by Karen Kingsbury Page A

surgery again. The doctors are doing all they can, but they don't think she's going to make it. You need to hurry.”
    Left alone, Jake cried and prayed as he hadn't in a decade. “Lord, take me if you have to take someone,” he railed. “Our boys need Laura. She hasn't even seen her newborn son, Lord. Please, let her live.”
    The next morning he told the airlines what had hap pened and was allowed to ride as a passenger on the 10:00 A.M. flight to New York. The entire flight he prayed and wondered whether Laura or their little boy were dying, even at that moment. When he arrived at LaGuardia air port, weather became an issue. He was informed that no flights would be leaving for at least four hours—until the dangerous weather had passed.
    Immediately Jake called the hospital for an update.
    “She's in surgery again,” he was told by a doctor. “She's still alive but she's bleeding from everywhere in her body. It's a complication of severe shock. Her blood is not clot ting as it should and so she's bleeding from all her major or gans.”
    “What does it mean?” Jake was frantic.
    “It means you need to hurry.”
    Jake hung up the phone, angry and frustrated. There was nothing he could do about the weather, and even if they al lowed flights out in four hours, he wouldn't be at the hospi tal for at least another eight.
    A fellow pilot and friend who had flown the plane from Paris found Jake and asked if there was anything he could do to help.
    “Yes,” Jake said. His eyes were swollen from crying, his voice dejected. “Is there a prayer room nearby?”
    The man nodded. “I think so.”
    “Take me there. Please.”
    The men walked down the concourse until they found the quiet airport chapel. Inside was a peaceful man who greeted them and explained that he was a pastor. “Flight's de layed,” he said. “Figured I could catch up with God in here.”
    Jake's friend excused himself and left alone with the pas tor, Jake explained the situation.
    “Just a minute,” the pastor said, picking up his tele phone. “Let me make a few phone calls.”
    Within fifteen minutes the pastor had called the elders at his church and asked them to start people praying. When the man hung up, he looked at Jake. “Can I pray with you?”
    Jake nodded, feeling numb and panicked. “I … I haven't been right with God for a while.”
    The pastor's eyes were kind. “Maybe it's time to change that.”
    “Yes.” Jake nodded, smiling weakly through his tears. He was exhausted from the emotional and physical journey, and still there remained another flight. The two men prayed and talked for several hours until finally Jake was able to board a plane for Tulsa.
    On the airplane he sat next to a man who had lost his wife a year earlier in an accident. Jake turned away and stared out the window at the endless blue sky, wondering if he would be in that man's position in a year's time.
    “Lord, I can't make it without her,” he prayed silently, fresh tears springing to his eyes. “Please let her live, dear God. Please.”
    Every moment for the rest of the flight Jake stayed in constant prayer for Laura and their baby. By the time he arrived at the hospital she was in surgery for a fourth time. Jake had said more prayers in the past twenty-four hours than he had in the past decade.
    When he finally arrived at the hospital, Jake saw Pastor Ryan Rowden from Hope Community Church.
    “Ryan, how is she?” he asked, hurrying into the waiting room and pulling up a chair.
    “She's on a respirator, Jake. We've been praying for her and we've called everyone on the church prayer chain. But it's very, very serious.”
    Jake nodded, too choked up to speak. After a while he said, “I'm going to go see her.”
    “She doesn't look like herself,” Ryan warned.
    Nothing could have prepared Jake for the way Laura looked. She had tubing running in and out of various areas on her face and upper body, and she was bloated from the blood and other fluids