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

being pumped into her. Her skin was gray and lifeless. Jake remained frozen in place, working up the courage to go near her.
    “Honey,” he whispered, finally, inching toward her as if she would break if he moved too quickly. “It's me. Every thing's going to be okay. God's going to help you, Laura. We're all praying for you and the baby.”
    He stood there a few minutes more, holding her limp hand and begging God to be merciful with her life. Then, when he could not stand another minute, he went searching for his son. Again he was unprepared for what he found.
    The child was so small he looked lost in the neonatal intensive care incubator, swimming in a sea of wires and mon itors. His fingers were frail, no thicker than matchsticks.
    “He's doing all right,” the nurse whispered with a smile. “Your pastor prayed over him a couple hours after he was born. Everything's been very stable ever since then.”
    Jake's lips turned upward in a sad smile as he considered the nurse's words. Prayer, again. The same thing he'd done so little of in the last ten years. He gazed at his son—his lungs not yet developed, struggling against the odds to survive— and he made a decision. If prayer was what it would take, then he would see to it that as many people as possible were praying for them.
    “God's going to take care of you, son,” he whispered, still looking at the infant. He thought about the pastor in the air port chapel. “We'll have people praying for you across this whole country.”
    The phone calls began right away. Jake contacted friends in New Jersey and Kansas and asked them to pray.
    “And please have your church pray for them,” he'd tell the people he spoke with. “Ask your friends to call people they know and then have their churches start praying. Please. We need everyone praying.”
    The prayer chain grew. Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan. Military bases across the country. By that night, thousands of people were praying for Laura and their newborn baby. The prayers were so many that Jake was not surprised that evening when doctors were finally able to stop Laura's bleeding. In the past four days she'd been transfused with more than one hundred units of blood. “Everything is not as good as it seems,” the doctor told Jake. “She's lost so much blood, there's a strong possibility she'll have brain damage. Also, many of her organ functions have shut down. Everything ex cept her heart and her brain at this point.”
    “Okay, so how long will it be before she can be out of here?” Jake said.
    The doctor stared blankly at Jake. “What I'm saying is that she has less than a 1 percent chance of living. If she does live, she could be brain damaged. She could be bedridden the rest of her life.”
    Jake was silent, soaking in the news. His entire life had changed in less than a week. But even as the doctor waited for him to react, he began praying again, silently asking God to heal his wife. The doctor cleared his throat and contin ued.
    “Another thing, Jake. She's going to need a lot more blood. Maybe you could put a call in to your church friends and see if some of them might be willing to donate.”
    Jake made the call that night, and within two days there were more than four hundred units of blood in Laura's ac count. At least the blood problem was solved.
    “What else can we do?” one of their church friends asked Jake. “We feel so helpless out here.”
    “Pray,” Jake said simply.
    He had never been one to openly discuss his faith. It hadn't come naturally as a fighter pilot, nor as a pilot for the airlines. In those worlds a man needed to be cocksure and confident, macho in every way. Not dependent on prayer.
    But now he found it the most natural thing in the world.The doctors were taking care of Laura's physical needs. The others needed to pray.
    For the next ten days Jake and Laura's mother alternated taking twelve hour shifts with Laura and then back at home with the boys. Although she did not