Parental Warning:   I don’t really think that I have a strong following of teenagers or kids, but if someone does read these blogs to kids, please pre-read.  I am sharing something of a somewhat graphic nature today.  It is probably best not to have the kiddos read this one without any discussion.

I truly believe that there is no such thing as coincidence.  Looking back in my life, I see circumstances where there was a person to meet, a challenge to tackle, or a lesson to be learned.  All part of God’s plan for my life’s direction.  Since my actual vision is quite myopic, I can speak as an expert – one who has amazing 20/20 hindsight. It’s just too bad it sometimes takes years to for my vision to become so clear.

Sometimes God uses otherwise innocuous events – a telephone call, a card from a friend, the words in my morning devotional.  On the latter one, I have been known to call friends who have the same devotional just to confirm that they had the same words on their page because it seemed to be written just for me.  God’s wisdom has been revealed to me by really listening to the words spoken by others (even on television on occasion).  At times the airing of songs on the radio seems divinely appointed just for me.

Tonight I have tickets for the Third Day concert.  This was my Christmas present from my earthly love, who will be my date.  In my excitement for the evening, I started thinking about the radio station (Life 96.5) and the band that played a song for my heart in what was possibly one of the darkest hours of my life.

I was transported back to October 2003, when I was four months pregnant with what would have been our fifth pregnancy.  While watching the World Series, I started to feel little cramps, but I felt better after lying down. By Monday at school, I had to step out of my classroom because whatever was going on wasn’t better.  In fact, it was drastically worse. Having gone down this road before, I sadly suspected I was having a miscarriage.

An hour later, our fears were confirmed.  My doctor who understood my wishes for the least amount medical intervention necessary gave me two options: a D&C or go home and wait out the passing of my child from my body.  We chose the latter.  I could have returned to school, but I elected to stay home, not wanting to have this intensely private moment in the “public eye”.  There were no guarantees on time limits.  This waiting could have went on until full-term, and I wasn’t ready to be out in the world with my pain.

To keep my mind busy, I started doing projects around the house, all the while listening to uplifting music.  Every day, I would awaken thinking that today could be the day.  I was scared, terrified really, but I just kept going.  Thursday of that very week, the time came.  I was home alone.  Grief was the deepest crevasse that began to swallow me.

I literally laid on the cold, bathroom tile and sobbed. After some time, I got up off the floor to get a drink of water.  While standing at the kitchen sink, a song I had never heard before came on the radio.  For whatever reason, my spinning head paused long enough to allow the words to penetrate my soul.  I don’t even know how it was possible, but my anguish turned to praise.  From the artists’ words, I knew that the shell of person on the bathroom floor had been loved enough by God for Him to allow his baby to die for me. That same baby loved me enough to go through deeper anguish than my own to be there for me in that tiny little kitchen.

In the period of maybe ten minutes, I went from crumpled on the floor to standing in kitchen with hands held high in praise.  My grief was far from over. I would have to walk through that as well.  The change came, however, from a heart empty and hopeless transformed to hope-filled.

I have included a video of that song below.  The Third Day band members and my “friends” at Life 96.5 have never heard this story, but on one October day that what they do mattered . . . and it still does.

God can use something as small as a song on a radio station to change hearts, I know because I am living proof.