The Prayer That Brought My Baby Back to Life: Trusting God in Crisis
Excerpted from Unlocking Heaven’s Truth.
After Joseph and I were married, we had side jobs and stood alongside my parents in the ministry.
We had worked through emotional and physical trauma from my younger years. As newlyweds, our marriage brought new challenges. A year after we were married, we found out I was pregnant. At around five or six months, the baby suddenly stopped moving in the womb—no kicking, no movement. She was motionless for three days. I asked my physician what was happening, and her words were clear and urgent: “Go to the hospital immediately and get checked.”
That evening, Joseph and I sat in a busy emergency room, waiting for what felt like an eternity. Finally, they took me back for an ultrasound. The silence in the room grew louder as the technician moved the wand across my belly. No heartbeat. Nothing but quiet.
Joseph started talking to the ultrasound technician. Joseph’s that way and always has been. Out of the blue, he’ll ask people about what they do—the pros and cons of their job. He asked, “What’s the most difficult part of your job?”
The technician said, “Honestly, a lot of times, the hardest part of my job is knowing that a baby’s dead, and I can’t say anything.”
He was hinting—maybe trying to prepare us a little.
We were in our early 20s. We were ignorant of the process and naive to what he was saying. We responded, “Oh, wow. That’s terrible. Okay.” We were, in a sense, completely missing the fact that, Hello, this could potentially be you. We were young and naive, so we let the professionals lead us through the process.
However, when he said that about knowing the baby was dead, I did have a momentary thought. It wasn’t until after the ultrasound, when we returned to the hospital examining room, that I immediately caught myself. Wait, no, I’m not going to allow that thought into my mind that it could be a possibility.
We went to the emergency room that evening after dinnertime. It was a hectic night in the ER, filled primarily with nurses, ultrasound technicians, and patients. We did a lot of waiting that night—waiting to become important enough for a doctor to enter our room. Other people arrived after being in major car accidents and all kinds of serious medical emergencies. I wasn’t an urgent priority because of the lack of beds and room availability. It was a small hospital. We sat and waited a lot while they ran blood tests and other tests and rechecked them.
When they finally discharged me at 3 a.m., I was told, “Go home. Get a couple of hours of sleep. We will have your prenatal doctor call you in the morning to discuss your next steps.”
Baby, Live!
By the time we got home, it was probably 3:30 a.m., and we sat on the couch. We needed a moment to come down from everything before we could even think about going to bed. That’s when Joseph looked at me and said, “I just want to pray.”
His prayer was very simple. He laid his hands on my stomach and said, “Baby, I speak life to you. Baby, live! Live in your being.” He said it a couple of times. “I command this baby to live, to have life, and we bless You, Lord.” It lasted probably 30 seconds. That was it.
When Joseph prayed, he wasn’t uttering words of desperation but inviting the God of miracles into our situation. God’s power was at work, even when we didn’t see it yet. His simple, faith- filled prayer was a declaration of trust in God’s ability to perform miracles in our lives, even when everything seemed unsure.
I don’t know why I didn’t ask Joseph, “Why would you use those words?” Instead, I agreed and said, “Yeah, live!” As I mentioned, I had a terrible thought and took authority over it. I grew up knowing it’s necessary to take those thoughts captive and not speak them—words contrary to what God’s Word says for my life (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Strangely, in the scenarios that were possible with the baby, the hospital didn’t cover themselves to ensure they were not getting themselves in trouble. If they had started to talk to me about “the possibilities are your child is dead,” I truly know the outcome would have been different. It would have been devastating. But I know now that the Lord protected me from the information.
When we find ourselves in the darkest moments, like the silence that filled the room during the ultrasound, it’s easy to let fear take over. That’s when prayer becomes our lifeline. Prayer is a direct line to God, who hears every word, every cry, and whisper of our hearts. James 5:16 (NIV) reminds us, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” During these seemingly hopeless situations, our prayers carry our faith and trust in the One who can change everything.
Prayer has the power to lift us out of despair, silence fear, and align us with God’s will, even when the circumstances haven’t changed yet. When all hope seems lost, you can reach out and hold fast to Jesus, the only Hope we need.
It takes bold faith to trust that God can step into the most impossible situations and do what no human effort can. When Joseph laid his hands on my stomach and spoke life, we weren’t trusting in any ability of our own to fix the situation but in God’s power to intervene. Jesus says, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26 NIV). That’s the foundation of our faith—knowing that God can do far more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20 NIV).
Trusting in God’s ability to perform miracles isn’t about denying the situation and pretending everything is fine. Instead, standing firm in the belief that God is still able, even when everything points to the contrary. We didn’t know what would happen after that prayer, but we trusted that God could do the impossible—and He did!
God Breathed Life
We went to bed, and the following day, when I woke up, I felt fluttering. Suddenly, a foot raced across my stomach! She started kicking again. Looking back now, we know God breathed life back into a situation the medical team at the hospital had perceived to be hopeless.
In Ezekiel 37, God revives the valley of dry bones, showing that nothing is beyond His power to revive. (This powerful, faith-building story is worth reading.) Whether it’s a dead situation, a broken relationship, or even a literal need for life, God is always attentive to His people’s cries.
When we don’t get an immediate answer, it can be easy to believe the enemy’s lies that God isn’t listening. But that’s not the case. God hears every prayer, and His timing is perfect. Psalm 34:15 (NKJV) says, “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry.”
In our case, God heard Joseph’s simple prayer and responded by bringing our daughter back to life in the womb. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not so short that it cannot save; nor is His ear so dull that it cannot hear” (Isaiah 59:1 NASB1995). No situation is too far gone for God to reach into and restore.
God isn’t looking for perfection in our prayers; He’s looking for a heart that believes He can do the impossible. In 2 Kings 20:5, God heard Hezekiah’s simple prayer and added years to his life. In our story, God heard Joseph’s prayer and responded with a miracle. Don’t underestimate the power of simple, faith- filled prayers—God moves through them.
Shortly after we woke up, the doctor called. I told her the baby was moving, and she said, “Wait, what?”
I told her, “She’s moving, and she’s okay.”
Again, I experienced protection from information. Usually, a doctor would erupt with, “How’s that possible?” However, the doctor stayed quiet because she was also a believer in Jesus. Perhaps she has a conviction about her words, too. I don’t know.
We went to the doctor’s office, and after she checked every- thing, she said, “This is miraculous. You’re supposed to be having a procedure right now, but your baby’s alive. You’re fine. Everything’s fine.” She did caution me with, “If you start having any pains, bleeding, or spotting, call me immediately.”
A week and a half later, we received a letter from the medical center where I had the ultrasound. The letter said, “We’re so sorry for your loss. If you need grief counseling, please let us know. It’s not your fault, and here is why this could have happened.”
The words in the letter blew my mind. I had to read it twice. Then I asked Joseph, “Can you read this? Am I reading this right?”
We were moving to Minneapolis, and my doctor recommended that I see a high-risk delivery doctor. Again, I didn’t think a thing of it. The Lord was protecting me from my thoughts. I thought, Oh, this is great. I’m going to get the best care.
There are moments in life, like the one I experienced, when the Lord shields us from certain things to help us bring forth what He needs on earth. He will protect you from certain circumstances or comments because He needs a specific outcome. He needed Alison to be here. I believe that 1,000 percent.
What we often see as the end is sometimes just the beginning of God’s miraculous work. When we sat in the room with the ultrasound technician, everything pointed to the fact that our baby was gone. But that’s when faith steps in, and prayer becomes the vehicle for God’s power. Just as Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb in John 11:43, God can bring life into any situation that seems dead. God specializes in resurrection.
Alison was born healthy! She’s married now; she’s beautiful.
The same God who breathed life into dry bones and brought Lazarus out of the grave is the God we pray to today. As in our story, prayer is where the miraculous begins. It wasn’t the ultrasound or the medical reports that had the final say—it was God’s power, activated through prayer, that brought our daughter back to life.
Marked For His Purpose
Knowing my life and the assignments the Lord has given me, I am certain Alison is supposed to be here for many reasons. Much of it has to do with the fact that she carries what Joseph has and what my father had prophetically. She has inherited gifts that function regularly throughout her life, and the Lord plans to use these gifts for His kingdom purposes. I believe the reason we weren’t fully aware of what was happening in the ultrasound room was to protect us from the “what if…” thoughts I struggled with in my younger years. Because of His protection, I never went there in my mind.
In our covenant, we have the gifts of salvation. There are seven things God gives through salvation (and we’ll go deeper into that in a later chapter). But one of those seven gifts is protection.
God gave us free will, and we have free thought. We can gov- ern it however we want. It’s up to us. By protecting our thoughts and not becoming afraid or concerned, we allow Him to bring His will into and through our lives.
It was like the Lord said, “I need to put you in this bubble right now to protect you from their words.”
People often think I didn’t do this or that, so I must have messed up my whole life, and God can’t use me. But God always accomplishes His will on earth. As long as your heart is toward Him and you desire to do His will, He will use you.
