Since the inception of our health ministry in 2003, my husband and I have sought to publicize the benefits of a balance between an appropriate faith in God and living a healthful lifestyle by following God’s eight Doctors. As we have previously noted, these eight Doctors have been scientifically proven to dramatically improve overall health, mental well-being and longevity. With such inspiring news from science, one can be tempted to forget the source of the power of the eight Doctors and even to question whether God still performs blatant miracles today.
Most of us are very familiar with the numerous examples in the Bible of miraculous healings, but in our secular twenty-first century it is easy to conclude that this is not the way the Lord heals today. While it is true that God usually works through His eight Doctors and God-fearing physicians, He still performs miracles today when it brings glory to His name.
With the earnest desire to bring glory to God and remind us all, that God is ultimately in control we wish to tell the miracle story of our son, Josiah George Gilbert Lewis, born Christmas Eve, 2012.
As soon as we joyfully discovered that we were expecting a baby boy in the late spring of 2012, we chose to name him Josiah. We named our little son, Josiah, after the Biblical King, Josiah, who was named in prophesy hundreds of years before his birth. According to the Bible, Josiah was the most faithful king that ever reigned over Israel and Judah, and was responsible for turning the people back to the Creator God (2 Kings 23:25). Our prayer for our little son is that, like King Josiah, he will be faithful to God and turn the people back to serving their Maker.
We also chose the name Josiah because of its meaning which is, “Jehovah heals”. To the Lord's praise, his name, as a promise, has already begun to come to fruition in his short life thus far. At 28 weeks of pregnancy, I was in a terrible car accident where I incurred a level one concussion and a drop in my hemoglobin secondary to a presumed pelvic fracture. To illustrate the size of the accident, our Ford Expedition was totaled. Despite this high impact accident, the air bag miraculously did not deploy which could have been fatal to Josiah. Instead, miraculously, the pregnancy continued safely until full term.
The promise in the meaning of Josiah's name was also fulfilled in the mode of his delivery. At 36 weeks of pregnancy, Josiah was still breech, which would necessitate a cesarean section for delivery. Although c-sections are very common today and usually end up without complications, given my inherited clotting disorders, surgery, in this case, would be much more risky. Miraculously, after much prayer and fasting, Josiah flipped over and became head down or cephalic. Given the car accident, under the careful care of Dr. Yvonne Gollin, Josiah and I received very close monitoring for the remainder of the pregnancy, which necessitated two times per week examining the baby's fluid levels by ultrasound and monitoring the baby's heart rate. During one of these examinations on Friday, December 21, 2012, the ultrasound indicated that the baby was still head down, with a cord around his neck. Then on Monday, December 24, I was evaluated again, and it was discovered that at some point over the weekend, Josiah had flipped back to the breech position, again necessitating a c-section. It is important to note that at 39.6 weeks gestation, the likelihood of a baby returning to the head down position naturally is very low and, in addition, manually changing the baby to a head down position is also unlikely to be successful. Furthermore, the baby was showing some heart rate changes on the monitoring, likely due to the umbilical cord being around his neck. Given these findings, we decided to proceed with having the c-section the same afternoon on December 24.
From the time that we discovered that the baby was breech at approximately 9 am until the scheduled cesarean section at 4 pm, we earnestly pleaded with the Lord to flip Josiah once again, to a head down position, again claiming Josiah's name as a promise 'to heal' if it was His will. At 2 pm we arrived at labor and delivery at Loma Linda University and almost instantaneously upon arrival, I started having regular contractions despite no contractions throughout the day. How futile the labor seemed since we knew that we were going to a c-section anyway because of the position of the baby, and we were forced to ask ourselves the age-old question of God, “Why...?” As though in answer to our question, the Lord blessed us with a wonderful Christian, Seventh-day Adventist nurse who prayed with us and reminded us that “all things work together for good to them that love the Lord.” At 4 pm, my classmate from residency, Dr. Sum Cheung came into the room to wheel me back to the operating room. Despite my not feeling any significant movement, we asked to have one more ultrasound scan to see if perhaps the baby had flipped back into a head- down position. Dr. Cheung performed the ultrasound and much to everyone's surprise and joy, Josiah had miraculously flipped head down again. With joyful praises to God, I exclaimed aloud, “Lord, you are the God that heals, thank you, thank you Lord.” Through God's providence, four short hours later, our precious baby boy, Josiah, was safely born as a small fulfillment of God's promise that He is the Lord who heals and, more importantly, He is the God who saves!
There have been many other miracles since Josiah's birth and we look forward to seeing how the Lord will fulfill His promise in his life. One thing we know for sure is that the Lord promises to heal because he wants to remind each of us of the power that He alone has, to heal us of the worst disease of all, sin (Matthew 9:6).
Our ultimate prayer for Josiah and all of us is that we will choose to have Jesus heal us of sin, so that we can all be together in heaven where there will be no more need for healing.