The peace of God

Peace….we all want it. We want it for the world, we want peace to reign and wars to end. We want it for the government. We want political peace and for all to fit together correctly and run smoothly.

We want it in our churches. We want the gossip tongue to be silenced and unity to reign. We want it in our schools. We want bullying to cease and kids to just get along. We want it in our homes. We want there to be peace between husbands and wives and children.

We all want peace.

When you look up “peace” in the dictionary there are several definitions:

Full Definition of peace

1:  a state of tranquility or quiet: freedom from civil disturbance :  a state of security or order within a community provided for by law or custom a breach of the peace>

2:  freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions

3:  harmony in personal relations

4 :  a state or period of mutual concord between government :  a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity

5—used interjectionally to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or farewell

If I asked you which one you have experienced, which ones would you be able to say you have experienced? I hope you wouldn’t answer that you have experienced the first one…for if you think you have you are quite mistaken. That kind of peace will not occur until the rightful King sits on the throne of David as Lord over all the earth (Jesus Christ).

I have always loved these verses:

 “ Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27

“ And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Phil. 4:7

But what kind of “peace” are these verses talking of? Obviously, it is not speaking of neither #1 or #4 or #5 of the definitions of “peace” that I’ve copied above. However, it is speaking of peace in relationships with others and also peace from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions (numbers 2 and 3).

I have experienced both of these. But not as a result of myself, but as a result of God Himself!

The birth pangs started at 12am. I did my best to still try and sleep through them, thinking that this wasn’t “it” because I had a lot of contractions everyday leading up to this day.

But then again these pains did seem more strong. I am not one to let on about pain…it was also a Sunday morning, and with Josh being a Pastor, since I wasn’t absolutely sure that this was “it” I didn’t want to interrupt his sleep as he would have to preach later that day. So I just kept moaning every once in a while as loud as I could… to see if he would suggest we go to the hospital. If I say it that we need to go and I am not in labor then I just wasted precious Sunday morning time…however if Josh says we should go in and I end up being sent home, at least I wouldn’t fell guilty because it was Josh who said we should go lol. There is your little peek into my brain and how my mind works lol I know, not pretty… and I know, I’m ridiculous…my moms already told me lol.

Anyways finally, at 4am after like a zillion moans and no recognition from my deep in sleep hubby, I hopped up out of bed. That is when my water broke. FINALLY my “it is time” sign came and there was NO questioning it! I was indeed in labor! I had prayed throughout the pregnancy that my water would just break, because then I would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was in labor. I always start my contractions early on in my pregnancies and I have a high tolerance of pain so it is hard for me to know if I am in labor. I didn’t want to have the baby on the road and I definitely did not want to go into the hospital only for them to send me home.

Upon my water breaking I tell Josh and we go into “flurry” mode to get to the hospital.

Once we got there, we were there only 18 minutes and Rachel came forth! CRAZY!

She was seemingly healthy. I took a shower and got back into bed to feed her. Josh came and kissed us goodbye and left to go preach. When he left she was fine, when he returned things had changed drastically!

I shouldve suspected something though. Because when I fed her the first time, she started turning blue (or “dusky” as the nurses referred to it) and the nurse took her from me and hit her back until she turned aright.

When I went to feed her a second time, she began to turn blue again and so I took her off and watched her breathing. It seemed odd to me. So I pushed my call button for the nurse. She came in and took one look at my little lamb and took her from me and left the room.

I remember sitting there in bed, thinking “now what.” The nurse had told me she was going to take Rachel to the nursery, but she hadn’t told me if I could come…or what I was supposed to do. I texted my mom to let her know what was going on. She called me and told me I needed to go find my little girl and stay by her side.

Scared, because normally a paitent just doesn’t go wandering about the hospital, I was afraid I would get in trouble or something. So I called the nurse again and asked if I could go be with my child. This was a new nurse, not the one who took Rachel. She kind of acted annoyed that I would ask to do such a thing at first, but to my surprise she had me follow her to where Rachel was. By this time they had the oxygen tubes in her nose. The nurse that originally took Rachel from me explained to me what was going on and that she thought they might have to send Rachel to a NICU in either Omaha or Des Moines.

My heart skipped a beat. I was like “say what??!!” You see when Miriam was born at 36 weeks they had the NICU on call just in case she would need it, like they were almost certain she would need it…but she never did. So I just assumed that since Rachel was 37 weeks she would not need NICU.

How could this be? They’ve got to be wrong.

They gave me a chair to sit in, and I watched as they began to do some blood draws and to put in an IV. I could hear them commenting on how Rachel wasn’t crying. As I heard them say that, on my right another baby had been brought in. She was in the process of being discharged. They did some things to her: temperature check, and blood sugar etc.  She was wailing like there was no tomorrow, and yet my child was being poked with needles and getting an IV in, and wasn’t even whining. Silence. As I watched this little girl baby who I didn’t even know, cry, I knew in my mind then that something wasn’t right with my little one. Here this baby was crying at a temperature check and yet mine didn’t cry at an IV being installed into her arm. And since her veins kept rolling they had to poke her a million times it seemed…yet no cries. I knew it wasn’t because she was tough….it was because she didn’t have the breath support to do so!

I knew then it wasn’t good. I knew we would most likely get sent to the NICU.

They had said it could be something as simple as her swallowing amniotic fluid. If that was so all it would need to do is pass through her system and she would breathe better and we could go home. However, since they didn’t have my results from the strep B test, it could be that she had an infection. The first sign of infection in a newborn is difficulty breathing. This is what they told me.

As I sat in that chair, still reeling from the birth and now dealing with the after birth pains, my mind began to reel. Like what if she is sick and what if we lose her? We had no guarantees. What would happen…and what in the world was God doing?

I mean first He takes a child from me (miscarriage) and then He gives me a “rainbow baby” (Baby that Is born after a miscarriage) and now He might take that rainbow baby away…WHY?

But I couldn’t live by feeling, Im called to live by faith. So I prayed…I prayed while they finished up her tests…I prayed when the ambulance arrived and they stuffed her inside the incubator with all these machines. I prayed in the ambulance on the way to Des Moines. And I prayed through out the night.

They hooked her up to a bunch of machines. I wasn’t able to hold her, or feed her. I’m so glad the ambulance techs let me kiss her before they loaded her into the incubator, because I wouldn’t hold her again till almost 24 hours later!

That night she woke up almost every three hours to eat…and I couldn’t feed her. It was heart breaking, because all I could do was stick her paci in and hope that this would calm her. I knew she was hungry…but there wasn’t anything I could do to comfort her!

In reality I should have been a complete wreak, but I wasn’t. I remember having this peace come over me. I couldn’t explain it to you (“Surpasses all understanding”…you cannot comprehend). SO many people were praying…my church family…my dads church family and joshs dads church as well.

And God answered! Because of God’s provision I had “freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions.”

His peace guarded me! And maybe you need to be guarded. Maybe you have disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions. Maybe you are going through a hard thing. If so, may I encourage you to seek the face of God! Seek for His peace. Ask Him for it! He will give it to you!