Testimonies & Elevators

When I was a kid, they called them testimonies. Often, they were someone who had gone through a significant dip in the road, got full of mud, and Jesus cleaned them up. I grew up in a Christian home. There were no big dips and not a lot of mud because of the Christian culture I grew up in. I remember knowing that I needed to be baptized. Camp time was remarkable, and I loved singing the choruses; I felt the conviction, making my heart feel so new. I knew who God was, and I loved Him. I wanted to do the right thing and stayed between the lines most of the time. Did I have an incredible testimony like the others? No. I knew Jesus as my personal Savior, yet God seemed to be an observer from afar. That all changed in an elevator. Most of us hear elevator music when we ride up with others, staring at the door or the ceiling. I go back to 1992 when God chose an elevator to talk to my heart. Here is my testimony of God changing my life.

I was pregnant with our second child. The ultrasound showed there was a problem. I was not producing amniotic fluid. We were referred to the Mayo Clinic, and further tests showed he had no bladder and no kidney, and his lungs would not develop without those two. We were faced with a brick wall. I could choose to end the pregnancy, there was no chance of viable life outside the womb, or I could choose to continue the pregnancy, which put me in a crisis health situation. Neither was a good option, but we chose to continue the unborn life and let God decide when life ended, trusting Him with both our lives.

I prayed not for healing but that I could love what I was carrying. They prepared us for reality. He would not look normal; 1 out of 15,000 Potter babies were born alive then.  I prayed to make it through what was ahead. I already had an 18-month-old daughter that I loved. I wasn’t sure how to love the unknown. I lived every day knowing I could lose my life by choosing to keep giving life to him. We named him, not the thing in the day, and kept living one day at a time. It was March of 92 when I began to bleed and headed for the Hospital. They decided to let things take their course. It was quite the opposite delivery situation. For our oldest daughter, there were two other people in the room. The Doctor, who, ironically, I had gone to school with and knew well, and a nurse, my husband, and I. This time, there was a swat team for the baby, one for me, and lots of interested medical people as Mayo is a research hospital, and most had never seen a Potter’s baby born alive.

We had already written our list of things to try if he was born alive. His lungs were plasticized. Without amniotic fluid to breathe in and out, the lungs could not develop. Without the bladder and kidney, the amniotic fluid could not be produced.

It was a simple and relatively quick birth. I am blessed to have babies easily, and they showed him to us and took him to the side room to evaluate. They returned him soon to my arms as he could not meet any of the options we had given. But what they gave me was a living baby, beautiful. God’s answer to my first prayer. He lived an hour and a half, and we got to hold and love him until his heart gave out. Several hours later, we left the hospital to return to “normal” life if there ever can be that used after the death of a child.

 We got into the elevator at the hospital with other people dealing with their moments of reality. But I didn’t hear the elevator music. I heard God speaking to me. I grew up in a Christian culture where that wasn’t even an option, or perhaps I had never heard that God came closer than the ceiling of the church. Jesus, yes. The Holy Spirit definitely, but God stayed a bit aloof in my growing up and understanding. That morning, I heard God saying very vividly in my heart, “I know how you are feeling. I watched my son die, too.”

Suddenly, God left the roof and walked right into my living room. God became someone who cared that I had just watched my second-born child, my first-born son, leave this earth and enter his presence, and those words told me that God knew the pain, the hurt, the confusion, and the reality of death. Yet, at the same time, it promised healing, peace, hope, and eternal life.

Those moments in the elevator began my search and focus on a God who loved the world that He gave his only begotten son and would take the time to speak to my heart in an elevator in Rochester, Minnesota. Thus became my testimony. I wasn’t mad at God for taking our infant before he could play on the floor with his sister. I wasn’t angry at the medical community for being unable to fix it.  There was something different that God was doing in my heart, and somehow, through it all, God gave me peace and a purpose. I prayed for the purpose. Nothing happens in life without there being a purpose. We chose not to spend time focusing on his short life and death. We always made a birthday cake on March 23, and our daughter would let balloons go outside so her brother had something to play with in heaven. I knew there would come a time for my testimony, but until then, this new relationship with God slowly changed how I looked at life and how I lived.

A few knew of our testimony, but you didn’t discuss it when you met people. “Hi, my name is Marette. I buried a baby. What’s your name?”.  It’s not something one dwells on, but it’s a secret sorority that no one wants to join, but those who are a part of it all have a story.

One day, we walked into a church to perform a concert—that was what I did as a ministry—and the preacher pulled me aside and said, “There is a gal in the back row who needs to hear your testimony.”  My heart left my body and fell right out on the carpet. After I picked it back up, I knew it was time to begin sharing how God used my encounter with Him to draw me closer in ways I could never have imagined.

I sat down beside the girl and said, “I’m Marette. I’m sorry for what you’re going through. Let me tell you how God walked me through our valley. Maybe it can help your heart.”

That began the sharing of the Testimony. Of how God used an elevator to show me not only that He has always loved me, but He knew right when I knelt as a little girl beside the sofa growing up praying he knew the place in the river at camp where I choose to be baptized, He knew the steps I took forward, backward and a few totally off the road, and He was waiting for me in an elevator to remind me that not only does He love me, but He took the time to make sure I knew in one of the darkest moments, that He was right there with me, and of all places, He chose an elevator to make himself real. I have had the blessing of sitting beside a mom-to-be knowing there won’t be baby showers and newborn moments. As hard as that is, God has prepared me to share my story, so their story isn’t hidden in the closet.

The verse we relied upon was in Romans, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” That’s the King James Version, but the message meets my heart because I lived so much of it many years ago.

 ^“Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

God knows me far better than I know myself. What a cool thing to consider. My friends think they know me, and my husband hopes he knows me, but God knows me far better than anyone else, and He made a point to get my attention when I needed to know He understood. It will be 32 years in about a month. Do I think about it? Of course, but not in the way one might think. For me, God changed the trajectory of my faith walk. I am grateful and humbled. I see March 23 as one of the most incredible things God has ever done for me. I try not to focus on the disappointment of losing our son, but on the beautiful gift, God gave me by revealing himself just a bit more than I had known before, and of all places, in an elevator. Every time I step in an elevator, my faith smiles. Yes, faith can smile!