My Ruptured Tubal Pregnancy and the Miracle of God's Saving Grace

Do you remember reading the dream I had a couple months ago that I was having a baby girl we named Joyanna Adelle Leal? Well, it was real, we were to have a baby girl, but the Lord decided to take her closer to His heart than mine. It was a miracle that we didn't both go to His heart then and there.  

We returned to the village after Christmas, the end of December. Within a week I was in bed with severe cramps. I'm so grateful that Kunti, a Christian friend and house-helper along with Ann Lycett, a dear British friend and school teacher in Kathmandu, came down to the village with us this time, and were able to help out. Eventually the pain subsided and I reengaged daily activities. But then, the next week the pain erupted so severely it was hard to stand up straight.

January 14, 1976: 

The Lord is good. Blessed be His holy Name and Love....Thank-you, Lord. So we're in Kathmandu. Last Wednesday the stomach pains returned along with a migraine. So I took a migraine pill which, we later learned, apparently can cause bleeding in pregnant women. Then I began to spot, enough that we decided to evacuate and leave for Kathmandu.

Bill bundled us on the motorcycle and drove us to the Bharatpur air strip about 10 miles away. We hoped we'd be on time for one of the twice weekly RNAC flights. The plane was there when we got there and, amazingly, there were enough seats for Jenny and me. We took off an hour later. Then, Jonathan and Bill rode the motorcycle up the Raj Path to meet later that day.

Jenny and I were met at the airport by David Meech who got me into a taxi that drove me to Shanta Bhawan, the mission hospital where Jenny had been born. I was immediately admitted to the hospital. Dr. Mary Eldridge, the Queen of Doctors--took such good care. I expected it was a miscarriage, but it wasn't. It turned out to be a ruptured tubal pregnancy.

So she did an emergency surgery to remove the right tube....I am still weak, but am so grateful to be alive and a recipient of His mercy. Turns out that I was the most unusual case of the week in the hospital so all the doctors were in here discussing me. I learned a lot listening to them. Maybe I learned too much--like how many cc's of blood they took from my gut to save my life. But the Lord is faithful.

The pregnancy was ectopic: the fetus was growing in my right fallopian tube. Once it started bleeding, without the emergency intervention, I would have died. The Lord's love surrounded us. Apparently He still had more life for me to live, more work for me to do, more family and friends to love. Of course our hearts were sad to let Joyanna go, but we look forward to one day meeting and spending time with her in Heaven. Here's a picture of how Ethan understood what happened.

So you see how Father protected us: the ectopic pregnancy, the medicine I shouldn't have been taking that caused us to leave early, the availability of a plane and seats on it, and a British doctor that recognized the crisis and dealt with it. Here was something we could not plan for and had no control over. Nor could we have scripted the sequence of just-in-time provisions. Truth, as Mark Twain said, is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.

Imagine....

If Bill hadn't decided to have us leave the village when he did?

If it hadn't been one of the two days RNAC had a flight into Bharatpur with return to Kathmandu?

If they didn't have a few seats left on the plane?

If David Meech hadn't taken me directly to the hospital?

If Dr. Eldridge hadn't recognized what was going on (remember they didn't have ultrasounds there)

If my Father hadn't decided to leave me here all these years?

George Herbert, in 1633, penned the following words and I echo them: "I live to show His power, who once did bring my joys to weep, and now my griefs to sing."

Here's a song to express what gives deep rest in the midst of fears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qec8TMNJEcw&feature=youtu.be