Immeasurably More by Stephanie Grounds
Stephanie Grounds has been
attending Calvary Baptist Church since 2005 and resides in Grand Prairie, TX
with her husband Chad and their three children. You can find Stephanie teaching
in the Refinery or Boulevard of Kid City on most Sundays. In her spare time, Stephanie likes to hang
out with family, play volleyball, and cheer for THE Dallas Cowboys!
Immeasurably More
Some
of you might know me as Chad's wife or you might know me as the girl that wears
the blue shirt since I'm always in Kid City. I met my husband at Arlington
Baptist College in 1995. Seven months into our friendship, and our courtship, we
were sitting in an Arlington hospital room with my parents, and a doctor with
bad bedside manner. At the age of 20, he
told me I needed a full hysterectomy. The words simply rolled off the tip of
his tongue, “You're never going to be able to have children. You might as well
go ahead and get the surgery. We can schedule it today or tomorrow.” What he
said so easily, felt as if a house just landed on me, and crushed me. I also
remember my very sweet, but very Texan mama replying, “Well, I don't think you
are God and we will definitely be seeking a second opinion! Thank you, bye-bye.
You are done here.”
The
road to my surgeries began. There were six surgeries to be exact, one before I
was married, five to follow afterwards, and they all led to exactly the same
place: no children. It is amazing how during some of the loneliest times in my
life, I absolutely felt my Savior the closest to me. He was right there beside
me. He was whispering truths because the enemy was on a mission. Satan wanted
to sift me like wheat and sometimes I let him. He would start whispering, “What
kind of a woman are you? This is what your husband has dreamed of! All he talked
about while you dated was having a family. You cannot give him that. What is
wrong with you?” About the time that the enemy would start feeding me those lies,
my Savior would start shouting out words of truth; everything depended on who I
chose to listen to. The Lord taught me so much during my journey and gave me
what I like to call “nuggets of truth”.
About
eight years into my journey with infertility I was at my very lowest after learning
a birth mom was choosing another family; not Chad and I. This was the second
time we had tried to pursue adoption and the door had been shut. I fell on my
face in my living room floor and sobbed from the depths of my soul. I gave
myself time to weep and mourn before I got up and I went to the Word. That's
where the comfort came from - friends can give you comfort, I love my family
more than life, but the Word is what kept me sustained. I remember telling the
Lord specifically, “I am lost. Please take away this desire to be a mom. I feel
dried up and empty.”
My
kind and gracious Savior took me to the Bible study I had been doing. The verse
was Isaiah 58:11,
”And the Lord will guide you continually...” Wait Lord, you mean I’m not lost?
“And satisfy your desire in scorched places...” My desire was to be a Mom and let
me tell you, I felt really burned.
“And make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” Wait, I’m not dried up?
Then I gave up! Not the way you quit
something, but I surrendered once and for all. This journey would be 100% His
will and not mine, His timing and not mine, His way and not my way. I promise
you, besides salvation, that was the sweetest surrender of my life!
In August 2008, after a nine-year battle with
infertility (and you can say nine years, “like oh yeah nine years” but that’s a
LONG time), I found out we were expecting. I embraced every moment of sickness.
Every time I felt like throwing up I celebrated; I was so excited! It was a
reminder of the life that the Lord had amazingly placed inside me. One month
later we found out we weren’t only expecting, but we were expecting twins! At
20 we were told we would never have children and 13 years later we’re carrying twins...
TWIN GIRLS! Their daddy was in trouble.
Everything was going perfect until my 24th
week. I taught at an elementary school, having a normal day, until the pain hit.
I thought, “Good grief what did I eat that you two disagree with?” Before I
knew it, I found myself in the nurse’s station at the school, buckled over,
while she told the school counselor to get me to the hospital pronto! This
could not be happening.
At the hospital, they told me I was in full
labor. This was not good, it was January and my babies were not due until May! There
were about six people in the room and everybody was doing something different -
rolling me side to side, giving me shots, pumping meds through my IV. I had no
idea what was happening because nobody was talking to me. I remember thinking,
“I haven't even had a Tylenol since I found out about these babies!”
I was finally able to ask what the nurses
were giving me but nobody was listening. Finally, one nurse looked at me and
she said, “Honey, we're giving you steroid shots. Your babies’ lungs have not
developed. If they're born today, there's a very good chance they’re not going
to make it.” I was devastated. They had done a sonogram and Baby A weighed one
pound and Baby B weighed 14 ounces! This was a nightmare, but within a few
hours the meds started working, my body was responding, and life started making
sense again. I was told the girls were stable, but I would have to spend the
duration of my pregnancy in the hospital on bed rest. Two days later as I lay in that hospital bed,
two of my precious friends were trying to cheer me up and brighten up my room. I'll
never forget they painted a verse for me on a little board:
They
hung it up in my room without knowing a few hours later that verse would be my lifeline!
I had complained to the nurses that I was having a hard time breathing and they
told me it was the medicine they gave me to stop the contractions and I was okay, but the
feeling continued. I insisted that I really couldn’t catch my breath, but they
suggested that I was going through some anxiety. Once I made it clear that I COULD
NOT BREATHE I was taken for a CT scan and chest X-rays. The techs
were laughing and having a good time, cutting up, and then all of a sudden they
were very somber. When they took me back to my room, they treated me like I was
a delicate rose. I was confused, “What’s
going on? What happened to the funny people from before?”
The
techs said my doctor would talk to me if there was anything they needed to
discuss. The on-call nurse came in and
she told me they found an aneurysm on my heart. They were talking with a heart
specialist who would be in shortly to discuss this with me. The heart surgeon arrived with my mom, my
husband, and preacher. When I saw
preacher, I knew it was bad. My husband wanted to break the news to me, so with
tears in his eyes, yet so strong, he said, “Stephanie, this aneurysm has to be
removed but in order to do so, it requires open-heart surgery. They're going to
have to lower your body’s core temperature to the point that your pulse is very
weak. But the girls won’t survive that.”
I
refused and insisted we just wait because they were only 24 weeks; we just needed
to give them a chance and wait a little longer.
The heart surgeon insisted that I didn’t have time. The aneurysm could
burst at any moment. Again, I insisted
we give my daughters a chance. I suggested doing a c-section. They could deliver the babies (and we would
pray for God to sustain their life) and then the doctors could do the open
heart surgery afterwards. The surgeon
told me my body could not go through a c-section and in then immediately have
open heart surgery. I would die on the table. I recognized the options all as lose-lose
situations but right there hanging in my window, seriously the same day, was this
freshly painted sign: God is able to do IMMEASURABLY more than all we can ask
or imagine. It is His promise, immeasurably more, and that was what it would
take. A peace came over my body that I can’t explain to you, it was the Lord,
and I resolved this wasn’t my story. This was not where God brought me. He did
not bring me here for this.
No heart
surgeon in DFW wanted to touch me because I was a huge insurance liability, but
the hospital found a surgeon in Houston who would do the surgery. The plan was
to CareFlight me to Houston so the doctors wanted to do a sonogram of my heart.
They brought in the sonogram machines and told all my family and friends to
step out. As hot tears were streaming out of my eyes, they had me swallow a
scope. Normally scopes are done while you are under anesthesia, but I couldn't
have any, so I was consciously swallowing a scope that would take a picture of
my heart. The process seemed to last forever but I felt (literally felt) my
Savior holding my hand through it. After it was over, I looked up at that surgeon
and he had a very strange look on his face. He told me I had done well and walked
out of the room. That was all he said.
I
was later told the heart surgeon went straight to my husband and a waiting room
full of prayer warriors there that day. The
doctor looked at Chad and told my husband he couldn’t find the aneurysm. It was on the CT scans, every test they did,
but when they did the sonogram the aneurysm was gone. Chad asked if I still
needed surgery, and the doctor said “Nope. She doesn’t need anything. It's gone.”
The doctor was so puzzled and even had me go in weeks later for follow
ups. He admitted he didn’t know what
happened. I said, “I do! I told you. It
was God. He did immeasurably more...”
I
want to thank so many of the people who prayed. When you tell somebody you will
pray for them: pray for them! Prayer works and God is still in the miracle business!
I was able, with the Lord's help, to hang on to those precious baby girls. At 32 weeks, my beautiful twin miracles made
their debut. Abigail Elise came first weighing 4lbs, 6oz and Reese McKenna came
one minute later weighing 3lbs, 7oz. and they are the joys of our lives. I want
you to know that God is still in the miracle business. He loves to show off
because nine months later, we all discovered there was a sibling coming. Our
son, Noah Colt was born 18 months after his sisters, rolling in at 9lbs pounds.
More than their COMBINED weight.
The
kicker of our story is that I delivered all three of those babies in the same
hospital where that first doctor told me I needed a full hysterectomy and would
never have children. Wow, I guess my
mama was right when she said that things aren't always as they seem.
