Imagine your heart racing at the horror of rushing your 6-week-old baby to the hospital because she is having trouble breathing.
You pray desperately that God can save her fragile young life.
Then the big shock comes — your baby is suffering from congestive heart failure and on the flight to save her life, her heart stops beating.
This is exactly what Lauryn Gibson’s mom experienced about 18 years ago.
But her mom, Heather, did not bat an eye when the doctor – after putting her baby on life support with a heart functioning at only eight percent – told her that her baby would not be leaving the hospital without a new heart.
She simply looked at him and told him the truth that was in her heart: “I’m not going home without her. My God is bigger.”
18-year-old Lauryn Gibson began her college career this August at the Christian college, Cedarville University, in Ohio.
Though many with her medical history might be nervous about the life change, Lauryn has decided to trust Jesus with her care and is going forward without fear.
But trusting in God is nothing new for Lauryn and her family.
In fact, when doctors were sure she would have to wait in the hospital for a new heart, the faith of her mother proved to be right when, within two weeks of being hospitalized, Lauryn’s heart had improved enough to be able to go home.
This stunned the doctors, but not her parents, who were sure of God’s power to heal and protect and care for them.
It is this faith Lauryn witnessed drive the lives of her parents. And it is the same faith that drives Lauryn’s life now.
“When I was in the hospital, my mom put me on prayer lists worldwide and even in the Middle East,” said Lauryn. “Everybody is constantly praying for me, constantly praying to God to help me through daily life and to help guide me to my future.”
Though she has a suppressed immune system due to the drugs that keep her body from attacking the foreign heart within her, she is trusting God will take care of her while she is at college and likely surrounded by students who will have occasional sicknesses.
However, she has decided to commute from her parents’ house to reduce the chances of her getting sick, but she says, “I don’t have restrictions otherwise.”
Lauryn says that God has always been working in her life, even before she can remember.
The fact that she was well enough to be able to come home to wait for her new heart, which she received shortly before her first birthday, was rare enough.
And that is just some of the proof her parents have that God has always taken care of Lauryn.
“She was defying the odds,” the doctor said.
And she continues to live her life without fear, trusting in God always. “I just try to do as many once-in-a-lifetime experiences as I can. I’m really grateful for this second chance.”
As for Gibson’s plans for the future? She intends to become a pharmacist to help other patients who must take lifelong medications just as she does.
She says she wanted to be a veterinarian when she was younger, but, “Then I began thinking that I wanted to help people like me that have to take medication twice a day for the rest of my life.”
“I just wanted to be in a field that can ease the complications of taking medication every day for my patients, particularly pediatric patients. Because I understand how hard it is to take medications.”
And it is this understanding, as well as the compassion and love given to her by God, that Lauryn knows she can achieve all her goals.
It’s stories like Lauryn’s that show us what a caring Father we have and how precious we are to Him. We are His children, and He cares for us as His children.
We must always trust in Him and know that, whatever life brings us, we are not alone because we have our Heavenly Father.
He is always with us and will not give us anything we cannot handle. For it is in our weaknesses that He is made strong.
