Amanda shares two stories to demonstrate the incredible power of the Word of God: one about how it drew her into a relationship with Jesus, and another about its role in the life of her newborn child.
I had an awesome childhood and a lot of ways, a lot of good memories. So I don't want to discount that. I have good relationships with my siblings, and, we did a lot of fun stuff, but we had a lot of very traumatic and unfortunate experiences that changed a lot of the ways that I viewed myself.
My identity.
And so the combination of that left me feeling confused, alone, and a little bit helpless.
Even from a very young age. And so I took that, perspective of myself, not only of myself, but also of Christians and God. Because if those Christians are like that, then the God that they follow must be, unloving or not caring or just uninvolved. And so I wanted nothing to do with God from a very young age on.
And so, yeah, I took that with me all throughout my life. That feeling of I'm alone. I'm, not loved, I'm not valued. And that transpired, unfortunately, to the rest of my life and how I chose to live my life. In high school was in a lot of pain, and, tried to cope with that pain by partying a lot and getting into some really dangerous stuff.
And, making really dumb choices. And, you know, unfortunately, drinking does not numb your pain and actually ends up leading to, like I said, bad decisions and saying a lot of hurtful things when I partied. I saw a lot of people that I cared about being taken advantage of and myself included. And, yeah, just had a very even lower view of myself and lower view of this world.
And, just felt continue to feel disheartened and hopeless throughout life as I kept going,
I really think that the only reason that I lived was because of Him at this point. And, the fact that my sister and her, friends that she was on a Bible study was they were praying for me for a year and a half before finally my sister randomly was like, hey, can I come over?
And it wasn't just a, you know, come over like 20 minute drive. She came from Columbus to Wooster, which was an hour and a half away to visit me, and we ended up watching a movie with my roommate, and they ended up talking about death and like, what happens after this life and me being in the situation that I was, I was like, okay, I know that my sister likes God and all and wants to follow him, but I know that I know what's coming.
She's going to try and talk to me about God, and I don't want anything to do with that. So I literally like, removed myself from the room. And she, you know, kept talking to my roommate, luckily. And she also brought her Bible, which is kind of funny, her Bible that she had since she was a kid. And she was just reading verses.
after verses, and I found myself slowly coming closer and closer to the conversation, being drawn in from God's Word. And eventually, next thing I knew, I was sitting down and I was listening to where she said, and for the first time ever, I understood God is not an evil God. God cares about me. He loves me so much that he sent his son to die for me.
Me, the person who I felt was like the lowest of the low, and undeserving of love. Forgotten and not valued. And yeah, I saw the truth for what it is that he does love me, and he does care about me, and he cares about everyone. No matter who we are or what we did. And so I just remember it being like this moment where finally I felt like this weight was lifted off my chest that I had been carrying around with me all my life.
And, you know, I had gotten into drugs. I was taking painkillers, like, every day. And drinking during the day to, just to get through life. And I felt like, you know, I was trying to get rid of that pain, that discomfort, that heaviness that was following me everywhere. And this was that moment where I was like, oh my gosh, this is why I needed I needed a God, not this temporary effects.
I was very hardened. My heart was hardened, and the word was able to break through. So I guess the, the verse that I always think of is Hebrews 4:12, where the word is living and active and sharper than any double edged sword, and can pierce through bone and marrow.
I always think of that verse because I feel like for me, I was like, unable to hear the fact that God loves me and that he like, I mean, the classic verse, John 3:16 that he sent his son to die for us. And then even verse 17 where he doesn't want to judge us, he doesn't want us to perish, but he wants us to have a relationship with him.
So I think I, I think I was very like aware of that judgment aspect, but I wasn't aware of his love aspect, like he loved the world that he gave up on for me.
Yeah. Even though in God is great, doesn't mean that you're not going to suffer. A year into my marriage, we found out that we were pregnant.
And then, you know, a day after her due date. Luckily we had an appointment in the morning to just, like, check up and make sure, like, okay, like, what are we going to do? Moving forward of, like, how we're going to progress this pregnancy for a delivery.
And luckily I had that in the morning because when they were checking her, her heart rate was really low.
And so immediately, I had to call Isaac and tell him something was wrong and that he needed to go to the hospital immediately, and I was transported.
And sent to the emergency room. And right away, they they checked vitals again and put me right on the surgery table and knocked me out. And so I wasn't sure, you know, like that whole time going into it. Am I going to wake up? Am I going to see my baby again? Like, what's what's going on?
It was really scary. And I did wake up, but without my baby and in a lot of pain because I just had a C-section emergency. And so, yeah, basically, from the point that she was born, they had to, like, hook her up to all this equipment to essentially keep her alive, because what had happened is, her blood was all kind of reversed and taken out of her, and she went into full organ failure.
And needed to be transported to Nationwide Children's Hospital.
the moment that I saw her, as soon as I got into the hospital, the doctor came right up to me and was like, she's not going to make it. She's not going to make it through the night.
And that was one of the hardest experiences that I ever had. The, you know, I didn't even get to see my baby. As soon as I see her, she's hooked up at all this stuff. And they tell me that she's not going to make it.
So the next basically two and a half months from that point on was just us being in the hospital. Day in, day out, constantly, just basically living there. And, basically being told every day that she's going to die, she's not going to make it. And giving me the options to, you know, hold her as she passes and take her off all of her support or, you know, eventually they they might have to just, you know, take her off of it.
It got really bad at points. But all throughout that experience, I feel like. I don't want to run away from God. If anything, I was like, I need God. I need to cling to him, and I needed to cling to his word. And I went to his word, to seek comfort and to seek strength to get through that time.
And both me and my husband made sure that we did that pretty much every day, probably multiple times a day. And not only would we read it ourselves, but we would read it to our daughter. And I swear every time that we read it to her, her vitals like got so much better. Like, we could just tell that it was just it was bringing a life to her.
And yeah, I think, you know, in a situation like that, it's really grim. It's really hard. It feels like the worst thing in the world. And it was, But there is always that sense of like. I feel like there's more. There's more, and we can't, like, give up on her.
yeah, my daughter is still here. She's thriving. She's doing a lot more than I even thought she could. I thought she was going to die. I thought she's going to be a vegetable.
And she is just delightful. She's a joy. Everyone who meets her loves her. I do feel like she's just like. Yeah. Embodies God's love. People just love her. And. Yeah, I had another baby after that. And so, you know. There is suffering I'm still working through. I'm still wrestling through it. You see people in the Bible, people who are following God.
Suffering. But I guess my case is I've had pain and suffering with and without God. And ultimately, what I see is, you can still follow God and suffer, but you can have hope, at least, and joy in the midst of suffering.