Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 8, 2016 | Expresso - Elizabeth Cochrane

Transcript

November 8, 2016 | Expresso - Elizabeth Cochrane · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hi.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I can't I don't have the same talent of speaking without a script like she does.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote it out.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, did you choke on your coffee?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Poise like, you know, poise or poise like you know there's a feminine hygiene.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Never mind.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So okay, so that's about the extent of my jokes tonight, but that's me.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's right after I cut my bangs in second grade, right before pictures.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: My mom still gives me a hard time about that.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, that was after they were, you know, fixed by the hairstylist.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I got in quite a bit of trouble for that.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So let me start out by saying, when you understand God's love for you, really understand it and remember it in every moment, there is peace.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say that I understand God's love for me, but I understand it more than I did 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10, 5, or even yesterday.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: 30 years ago in 1986, I was in second grade at McArthur Elementary School.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: I had friends and even a boyfriend who kissed me upside down on the monkey bars once.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: My family had moved to Topeka the year before from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where my father had been a Presbyterian minister, and he needed to get help at the Menninger Foundation for his bipolar disorder.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I missed my friends and teachers in Michigan, but Topeka wasn't so bad.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: I became a Christian at age five in the Iwana Sparks program in Michigan, and I enjoyed learning about God and learning scripture.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Things got worse at home.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: It seemed like my mom was not home much because, as a teacher, she stayed late at school a lot.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: My sister and I fought a lot and competed for her attention for the little time that she had to give.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now that dad wasn't working anymore due to his disability, he picked my sister and I up from school, and the kids teased me that my dad looked like my grandpa because he had started to go bald and gray and he drove an O'smobile.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Dad would yell at us a lot and became very emotionally abusive, calling me fat, ugly, stupid, annoying, and worthless.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: We made up a couple of years ago, and I'm thankful that I forgave him before he died earlier this year.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Looking back as an adult, I see how he knew a lot about God intellectually, but he never really understood God's love at the heart level.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And this combined with his mental illness made him a very mean person.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: I got glasses and a perm in fourth grade.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids teased me on the playground, calling me four eyes, fatty, dork, etc.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was bullied in fourth and fifth grade, complete with a boy hitting me in the face with a pair of soccer cleats, and another boy shoving me up against a wall and hitting me.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the popular kids no longer wanted to hang out with me.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: But looking back, I'm pretty glad about this.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: You become like those with whom you spend your time.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thankful that I experienced the receiving end of meanness, so that I would learn to love and accept everyone as they are.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think most of those girls understood the love Jesus had for them, and that makes me so sad for them.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: They must have thought that their worth and lovability depended on how much money their daddies had or how popular they were.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or nowadays, some of them must think their worth depends on how put together they look when they go out in public.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Our worth doesn't depend on what other people think of us, or how fancy our purses are, or how good our makeup looks, or whether we own the latest gadgets, but we often live as if it were.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, these non-Christians were kinder to me than some of the popular girls who claimed to be Christians, but usually avoided me or spoke to me with disdain when they did interact with me.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Since these friends were younger, I still didn't feel like I truly belonged.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: At times, I begged my mother to divorce my father so that we wouldn't have to put up with his abuse at home anymore.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: My mother filed for divorce that fall of 1996, and my dad had to go live in a group home where the living conditions were not good.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was my fault since I had begged my mother to get the divorce.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I stopped going to church at First Presbyterian where my family attended because I didn't feel like I belonged there either.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And besides, I thought, why should I go learn about God when He was allowing all of this pain to happen?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: My depression worsened, and all I could hear inside of my head was the words that my dad and the mean kids had spoken over me.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I began to cut my arms.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: The pain inside was so bad that I wanted my body to hurt the same way because at least then people would see that I was in pain.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to kill myself, but I was never brave enough to try anything, thankfully.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: God didn't let me get too far.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: It just so happened that he worked out the best financial aid deal at Wheaton College, which is a Christian school in the western suburbs of Chicago, and that's where Pastor Jim Congdon went for his undergrad years, and then several other TBCers have also attended Wheaton.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Wheaton, this is a picture from like sophomore year.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: We went down to the lyric opera and had some fun.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um Wheaton was the best thing for me at the time.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: In February of my freshman year, I attended a weekend worship time at the campus coffee house, and where there I renewed my commitment to Jesus.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that I became a Christian at age five, but I truly started walking with God in 1998.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: The Wheaton years were good, and I look on them with um with nostalgia.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Even there, where people were kind to me, I never truly felt like I fit in.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: By now, you might be picking up a theme or two.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I never felt like I belonged anywhere, and I sought belonging through my academic achievements and perfectionism.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't get me anywhere good.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: When you hold yourself to a perfect standard that depends on your own performance, there will come a time when you will fail.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: None of us are perfect, and the only perfect one is Jesus Christ.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't ask us to be perfect.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: He asks us to believe in his perfection and let his love and grace transform our hearts of stone.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: After completing my vocal performance degree from Wheaton, I didn't have much direction in my career.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to support yourself on a music degree.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had not completed my MRS degree at Wheaton, so I had to support myself.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know what that is, the MRS degree is that degree that you work towards when you're trying to find a husband in college, and I had not found my husband.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I moved home to live with my mother, and I worked as an activity coordinator at Aldersgate.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I loved my job there, but at$8 an hour I knew it wouldn't be enough to support myself long term.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: During those 18 months of work there, I did frequent performances for the different care units, and I truly enjoyed those times.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Seeing the residents connect with the music, combined with what I remembered of my grandmother's connection to music, even in her advanced dementia, I decided to go back to graduate school at KU for music therapy.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: KU was well, I still went to KU, but my first semester in grad school, I um I'm kind of getting ahead of myself though.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So right before I went to grad school, I had a blood clot in June 2003.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um doctors discovered that I have a genetic clotting disorder called factor V liden.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the hospital for 10 days, and they told me I had to be on anticoagulants for six months afterwards and that I might have trouble having children someday, but otherwise it didn't really slow me down much.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Five months later, that's this picture in November 2003.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was heading out to do my monthly program at Aldersgate, which I still did even though I didn't work there anymore, and I was in a car accident that did slow me down.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had a compound, which means it broke through the skin, compound right leg fracture, and a moderate traumatic brain injury.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the hospital for another 10 days, including five at Kansas Rehab.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand why all of this was happening to me.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I decided to take the spring semester easy because of my traumatic brain injury and the headaches and the exhaustion that accompanied.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked at the Kansas legislature session that spring and I took one class at KU in the evenings.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had been planning to complete two master's degrees, one in music therapy and one in opera performance, but after the car accident, I narrowed my focus just to music therapy.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Ten years ago in 2006, I had completed my final semester of classes at music therapy and was preparing to move to Minneapolis, Minnesota for my six-month internship at a hospital and hospice.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Life was looking up.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had one more blood clot after an appendectomy in 2005, but otherwise the blood clots were fine.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um I counted and I had 11 surgeries from 2003 to 2016.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of don't even count the small the minor ones like the appendectomy and all that, but kidney stones.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even mention anyway.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um doctors had told me if I had one more blood clot, I would have to be on anticoagulants for the rest of my life.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: During my internship, I had another clot, and I was in the hospital for another seven days, had another surgery.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: I struggled with being so young at only 27 years old and having to be on blood thinners for the rest of my life because blood thinners were something that the old people at the nursing home took, not me, and I was 27.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought no one would ever want to marry me since I was getting older and I had so many things wrong with me, both physically and emotionally.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of gave up on marriage since there were no prospective wooers, and I planned to move somewhere after my internship and just work.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: One day I was scrolling through Facebook and saw a funny comment from a man from a name that I recognized, but I couldn't place how I knew him.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I messaged him to ask how we knew each other.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: We chatted back and forth, and finally we figured out that he had dated one of my nurse friends while she and I worked at Aldersgate in 2002.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she and Nathan had been on several double dates with me and my boyfriend at the time.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Once we solved the mystery, I admitted nonchalantly that I had considered him to be cute and funny at the time we hung out.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, this piqued his interest because he wanted to know if I still thought he was cute and funny.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um we kept chatting back and forth.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: We had so much to say, and he was very easy to talk to.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Facebook messages turned into four-hour long-distance phone calls during the last month of my internship.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Since I didn't have a job lined up, I moved back to Topeka to see where things went with this Nathan guy.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: He still teases me about his$250 cell phone bill that month, but that was before unlimited minutes plans.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: We got married on June 21st, 2008, exactly one year after our first date.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Life was great.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you hear me belch, it's because I'm nervous and my body just does weird things when I'm nervous, so I'll just put that out there.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: So five years ago in 2011 began the hardest five years of either of our lives so far.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: After two and a half years of marriage, we elatedly found out that we were pregnant in January 2011.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had some spotting, but an early ultrasound reassured us that everything was okay when we heard the heartbeat together.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: We made plans to welcome our first baby that September, but the plans were halted when we learned that the baby no longer had a heartbeat.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was 10 weeks pregnant and my body was not miscarrying, so I had to have a DNC, which is one of the 11 surgeries.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I never got to hold or see the baby, but we both felt like he was a boy, so we named him Elijah because Jim Congdon had priest preached a sermon about Elijah around that time, and because our baby went straight to heaven without having to face the pain of death.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thankful that our baby knew only love.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Three months later, we became pregnant with Adelaide Grace, who was born in March 2012, about two weeks before I became pregnant with Adelaide.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: We attended a Christian family camp called Camps Farthest Out, or CFO.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: We attend this camp in South Dakota every year that we can afford it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I felt God called telling me at CFO that by that time next year I would have a healthy baby in my arms.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I even spoke this aloud to the other campers.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because of my blood clotting disorder, my doctor induced labor, and she was born after a long 28 hours.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was exhausted and almost passed out, and she was struggling.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Her apgar score was only two at birth, and then she perked up to an eight as the minutes passed.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: I could see the concerned look on my doctor's face as he worked on me, but paid attention to her.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then the relief came when they announced the increased score.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: She had some bruising on her face and head, but the doctor said it was just because of being squeezed through the birth canal.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: We were elated that first day until about 24 hours after birth she began having seizures.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Doctors thought she might have meningitis, but ended up ruling that out and diagnosing subarachnoid hemorrhage.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know exactly what caused it, but it was most likely caused by head trauma during birth.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so thankful to God that Adelaide has been free of seizures since she was three days old and that she only had to spend six days in the NICU.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Life continued along happily.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: My husband had experienced occasional back pain before we had children, but it became debilitating when Adelaide was about three months old.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: He lived in chronic, excruciating pain for the next 18 months until he had surgery on December 13th, 2013.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: We praise God that he has basically been pain-free since that time, although he does have to be careful how he exerts himself or else he is bedbound if he overdoes it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to have three children and we knew neither of us was getting any younger, so we started trying to become pregnant in the fall of 2013 when Adelaide was 18 months old.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: We discovered we were pregnant and both sighed with relief when I passed the 10-week mark, since that was when our we we lost our first baby.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: The 10-week mark just happened to be the same week of Nathan's back surgery, so we were very happy that both stressors were going well.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: We were so happy when Nathan's surgery results were positive and the pregnancy was going along great.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: The time right after Nathan's surgery was one of the happiest times of my life.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was such a relief that he no longer needed my help with almost everything.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my so shoulders.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: The happiness lasted three weeks until January 9, 2014, when I went to the bathroom one evening and gave birth to the baby at 13 weeks.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just three short cramps, and he was born.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: His arm moved, and he seemed to be waving at us as we sat in shock.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: I had a sense of foreboding leading up to that evening, and then it was happening.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I had prayed that God would allow us to see the baby and get some good pictures if we had to lose the baby this time.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I messaged my friend Elena, who is a professional photographer, that evening about 9 30, and then I was calling her in tears about an hour later.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Nathan and I were both in shock, but I'm thankful that God worked it out to get a few professional photos with our baby.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was faithful to work out the small details that I had asked him for, even if I will never understand why he didn't work out the pregnancy to health.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: We were devastated, but we had been down this road of miscarriage before, so we moved through the shock a bit faster this time around.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think the fact that we saw the baby's body and had a memorial service helped us in our grief.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: By March, that was the previous picture.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: By March we were pregnant again, and we trusted that this time the baby would be okay.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Similar to when I had heard God speak to me about Adelaide before.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: She was before I got pregnant with her.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I heard God say that we would have a baby in our arms by Christmas.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I remember praying and asking God, a healthy baby, right, God?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: But he didn't answer me.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Still, I chose to believe that this baby would be healthy.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I had to believe that to avoid constant anxiety throughout the entire pregnancy.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I saw the maternal fetal medicine doctor and got a high resolution resolution sonogram every month for monitoring due to my blood clotting disorder.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: He said she was smaller than usual due to some restricted blood flow to my uterus, but it was nothing to be worried about.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: In November, we learned that the baby was breach.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: I began to have a sense of foreboding like something was going to be deathly wrong.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Either the baby or I was going to die if I had to have a C-section, which continued to be the birth plan as she remained breach.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: I tried to shake this horrible feeling, but I lived with constant anxiety those last few weeks of my pregnancy.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Whenever I expressed my anxiety, people told me I was overreacting and hormonal and everything would be okay.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Some said I needed to think positive thoughts, and others said I needed to pray and trust God, and it would all work out.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And yet the feeling remained.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hannah, Ruth Ann, was born via C-section at 39 weeks on December 10th, 2014.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was so glad to be done with being pregnant because I had been very sick during the entire pregnancy, to the point of needing IV fluids.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: I put on my brave face as they started the C-section.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: She came out and I heard her tiny little cry.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: At Stormont, a NICU doctor is present at every C-section birth as part of their protocol, so I didn't think too much of it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: However, I had asked for the baby to be placed on my chest as soon as possible, so when that didn't happen, I knew something was wrong.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Her tiny little cry sounded like she was in pain.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Nathan held her for about 30 seconds to take one picture before they whisked her down to the NICU.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Her oxygen was in the 50s and 60s and wasn't improving.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: That evening, she was transferred to Children's Mercy Hospital because the Stormont NICU wasn't equipped to diagnose or treat her.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: I prayed with all my heart that God would heal her, and I stayed up most of the night trying to express milk for her.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: The next morning, the doctor on call came to my room and told me I was being discharged to go be with my baby in Kansas City.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was so glad to hear this news.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: My sister-in-law and brother-in-law drove me to Kansas City.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as I arrived, they took me upstairs to a little room where they told Nathan and I that she had a heart condition called TAPVR and it was inoperable.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: TAPVR stands for Total Anomalous Pulmonary Venous Return.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: The veins from her heart to her lungs were in the wrong place, and they were too small at only two millimeters to operate on.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: So like the blood was just going back and forth from her heart to her lungs, I guess, and it wasn't getting to the rest of her body.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Since modern medicine hasn't yet developed artificial veins, the doctors told us that she would die.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: But that we could choose within reason what day they would remove her life support.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: I Googled how much life support that she was on would cost, and it was something like$80,000 a day.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we chose the day that um the photographer was available.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'd say that a little bit later.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of falling apart.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I was scrapy.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: The ECMO machine, which we kept it covered up with a blanket, but the ECMO machine went directly into her heart and was breathing for her, so she had a big open incision on her chest, which was really hard for me to see.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: We chose December 13th to remove life support because that's when the photographer from the hospital was available.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: See, there I go.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I spent that week in and out of Truman Hospital with complications from my C-section, and the wound didn't actually heal until sa Palm Sunday, more than four months later.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: As I held my tiny five-pound baby in my arms after they removed her from the ECMO machine, she struggled to breathe on her own for almost an hour.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Her little body would quiver from time to time.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was like kind of like I'm doing because I can't breathe when I'm nervous.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: He hurts us.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It hurt us so much to see our little girl struggling.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: We prayed for God to take her quickly so that she wouldn't have to suffer anymore.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a strange experience to pray for your child to die quickly.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, not very many parents ever have to pray that prayer.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: About 45 minutes after they disconnected her from the machine.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so my postpartum body was so miserable that I just had to find a restroom.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it was distracting me from being present with her because it's all I could think about.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: And um so Angie Bowles had come to do my makeup for pictures, and she was sitting outside of the room praying for us.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: As I rushed out, I asked her to pray that Hannah would hold on until I got back to the room.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: I hurried down the hall, but there was a line for the closest restroom, which had never been never had a line before that.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I ran down four other hallways to try to find the next closest one.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is like two, three days after a C-section.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, on my way back, Angie was leaving and she said, Don't worry, you're going to make it back in time.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: God was so kind to allow my prayer to be answered as I asked.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: I got back to the room and settled down with Hannah back in my arms, and Nathan immediately started playing Come to Jesus on his cell phone by Chris Rice.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: We listened and watched the heart monitor continue to decrease.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: The song finished with these lyrics.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And with your final heartbeat, kiss the world goodbye.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Then go in peace and laugh on Glory's side, and fly to Jesus and live.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: We wept together as Hannah flew to Jesus right after the song ended.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: She was gone from our arms, free, in the presence of Jesus, perfect and healed.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: He had answered my prayer to heal her.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: My friend Mikhail told me to listen to the Holy Spirit tonight and not just read from the script.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like he's telling me to say that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: We pray that God will heal.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then when someone dies, we doubt that God didn't answer or God did not hear us.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're a believer, if you're a Christian, death is the ultimate healing because you get to be perfect in heaven.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel like we pray.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking of this one little boy in our church who has cancer, and people, so many people praying for him, you know.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I do hope that he gets better, and I pray that he gets better.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: But if he doesn't, God is still good and God is still on the throne.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: And our circumstances don't define who God is.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: So no more pain, no more sickness.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: My heart felt like it was shattering into oblivion and that I would never get all the pieces back.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I went through a long period of struggle in my faith after Hannah died.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hadn't I experienced enough pain in this life?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why has my life had so many difficulties?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like I've had more pain in three decades than most people have in a lifetime.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: If God is as good as he says he is, why does he allow me to continue hurting?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why does he allow horrible things to continue happening?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: I read James 1, 2 through 4, which says, Count at all joy, brothers, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've certainly met trials of various kinds, but I find it difficult to consider it all joy.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: I feel about the furthest from joy that I could imagine, especially when I think of the last five years.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: God is faithful to me.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Even in my darkest hour of waiting for my baby to die, he never left me.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: There is a precious beauty amid brokenness that cannot be found anywhere else.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: As my baby died in my arms, I could feel the presence of the angels.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: God was giving us strength to endure when we had no strength left.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have read the book of Job several different times in my life, and I reread it after Hannah died.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Amidst all of his losses, Job did not sin against God.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: His wife encouraged him to curse God and die, but he chose not to, saying, The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: God restored to Job even more than he had lost.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: I find it interesting that God told Job's friends to bring a burnt sacrifice to Job and ask him to pray on their behalf.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's also interesting that God waited to restore Job's fortunes to twice as much as he had before until after he had prayed for his friends, the very ones who had hurt him.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have questioned God and his goodness.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have shaken my fists in the air in anger.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have stopped praying for a time.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: But God's love remained because his love doesn't depend on my behavior or my doubts.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: In a similar way, joy doesn't depend on my feelings.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: I believe you can be sad and still be joyful.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is maintaining a sense of humor after being hit by a boy in the hallway.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is continuing to get up every day when you feel pain, soreness, and discouragement after a life-altering car accident.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is thanking God as your baby is dying in your arms for waiting to take her home until you could get back from the restroom.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is mingled with hope and perseverance as you look forward to heaven and being in the presence of the glory of God.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is a deep settled contentment, confidence, and hope, the choice to praise God when your circumstances tempt you to curse God and die.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is having another baby after two of your babies died in the same year, and continuing to embrace hope.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Joy is hoping with all your heart that God will let this one stay with you on earth.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: We welcomed Bethany Kiana Rose Cochrane to our arms this past March.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Fifteen months after Hannah, Ruth Ann departed.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: We were both scared to the point of sickness as we awaited her birth.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: When Bethany was born, her oxygen saturation was lower than the NICU doctor wanted to see.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: So she had to go down to the NICU as well.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was scary because it seemed really like a replay of Hannah.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: But all three of my babies who were born in a hospital had to spend time in the NICU, and I grieve the lack of a normal, natural experience with birthing them.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also so grateful for our modern medical capabilities.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: God gave us three days with Hannah by using the gift of a C-section, and God saved Adelaide and Bethany with medicine.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to explain why I still believe God is good after everything I've been through so far in life.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: People have asked me that question many times.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: I know that he loves me and he wants to bless me with good things.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the good things don't seem good to us at the time.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: But Romans 8 28 says, We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: I am trusting that God will work out everything for good and for his glory.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: If I don't have that hope, then I really am destitute because there has been a lot of trauma in my life.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth compare comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us and in us.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: God's glory is greater than any suffering we experience on earth.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: It will just be a distant event, something that happened.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: It won't upset or traumatize us anymore when we see Jesus.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I took this picture like four years ago.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: Have you ever seen a sunset behind a storm cloud on the horizon?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: The storm cloud magnifies the beauty of the light shining behind it.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: The bigger and darker the storm clouds, the more magnificent the light seems to be.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: Similarly, I wonder if the lives on earth who suffer the most will make the glory of God shine even brighter.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like a tapestry, we only see the underneath side, but God sees the beauty of the finished product from the artist's view.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: I pray that God will turn everything that I've experienced and have yet to experience and turn it for good and for his glory.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, remember that feeling I shared with you about my life, lifelong feeling of not belonging anywhere?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, lately I've decided that maybe it's okay to not fit into a mold just like everyone else.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: The people who help God change the world for good never have been cookie cutters, and Jesus certainly never sought a life of conformity.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: He broke the mold of societal expectations and the mold of sin and death, and he replaced them with freedom and life.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: How will you look to Jesus today for your freedom and your love and your life, your eternal life, instead of looking to the world for security and acceptance?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: The only true acceptance we will ever find is in the arms of Jesus, who will never let us go once we turn to Him.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to close by sharing a song that I wrote in 2007, right after my third blood clot.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's called, You Are My Delight, Lord.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that it blesses you, and God is writing a story in each of our lives.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening to the part that I've experienced so far.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Dun dun dun.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: In you I place my hope.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: You are all my joy, Lord, and I love you with my love.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are my strong tower, in you I place my hope.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: You are my dear liver, and I love you with my love.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I choose to praise you still with joy, Lord.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know that your love will heal me with time, and I choose to praise you still with joy.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: You are my dear life, Lord, in you I place my hope.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: You are all my joy, Lord, and I love you with my love, you are my strong tower, in you I place my hope.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: You are my dear liver, and I love you with my love, Lord.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you today for being my friend, and I want to know you with joy, Lord.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I know that in your love my life will never end, and my heart is filled today with joy You are my dear, in you I place my heart, you are all my joy, Lord, and I love you with my love, you are my stronger, in you I place my heart, you are my dear, and I love you with my love, you are my dear Lord, in you I place my hope, you are all my joy, Lord, and I love you with my love, you are my stronger, in you I place my hope, you are my dear liver, and I love you with my love.