Today is the first day in our blog series on finding faith in the deeper places of life, the places where things are uncertain or footing is unsure.  We are so excited to share this conversation with you all! Over the next 4 days we’ll visit with some very dynamic women who have found that faith is forged in those unexpected challenges and twisted diversions. It’s also found in the unexpected wait and slow down. To start us off, Brandi will share a testimony of finding life while facing death. Sometimes it takes a plunge into deeper waters to realize you could swim all along. 

I had been hiding; afraid to express the depths of my heart. I had allowed spoken words, and negative experiences wrap around and imprison me. My passions and dreams were bound by fears and doubts, hidden for so long that even I had forgotten them. I was stuck on the shores of pretense.

God had been calling me deeper but I didn’t start to listen until I started labor with my third child. My Doctor had once explained preeclampsia as one of those conditions that can either gradually present its self or come in like a roaring lion. Scripture states that our enemy prowls like a roaring lion…. Preeclampsia has no known cause and its only cure is delivery. Unexpectedly and in the shape of one fast, overwhelming wave I found myself diagnosed with one of the worst forms of Preeclampsia, HELLP. That lion was starting to prowl.

But I belong to the Lion of Judah and He is faithful.

You see, God promised me a third child, a little boy, a sacred gift. God was asking me to trust Him as we waded out away from the shore, I just had no idea what the waves would do. The sound I still treasure from those long 14 hours was the sound of my sweet son’s heart beat, resonating through the monitors, a steady rhythm of hope like the waves upon a shore.

Micah Canon made his entrance on January 4 at 12:02 in the afternoon. He instantly delighted my soul and ravished my heart. Micah’s name means Sacred Gift from God, and he is- he truly is. But I had thought the gift was going to be the simplicity of adding a third child,  when God wanted to call me out of the muck of shame and into the gift of His sacred presence. He wanted me deeper.

As my nurse continued to massage my post-partum belly,  the prowl of my enemy became his roar.


She massaged once and gasped.  She massaged again and pushed the button on my bedside, urgently shouting something. Within seconds my room hosted three more nurses and my doctor.

The Doctor massaged my belly as the nurses weighed the first towel. Without moving her hand or her eyes from my body she firmly asked for someone to call the lab.

“The lab is busy for the next 20 minutes” came a nervous report. The doctor then asked for someone to page radiology.

“They’re backed up for at least a half hour”.

The pattern of requests and answers repeated until my doctor firmly and confidently ordered a Code White which seconds later echoed over the hospital PA system. Instantly my room buzzed, cords slapped the floor, machines blared, bars on my bed slammed up and shoes… lots of shoes.

In the one minute it took to get us down the hall and into the C-section-turned-surgery-room, every available department had already convened. Janitors were hanging plastic sheets to expand the sterile space; lab technicians were standing at attention loaded with bags of blood; blue shirts were scrubbed and ready.

And the chaplain was there.

That one minute in the hallway was the turning point for me. The reality of the grave was staring me in the face while my husband whisked by and images of my children pounded in my chest. One second I wanted to yell “this can’t be it- I am NOT DONE!” and the very next I heard a nurse say to my husband “no, you can’t come with us. Say your prayers”.

My heart screamed what my mouth couldn’t muster: “Jesus!”

Months later, while standing in worship at church, a song vividly sent me back to that hallway:

“Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,
God of Power and Might.
Heaven and Earth are filled with your glory.
Hosanna. Hosanna. In the Highest.”

I asked God why; why, during this deep worship song was I back in that hallway?  He answered: “Because that is what the angel was signing over you as he walked next to your gurney”.

I lost over three times the normal amount of blood after a delivery in the course of only 40 minutes. I was graciously spared a second chance to stop hiding on the shore and to dive deeper into an authentic place with God.

Deep fears bled out, breaking down walls of doubt, and my life was left standing, open, visible… free. And I began wading deeper.

You’ll find Brandi sipping coffee with her feet propped up on an overflowing laundry basket. Three children and a dreamy husband may fill her house with joy and lots of laundry, but Jesus is her heart beat and “after-hours”, she writes about authentic faith on her blog:  faith2shine.com. She is also the one helping us write our book!

You can connect with Brandi on  Facebook ,  Instagram  or  Twitter. (seriously, she would LOVE to hear from you!)

Tomorrow we’ll be hearing from a sweet southern belle who not only lost her mother to cancer at a very young age, but watched her step mom and baby sister float out the back door in a catastrophic flood. See y’all tomorrow!