The two parents watched the screen anxiously and with awe. The head appeared. The arms twitched. Then the feet wiggled -- the feet of their 18-week-old baby.
For Lee and Dena Smith, the day -- April 10, 1997 -- and the unborn child were answers to years of praying. Seven to be exact. The ultrasound technician could sense their excitement and smiled kindly as she cheerfully chatted about each new discovery.
Then silence.
As the second anniversary of that day approaches, Lee talks about the day as if it were yesterday.
Unnerved by the sudden stillness, Lee tentatively asked what was wrong. No answer. Lee watched the technician scan the spine and brain stem. He asked again.
“I do see a problem,” said the technician. “And the doctor needs to look at it before I tell you what I think.”
The doctor looked grim. He compassionately, yet firmly, told the tragic news: Their child had an incomplete formation of its spine -- a birth defect known as spina bifida. Accompanying this rare abnormality was hydrocephalus -- an abnormal increase in spinal fluid in the head cavity which leaves no room for brain development.
This neural tube defect had dashed the Smiths’ hopes for a child, at least a healthy one.
More tests at a research hospital revealed a grave situation.
Doctors offered no hope, explaining the baby would die in utero due to the fluid build-up. If, by a slim chance, the child lived, she would exist in a mentally vegetative state, totally paralyzed.
“Really the only option for you is to terminate the pregnancy now,” said one doctor. The Smiths were devastated.
“I remember going to the doctor’s office the first time. I thought that this is what Abraham must have felt like when the child of his faith was in the womb of Sarah,” recalled Lee, a master of divinity student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. “And now, having this news, I wondered if I may have felt like Abraham did when God said to sacrifice Isaac.”
The choice was clear according to the doctor. Nothing within human rationale justified carrying the baby to term.
But, something in the Smith’s faith said, “Let God have his way. If stillbirth was required, then the Lord would give the grace to endure that.”
So Lee and Dena agreed to wait. Their decision shocked the doctor. “The doctor acted like we were absolutely foolish,” said Lee, a native of Raleigh, N.C. “He was short with us and very uncompassionate.”
“‘Well, if you’re determined to do that, I’ll see you in a month,’“ the doctor said condescendingly, Lee recalled. “‘In a month you’ll see that the hydrocephalus has continued to worsen. It will not go away. It will continue to build up until the child’s head cavity explodes in the womb.’“
When the Smiths returned home, Lee called everyone he knew -- the deacons in the church where he pastored, his family, his friends. The Smiths’ request was simple and earnest: They did not care whether the child was mentally or physically handicapped, they wanted a child -- a life.
Church members began to pray. And they instructed Lee to take that Sunday off. “No, I want to preach,” Lee said.
He preached from Matthew 14, which tells of Jesus calming both the storm and the fears of his disciples. He is a “God of our storms,” Lee said.
During the altar call, many came to pray. Overcome with emotion, Lee and Dena left and went home. The congregation stayed, petitioning God long into the afternoon.
The following month seemed to last forever.
“During that time we just prayed, prayed and prayed. And the Scripture that came to my mind is in the James 5:16b, which reads, ‘The fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much.’ I began to hold to that Scripture,” Lee said.
The Lord also spoke to Dena that month. She read a book about the women approaching Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body. On the way to the tomb, with despairing hearts, the women had no clue that the stone was rolled away. They were in their “grief journey.” But when they arrived, a miracle had happened.
“I don’t know if God can do this in my situation or not. I don’t know if this is my wishful thinking,” Dena said at the time. “But I feel that the Spirit of God is saying to me, ‘You’re in your grief journey, but the work is already accomplished. The stone has been rolled away.’“
She believed it, and Lee believed it as well.
“It was a comforting sense of the Spirit of God, saying, ‘You don’t know it yet, but I’ve already dealt with this problem,’“ Lee said.
The day for the follow-up exams finally came.
As the doomsaying doctor began the ultra-sound, Lee noticed something different. A full spine. Brain tissue developing. And no fluid.
The doctor didn’t say a word. After about 20 minutes of testing, he turned the machine off. “You’re child is fine,” he said bluntly.
“I don’t know what to say about it. The spine is fully developed. The ventricles of the brain where hydrocephalus builds up are normal size. I don’t have an explanation for how this happened,” the doctor said.
“Let me explain it to you,” Lee said, reciting James 5.
By that time word had spread, and a crowd had gathered. “I announced that continued fervent prayer could reverse what in the scientific realm doctors would classify as a hopeless case,” Lee said.
Lee had another word for the doctor: “If there is one-in-a-million chance for a natural remedy, not to mention supernatural intervention, doctors shouldn’t tell people there’s no hope. That one-in-a million might be my child.”
On Sept. 12, 1997, the one-in-a-million Alison Hayley Smith came into the world.
“She’s doing great,” Lee said.
Since then, Lee has shared this miracle in a dozen churches, incorporating the story into his sermon on Matthew 14, “The God of our Storms.”
God has used Alison’s story to minister to others swirling in the hurricanes of life, Lee said. Following one service, a lady whose baby had the same condition approached Lee.
“I encouraged her that a handicapped life was better that no life,” Lee said. “Sometimes God chooses to heal, and sometimes he doesn’t. When he doesn’t, he’s still the same God. And, the God of all comfort makes himself available, and his grace is sufficient.”
The Smiths view their storm to be like that of Job. “You almost want to say, ‘Lord, why did you put me through that month of hell if you were going to heal the child?’ Well, for the same reason he put those disciples through that long night of toil upon the sea of Galilee in Matthew 14 -- as a faith- building tool.
“No matter how dire the news is, I don’t believe there’s ever a hopeless situation. There’s always hope in the gospel,” Lee said. “God is able to do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think.”
