Can God Reorder Even This? A Story of Preterm Labor

Thirty weeks pregnant with twins, I lay on a hospital bed in the operating room as contractions grew more and more difficult to talk through.

A young doctor paced the room, watching me. He spoke with one of the older nurses who had been with me since I arrived earlier that morning. The doctor wiped his face. “What do you think?” he asked the nurse. 

“I’ll check her again,” the nurse replied. 

I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched for the check. The check confirmed I was in active labor.

“I’m calling the IWK. Get her ready to be airlifted,” he replied, then nearly jogged out of the room.

My heart thumped. My stomach churned. “What do you mean? What’s going to happen?”

“You’re in labor,” the nurse said as she peeled off her gloves with a snap. “We’re going to send you to the IWK by plane and then helicopter. An ambulance will transport you to the airport.” She further explained that my husband wouldn’t be able to accompany me; he’d have to make the three-hour drive behind us.

With a kiss on my clammy forehead and reassuring words, he squeezed my hand and left, where I wept as nurses hustled around me. My mind raced. Where is God in this crowded hospital room? Can his hand reach inside this tiny aircraft with nurses, pilots, oxygen tanks—and only one incubator?

Order and Disorder

The chaos of a high-risk pregnancy reminds us that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Our God is one of order; Look at creation and see how he arrayed every atom and molecule, how he structured the growth of a gilled tadpole to an air-breathing frog. Yet we also know that his organized sequences fell prey to the fall. 

When Adam grasped and ate the fruit from Eve’s hand—rather than bringing her to God to cleanse this sin—creation’s orderly arrangements jumbled and tangled. Now our bodies don’t always follow the instructions printed on them. They may push babies out too early; our blood pressure might force babies to be removed from our wombs prematurely; sometimes our wombs stop allowing our little ones to grow. This is all part of the disordering the fall instigated.

In the hours that followed, I felt that disorder deeply. A nurse toiled over me all night long and, by God’s grace, the labor stopped with medical intervention. The next morning, my husband wheeled me to a maternity ward where I thought I’d remain no more than a week. However, another nurse broke the news to me: We would remain for seven weeks, ensuring that when they sent me back to my hometown, I’d be far enough along that my hospital could care for me and my twins.

As my husband made phone calls to our parents, I stared out the window at the night sky littered with city lights. My first son, two years old at the time, would be separated from us for seven weeks. I had only given him a passing goodbye out the van window yesterday when my husband walked him up the stone pathway to his Grammie’s house. 

I felt as if I were in a nightmare as I moved about my days in my tiny room. I wept for my oldest son, thinking of all the damage this might do to his developing heart and mind. Would he know me when we returned? 

I wept for two babies in my bulging womb. I worried the stress would threaten their lives. I tried reading Christian books but soon tossed them aside to lie in my bed and stare at the blank wall.

Families were not meant to live in such disarray and separation, and my heart cried out against the disorder. I also wondered how God could be with us all—could his arms stretch out to cover each of us across these highways, forests, and glades?

Always Present, Never Abandoned

In Genesis 28, Jacob, son of Isaac, fled from his home after tricking his twin brother Esau. Esau planned to kill Jacob for his trick, so Rebekah convinced her husband to send Jacob away to his uncle’s home.

As Jacob walked the wilderness alone, he had nothing to sleep on but a stone. He didn’t have Christian living books or even a Bible to turn to as he lay there masked by the darkness. He had what his father gave him and what he saw in the pagan worship that surrounded him. In that time where every culture had its own religious system, most of them believed their gods were bound by geography. Jacob may have believed that God’s reach only covered his father Isaac’s property, and he now walked outside of Yahweh’s care.

Yet God was always present. In a dream, Jacob saw a ladder reaching from heaven to earth with angels ascending and descending on it. Spurgeon described that ladder as being propped in the manger and at the cross,[1] foreshadowing that God the Son would come to earth, develop in a womb, be born in the most unlikely of situations, and live the rugged life we move through every day. Why? To undo the curse—to bring back order by moving through the disorder. That’s what Jesus sought to show through every healing touch and command: he had the power to countermand the curse and put everything right. By his work on the cross, he draws his people out of the disorder and brokenness of sin and gives them a place in heaven’s glorious perfection and harmony.

Friends, God is not distant, and his rule extends from the riches of heaven to every part of the earth.

Seven weeks later, our family was reunited, with my babies still safely tucked in my womb—but for only a few more days. Though he only journeyed between our home, my mother’s home, and my in-laws’ home, my son had such a change in worlds in such a short time. We all faced great wildernesses to cross, but we never did so by ourselves.

We still abide on this broken planet, so grief is inevitable; disorder remains and bodies continue to disobey their instructions. Yet, even then, we can trust God’s promise: he will reorder all that’s disordered, and until then, he will never leave us alone.

[1] Charles H. Spurgeon and Alistair Begg, The Spurgeon Study Bible: The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 43.