The last few days have a been a whirlwind of calls, emails, and texts as friends and family informed us where they’d seen the recent article The Daily Mail in the UK ran over the weekend. The article was picked up by the Huffington Post, AOL and several other media outlets. We saw it translated into Dutch, Serbian, Italian, and Chinese.
I received a few dozen emails from around the world from people who were touched by our story.. from Holland, the Philippines, Mexico, Australia, and the UK . Many wishing Ryan a happy birthday and congratulating our family or sharing about their own child’s CHD.
I received one from a dear reader who I’ve struck up a friendship with (though we’ve never met in person) over the last three years that told me of her son and a former student who are both going into medicine after being inspired at Ryan’s birth. One of own babysitters in Virginia is going to nursing school after caring for Ryan.
I will leave you with an excerpt my favorite email that came from Guadalajara, Mexico.
So here I am, sitting in front of a computer miles away from your family thinking about what I just read and all that comes to mind is that you must be the real life wonder woman. You are SO brave. I thought my own mother had it hard raising 3 children on her own but this has truly been like reading something out of a fiction novel and I just keep wondering how on earth you do everything you do for your family. A husband, a household to run, 2 little women and a special baby. Omnia Vincit Amor, I agree but that doesn’t make us superhuman.
And then Philippians 4:13 just popped in my head: “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” It suddenly hit me (and pretty hard) that the spirit of God is with you my dear Leighann, you are never alone in your journey because HE is litteraly always there with you. I’m not writing this in a “hang in there, I’ll be praying for you” way, I am deeply moved and stand in awe at this revelation that in fact your amazing strength comes from the Almighty God Himself. You are truly blessed to be under His Grace and I WILL pray for Him to keep you like that forever.
And my response:
THANK YOU so much for your email!! When I was reading paragraph 2 I couldn’t help but have my same reaction when I’ve heard others say how wonderful I am – – inside I cringe and think “No, I’m not.” Then I got to the third paragraph and literally started crying. YES!! It is only by the grace of God that I was able to get through my pregnancy and Ryan’s time in the hospital. Only by His grace. He carries us through even when we don’t know we are being lifted by the Almighty. I am so glad He told you this… showed you this… while you were being wowed by me He rightfully spoke truth to you and pointed you to Him, exactly where the focus should be. It has been my prayer since the beginning (before I knew if Ryan would live or not) that God would be glorified; that our story would be used to show off Him. And your email was His gift of telling me that He is glorified…. I can’t thank you enough or tell you how much it ministered to my heart.
God bless.
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss
Comments (3)
so many words come to mind but the only one that fits is…
AMEN.
When I read this story a couple of days ago my first thought was, they have be Christians, they stood for life. May God continued to be glorified through all your lives. Plus may this encourage others to stand for life when others are pushing them to abort.
Beautiful…