AMAZING STORY
God Mends a Broken Heart
By Tim Smith
The 700 Club
CBN.com -“I woke up at 4:00 in the morning,” Joyya remembers. “And I felt like I was trying to breathe underwater. It started in my abdomen and just… I could not bear the pain.”
Four days after giving birth to her second child, Joyya Thomson experienced the most terrifying night of her life. “And I heard gurgling in my ears, and I felt like I was trying to breathe underwater.”
Joyya had also gained an excessive amount of weight, especially in her legs and feet. “I knew something was horribly wrong, so I was trying to decide if we needed to call 911 and have the ambulance pick us up, or if we could make it in the car. And I thought it would be best if we just get in the car and go, because I felt like I was fading very quickly. I remember listening to my heartbeat, and it just felt like it was struggling, just every single beat. It wasn’t working right.”
“I just thought, ‘Something is wrong with my body, and I’m losing life right now.’ I could actually feel myself losing life. When I first got into the ER, they could tell I was having trouble breathing. And so I was admitted right away.”
The doctors performed several tests. The diagnosis: congestive heart failure. But they didn’t know the cause. “When I was in the hospital, I was just trying to stay calm, because I felt like, ‘I don’t think they can help me.’ And all the tests they were doing, they weren’t finding an answer, I felt. So, I was trying to stay peaceful because I didn’t want to panic in my last moments. I was trying to just continue to feel the peace of God and trust Him throughout it all.”
While Joyya’s husband David was taking care of the two children, Joyya called her mother. “And I said, ‘Hey Mom, it’s Joyya.’ And she said, ‘What’s going on, are you OK?’ I said, ‘I’m in the hospital, and I don’t quite know what’s going on, but I wanted to give you a call so you can pray.’ And she said, ‘OK.’ But that moment that I was on the phone with her, the doctor came into the room. I said, ‘Mom, can you hold on for a moment?’ But I didn’t place her on hold; I put the phone down in my lap.
“He sat down and said, ‘Joyya, you’re going to have to have open-heart surgery. We are going to schedule you for emergency open-heart surgery. And that needs to happen right now.’”
Joyya’s mother Maxine also remembers it well. “I heard the doctor say to her that she had torn a valve in her heart,” says Maxine, “and that they were going to have to life flight her to the Seattle hospital.”
“‘We’re going to do one last test, and we think there is a tear in your heart, in the valve of your heart. We’re going to try to go in and repair that today.’ And he’s explaining to me that I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life, and I won’t be able to breastfeed my child, who’s four days old at this point. The news he was telling me was devastating. He said, ‘OK, we’re going to do one last test, then we’ll come back and transport you so you can have your emergency open-heart surgery.’ And I said, ‘OK.’”
“The conversation ended, and Joyya got back on the phone,” says Maxine. “And she says, ‘Did you hear that?’ and I said ‘Yes. I did.’”
“So we made a plan,” says Joyya. “I said, ‘OK Mom we had about fifteen minutes before they are back in here to do my next test. We need to pray. I’ll call my pastors. You call who you need to pray, and we’ll go from there.’”
Maxine knew what to do. “We hung up, and I got down on my knees, by my bedside, and I got the phone, and I called The 700 Club and this is what I said: ‘All I need is somebody who will believe God with me. Because I already believe that God can heal her body.’”
Joyya had the final test, an echocardiograph, before her surgery. She waited nearly an hour for the results from her doctor.
“He says, ‘I don’t know what happened.’ I said, ‘OK.’ And, he said, ‘We don’t see a tear in the valve of your heart.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ And he said, ‘So you don’t have to have open-heart surgery, and you’re getting better. I’ve never seen this before. We don’t understand why it was so bad, and why you’ve getting so much better this fast.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Thank you, God! Thank you, God! Thank you, God’ because I realized He healed my heart.”
“We talk a lot about God being a heart surgeon, and that He’s able to do heart surgery. But we talk about that in an emotional way. ‘O God, please change my heart.’ But to know that God can change my emotional heart, and he can change my physical heart; that He literally did heart surgery on me was miraculous.”
Today, their daughter Jordan is three and their son Isaiah is 1½.
“It’s just a privilege to be able to watch them grow up, to watch them play and learn how to read and learn their numbers. Just to be a part of those moments. Seeing Isaiah walk, and hearing those first words. When I was in the hospital, I didn’t think that I would have that opportunity. To see them growing up is a blessing, and something I’ll always treasure, every breath that I take, I treasure, and I’m so grateful.”
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