How Almost Dying Taught Me How to Actually Live
Almost dying was not my plan for the day
They rolled my bed past my husband and my newborn daughter into the hall. Labor exhaustion muddled with anesthesia, and I surrendered to the idea of surgery.
This was our second baby. Since I’d had pre-eclampsia right at the end of my first pregnancy, I wasn’t a stranger to the blood pressure checks and late pregnancy risks.
But this time, baby’s growth started slowing, then shrinking.
Then, ten days before my due date, the warning signs reached the climax. Baby’s heart rate was too high, and a rushed ultrasound placed her in the 3rd percentile, estimated to be about 5 pounds, and diagnosed her as Intrauterine Growth Restricted (IUGR).
We needed to induce right away.
By the time labor engaged, it was so fast and intense that it was shocking to both my body and baby’s. Within one short hour, a crashing cadence swept through my body like a hurricane, and she was born.
But I barely had time to savor the moment.
Now it’s me, almost dying
As one crisis dimmed, another flashed on like a harsh spotlight blaring its ugly heat straight down at me.
For the next hour, I strained through the third stage of labor to deliver the placenta, but it would not detach.
After both the midwife and doctor tried traction and manual extraction fruitlessly, they escalated to surgery.
During surgery, I took a sharp turn for the worst.
When the placenta was scraped free, I hemorrhaged, losing at least 2 liters of blood. Complicating matters, my uterus refused to clamp, and my blood lost its clotting factor.
I was transferred to the ICU, bleeding uncontrollably, blood pressure slumped, unconscious, and in critical condition. I was facing a life-threatening emergency called DIC, with about a fifty percent chance of survival. If I pulled out of this, there could likely be long-term damage to my brain, heart, liver, and kidneys.
The only solution was a massive blood transfusion that would hopefully right my blood composition and restore me.
Forty-five minutes later, my system miraculously engaged, and I began to pull out of the nosedive.
An overwhelming sense gratitude for my life
As I slowly awoke in that tiny room with the gleaming lights overhead, my heart brimmed with these simple truths:
I’m grateful to be alive to see another day.
God is good.
I am loved.
During those watery moments, I caught fragments and began piecing together the story.
Almost dying gave me gave me more reason to live
That’s when I realized, deep down, that it could have ended another way. I may not have woken up to the oxygen of this world and the embrace of humanity. This meant that my new baby girl nearly became motherless just hours after her birth, and Lucas would have been left a single dad to raise two girls on his own.
But I’d been snatched back from the clutches of death itself, and the meaning of that incredible rescue was not lost on me.
Life. Somehow before, I’d failed to notice the majesty of it all. But today, it rang out and echoed through the chambers of eternity.
I wasn’t guaranteed the next minute, let alone hour, days, or years. Yet, here I was, living.
In that ellipsis of my life, I encountered both the fragility and the weightiness of my own existence.
As if I hadn’t heard when the Maker of the oceans and stars had whispered me to life the first time, He’d thundered a second time that word that called me alive, awake, and resurrected.
I was humbled. Overwhelmed. Bewilderingly thankful. My gratitude gushed over, and I was drenched in the profound mercy of it all.
The kind of gratitude that changes your life
That day, gratitude became part of the fiber of my being.
Instead of a trite practice or a well-intentioned mantra that I fumbled and dropped way too often, now, my gratitude roared to life as a response of bold action.
The way I could shout back my thanks and make my voice carry to the heavens was to punctuate time by making my moments count.
I’m almost embarrassed to say that it took almost dying to awaken me to the reality that every single breath and heartbeat is an exquisite gift. Dear one, let our response be exuberant, wild gratitude that lifts us make the most of that gift.
Meet Rachel Marshall
Rachel Marshall is the Co-Founder, Chief Financial Educator, and Content Strategist of The Money Advantage. She also co-hosts The Money Advantage podcast and You Tube channel, teaching innovative business and personal finance practices. Rachel is known for making money simple, fun, and doable. She’s currently writing a book about her near-death experience and how it became the springboard for her family’s multi-generational legacy of more than money.
Where to find her . . .
Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.
If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.
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If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.
