By Israel Matthews —
After the Thompsons’ first baby, they spent 10 years trying to get pregnant again, then decided to become foster parents. After a decade they were shocked and surprised when Jenny Thompson got pregnant again.
“We tried for years to have another child,” Tony Thompson told CBN. “For some reason we just never could conceive again. We got very, very heartbroken and decided to become certified foster parents.”
As foster parents living in Chesapeake Bay, they adopted a teenager and a son, Alexander.
Then Jenny got pregnant.
“We had prayed for 10 years and Gideon West was just a huge answer to prayer,” Jenny said.
Over lunch at Gideon’s first birthday, Tony reached over to straighten the tyke’s head. He shrieked in pain.
A visit with the pediatrician led to a referral to the hospital. After a CT scan, doctors determined he needed surgery immediately to remove a brain tumor.
It was staggering news.
“Our world just stopped,” Jenny says. She called friends, family and church to pray.
The surgery lasted nine-and-a-half hours.
“We felt so helpless,” Jenny says. “Directly after the surgery, his body was failing. He was on medication. He had tears coming down his face. My heart just broke into pieces.”
She cried and cried to God, who gave her a vision of Gideon playing joyfully with angels.
“It was perfect peace,” Jenny recounted. “From that moment on I knew that no matter what the outcome was going to be God had our baby.”
In other words, even if he died, he would be in Heaven.
Gideon remained in ICU for 30 days.
The tumor was examined in pathology. It was cancerous.
“How do you even fathom that your child has cancer?” Tony said. “The question was, God, why would you bless us with this child just to take him away from us? What did we do so wrong?”
Even though the outlook was bleak, Tony and Jenny determined to pray and believe. They held on to hope.
As “a way of coping,” the couple launched a Facebook page “Prayer for Gideon” that quickly went viral. Gideon’s progress was constantly updated, as were specific prayer requests.
“After 30 days in the ICU, Gideon just turned a corner,” Jenny says. “And he started chemotherapy.”
At one point, his white blood cell count, which always goes down as part of the chemotherapy, went to zero. Again he was isolated in the hospital.
Hospital staff informed that the white blood cell count would need at least four days to rise to the minimum 500 for release from the hospital.
By this time, the Facebook page had thousands of prayer warriors joining in supplication to God.
“Literally thousands of people were praying that our son’s white blood cell count would go up,” Tony recalled. “And God answered the prayer.
“His white blood cell count went from zero to 7,000 in less than eight hours!” he exclaimed.
Doctors thought the test had gone haywire. So they ran it again. And again. And a third time. “No one could understand,” Jenny says.
God heard the prayers of his saints and brought a miracle. “God was healing our baby,” she said.
Gideon finished six months of chemotherapy before Thanksgiving.
“It was just perfect timing,” Jenny said. “We had so much to be thankful for.”
At the 4-hour MRI just before Christmas, the oncologist found no evidence of cancer.
“It was the best Christmas present ever,” Tony says. “This is the story about a little boy who had one of the worst diseases that you can think of and God blessed him. He came through it.”
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
Israel Matthews studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica.
As usual, the authors from this top notch school do not disappoint. It is a well written piece that covers the topic well . Good work by Israel and his teachers.
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