Becoming a Prayer Warrior

What happens when your faith is tested in ways you never imagined? Today, I'm joined by Tracy Ripley, whose life took an unexpected turn when her youngest son was born with a congenital heart defect. 

Tracy Ripley's Website: https://prayerfulwarrior.com/

Listen to last week's episode with Heather Bradley: https://www.honestchristianconversations.com/walking-through-the-unthinkable/

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Faith in Trials
• 11:25 The Impact of Faith in Community
• 17:42 A Mother's Faith Through Trials
• 27:30 Book Availability and Impactful Story

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello friends, welcome back to Honest Christian Conversations. I'm your host, anna Murby. I'm so glad you are tuning in today. My guest is Tracy Ripley. She is an amazing woman with such a gentle spirit. Her son has congenital heart defect and they didn't find out until he was 14 hours old. And even still, the way they found out was only through a supernatural channel that God could have opened. There's no other explanation for it. Her story, her journey, why she wrote her book Prayerful Warrior Mom, is an amazing testimony of how good God is and how he uses his people for his glory. You're going to love her story today. I can't wait for you to hear it. Let's get to it Before the episode starts. Make sure you follow the show so you never miss another episode. Tracy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and I'm really excited to get into everything your story of your book. But before we do that, why don't you just tell us a little bit about your testimony, who you are, how you came to Christ?

Speaker 2: 1:23

Okay, Thanks, Anna. I just want to say before we start I really appreciate being on your show and we've been very excited to talk with you today.

Speaker 1: 1:31

Yeah, happy to have you here, thanks.

Speaker 2: 1:35

So to just kind of give a brief overview of you know kind of how I got here, I was actually raised in a Christian home. I have three sisters and my grandmother was very much a Christian woman and so my and I was actually my parents were divorced, so I live with my dad and my grandma as a child and we actually went, my sisters and I, to a church that had a church bus and there wasn't a whole lot of churches that did that, but we were fortunate and they came every Wednesday and every Sunday and I know sometimes my sisters and I would kind of try to be real quiet on Sunday mornings and if my dad was still sleeping we would pretend we were still asleep and then the church bus guy would come and knock on our door and we would go scrambling out and I know, sometimes my sisters and I kind of felt like why do we have to go?

Speaker 2: 2:33

Because there weren't a whole lot of people from our neighborhood that actually went, let alone went to the same church that we went to. So sometimes as a kid, that can kind of derail people from wanting to go.

Speaker 2: 2:46

But, as an adult. I am so thankful that I had that as a foundation, because as a teenager, my sisters and I we moved to my mom's and we stopped going to church. We were kind of away from the church we had grown up with as children and as teenagers we did what teenagers do. We didn't want to mess with that and get up on Sunday mornings that was time to sleep in and so I kind of got away from it. And then, as I was in my 20s and had got married, I knew that I wanted my children to know God and I wanted them to have the foundation that I had God and I wanted them to have the foundation that I had. So we had gone back to church and found one that I just fell in love with, and I was just telling my pastor about this the other day that I feel like God guided me to that church, and at first it was the stained glass windows that made me want to go to that church. It reminded me of my grandmother. And then, as I was going, I just found such a loving family and my youngest son was born in 2013 with the congenital heart disease, and we were floored because no one in our family at that time had anything like that. We had no other cousins or nieces or nephews that had this, and I actually didn't even find out until he was almost he was about 14 hours old when it just so happened a nurse came in our room and took his vitals and she said, oh, he's got a murmur. And I was shocked because no one had said that he had been seen by several doctors and several nurses. No one had said that, and so I was like that's interesting. And so she actually went and had a cardiologist come and look at my son and he was diagnosed with aortic stenosis and a bicuspid valve and we were told at that time that he would need some type of surgery. But they wanted to wait and let him grow as much as he could, because the older they are, the more their lungs are developed and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 4:54

So in the initial days I really leaned on my faith and my church family to just, I guess, hold me up, because it was, I'll say, devastating. It was almost like grieving a life that you pictured in your mind, that you thought you're going to have with this new baby and what his life was going to be like. And all of that just came crashing down in one you know moment. And so I had my church family. They were all praying for us and at that time we didn't even know what aortic stenosis was. And so I found myself Googling it on my cell phone literally as I was in one hospital and my son had been taken to a different hospital because he needed to be where they had the things that needed to monitor him and care for him. So we spent that first week in the NICU.

Speaker 2: 5:54

I would say that's really where I feel like my faith kind of firmed and became the foundation that all of my worries and things stemmed from, the foundation that all of my worries and things stemmed from. But I will say I don't think it was until my son was five weeks old and he actually ended up in heart failure that I felt like I was drawn to God and that's when I really felt that he was with us. You know it's a little bit difficult to explain. You know you can read your Bible and you can sing to God and you can praise him in church, but to actually feel like he was with us, that I was not alone, that he had my son's hand the night that my son was in heart failure. I didn't know until days later, but I was told he had 12% heart function, Wow.

Speaker 2: 6:46

And so he was very lethargic, he, he just kind of laid there.

Speaker 2: 6:51

After a few hours he wouldn't even try to eat, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:54

He didn't even cry to eat anymore, he just slept.

Speaker 2: 6:58

And every once in a while the alarms would go off and the nurse would come running in and I would kind of be nervous, like what's going on, and the nurses would start yelling he's bradying, he's bradying. I didn't know what that meant, and so I would wait until everything calmed down and the nurses would leave. And then I would ask what does that mean? When you say that and she explained that it was his blood pressure was plummeting, so like it would be fine and steady, and then all of a sudden it would just plummet and they would have to come running in with this medicine that they would administer. That kind of went on throughout the night. But in between those periods I was left alone with my son, and I guess, I should add, my husband would have been there at this. That same week that my, my son went into heart failure, my husband's father passed away, and so he was dealing with you know writing the eulogy preparing for all of that and he had our youngest daughter who at the time was four.

Speaker 2: 8:00

So it was kind of like a divide and conquer thing where he had to be home with her. And that night when I sat beside my son's bed, I just really felt God's presence with us. And the reason why I say that is because I didn't feel fear. I didn't feel like I was going to lose my son. There was some part of me that knew this was not going to be easy. He was going to have some trials, but I knew I was going to bring him home.

Speaker 2: 8:34

And I don't know how to explain that other than I just felt God with us and I felt the need to pray and thank God and to thank him for the fact that we knew that it was a congenital heart disease. Because we did later find out that if we wouldn't have had him at the cardiologist that day and if he wouldn't have been admitted that day, he likely would have passed in his sleep that night. And if I wouldn't have known he had the heart condition, they probably would have ruled it as sudden infant death because they wouldn't have known that, that he had the heart issue. So that nurse coming into my room was in my mind, god sent her.

Speaker 2: 9:17

He knew we needed her that no one else had caught it yet. And then the nurse that he sent, she actually said wow, his murmur sounds a lot like my son's. So she had a son who also had a murmur, and she wasn't even our nurse that day. She was like helping out and so when she came in and and took my son's vital, if she wouldn't have done that we would not have been at the cardiologist that day.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Yeah, God is good. I see him working in that whole situation and, as dark and scary as it was, I'm I'm glad that she was there and able to figure that out. That's heartbreaking. It reminds me of last week's guest, which was Heather Bradley, who her son passed away after only I think it was four months, and I mean it was in the hospital.

Speaker 1: 10:19

She started feeling God's presence and it's probably just like with your story. It's a struggle, it's a daily. You have to surrender what you want, what you thought and how life is now to God and you have to trust Him. It's not like it's just there. You go, you start trusting Him and everything is easier to handle. It's not. It's not. Those aren't easy things to deal with.

Speaker 1: 10:45

This is a thing that you have to keep going through for your son and that's the thing she has to mourn and will remember. But at the same time, she can look back on God's faithfulness through it as well as you. You can do that too, and that's awesome. And you see all the amazing times that God worked. And if anyone ever says to you, I don't believe in God, I don't think he does this, he does that, you can go back and say well, what? How do you explain this? She was not my nurse. She happens to have a son who has the same issue and she's the only one who caught it. What do you call that? I was like. You can't refute that, so that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 11:25

There were so, so many things and actually you know, I did share some of these in the book that I wrote and mostly I guess I would say that I wanted people not only to look for God in those moments, because it's very easy to see the darkness and to let that overwhelm you with fear and doubt. And when you stop and kind of look back and think. And when you stop and kind of look back and think, wow, he had us this whole time. You know, he knew even before I married my husband, because that's when he led me to that church and to a pastor who showed up. She was at every one of my son's surgeries, every one of his heart surgeries. He's been with us, prayed with us, prayed over my son and my church. Family have just been such a huge foundation for us in a support system. We're a small church but the people there are pretty mighty.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Yeah, the church body is so important to the testimony of who God is and the gospel itself testimony of who God is and the gospel itself and it can do miraculous healing in somebody's life if they just take the time to get plugged into a local church. I know when I was going through my second divorce, my church was instrumental in helping me get back on my feet because I was a single mom. I didn't have a job, I didn't have family nearby to help me with my kids. I had to rely on people that I barely knew because I had just started going to the church, and they helped me. They're still my friends today.

Speaker 1: 13:04

I met my husband through the church. I mean, it's awesome that you had that foundation and, before we go forward, I also think it's very cool that the church you went to as a child had a church bus. That is unique, and that he would knock on the door if you weren't there. That's even more awesome. It's like he's not going to let you get away with skipping, so I think that's awesome. Not going to let you get away with skipping so I think that's awesome. I wish more churches would do that or had the ability to do that, especially for young kids and teens, because they might be the ones who really want to go, but their parents won't take them. So that's problem solved. The parents can sleep. Not that I want them to I feel like I should go too but if you're going to do something, you know it's a great place for your kids to just, you know, give you an hour or something of sleep I made there.

Speaker 2: 14:03

When they say, raise them up in the church and as adults they'll come back, and I feel like that's exactly why I came back when I needed it.

Speaker 1: 14:09

Sorry, no, don't be sorry. These are raw and honest emotions and I love it. And you're absolutely right Having a firm foundation in Christ as a child. Even if you end up not following that, it's going to come back because God's word doesn't return void. It's always got that seed is always planted and it will be there when you're ready to allow it to continue to grow deeper. And sometimes we have to learn the hard way to have that happen. Sometimes things just happen. Don't be ashamed of the emotions. This is how we grow in.

Speaker 1: 14:58

Our faith is through trials. The Bible says so. We can't all just have an easy life, otherwise we wouldn't grow, we wouldn't think we need God. I mean, think about all the times that we pray and ask for God's help. We don't do that during the easy times we almost forget Him because we got it all together. Why do we need anything else? We don't need anything else. Until you drive by really fast, a cop, and then all of a sudden his lights are on. You're like, please, lord, don't let him give me a ticket. That's when, all of a sudden, you realize you need him and that's why we go through trials is to be reminded that we can't do things apart from him. Without him, how do we survive? How would you have been able to survive what you went through if you didn't have faith in Jesus, to trust that he knows what's is going to help you through?

Speaker 1: 15:57

Hey friends, have you joined the Honest Christian Conversations online group yet? If you haven't, you're missing out on a perfect opportunity to grow your relationship with Jesus Christ. This is a community for those who want to go deeper in their relationship. You can do Bible studies together, ask the questions you have biblically and get the answers that you might need or maybe you're somebody who has answers to somebody else's questions. You can leave your prayer requests. You can leave your praise reports. This is a community. This is what church is supposed to be, and I am so glad that I finally took that step to make this group so that people's lives can flourish in Jesus name. Also, if you haven't signed up for the mailing list, you're missing out on an opportunity there as well. I send out a weekly email chocked full of so much awesome content that I don't have time right now to share it all with you. But when you do sign up for that mailing list, you get my seven-day free devotional that I created just for those who sign up for the mailing list.

Speaker 2: 17:07

If you haven't joined either of these, you can go to my website, honestchristianconversationscom and sign up there, or you can use the links for it in the show notes, I don't know why, just when you were speaking, the night that they took my son to the other hospital I think it was three nights that I was not being released yet because I had had a surgery and so my doctor wouldn't release me yet and so I was only permitted to go see him, like in a visit, a couple hours. So at night I was alone in my room in the maternity ward. So I was still in the maternity ward, even though my baby was in a completely different hospital. Baby was in a completely different hospital. And I was just thinking when you said that, when I was alone and I could hear all the other babies around me and it broke my heart because I didn't have my baby to hold and literally I was using the hospital nursing the pump, because I was nursing him before they took him.

Speaker 2: 18:14

So I wanted to continue, because then I wanted him to get the antibodies and things to help him, because they were so worried about him getting sick and it was flu season. So, like I didn't have my baby, I had this machine, you know, and and then when I was there alone, I just talked to God, I just prayed and talked to him as if he was right there with me, and if I didn't have my faith, I don't even know what. I probably would have just sat there and cried the whole time, you know. But because I had him to talk to and to lean on, you know, I was able to just do what I needed to do.

Speaker 1: 18:56

Yeah, that's awesome. People call us people who have crutches. I've heard that before. You know, god is your crutch. No, no, he's not. He's my everything.

Speaker 1: 19:10

Crutches are things that help prop you up. Pretty much he doesn't help prop me up. He keeps me strong, which is different than that. I mean, maybe he's my brace, if you want to call him something, because that keeps something in place and keeps you strong until you can do things on your own. I mean, a crutch would be if you're having negative emotions and you start drinking. Crutch would be if you're having negative emotions and you start drinking, that's your crutch because that's propping you up until the next negative emotion. If you're into pornography, that used to be my problem. I used to have a pornography addiction and whenever I was angry or having any sort of negative emotion, that was my crutch that I went to to help relieve that.

Speaker 1: 19:56

A crutch is not. God is not a crutch. That's the basic thing. He's not a crutch. If anything, he's a brace holding us together until we are strong enough to walk on our own, not necessarily without Him, but walk a little stronger, and then we don't need to have that full-on, constant brace and then we recognize that we only healed because of that brace. I mean, if you have a cast on, you only heal because you have that cast on and it's been able to do what it's got to do. If you don't have one on, you're probably not going to heal very well.

Speaker 2: 20:32

No, you might break it again or worse.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So how old is your son now, if I may ask? He just turned 12. Wow, I have a 12 year old. He's going to be 13 in April. I can't even, but that is awesome. I am so happy to hear that he's. Is he doing a lot better?

Speaker 2: 20:54

He's doing really well. You know we're we still have to go for checkups. He goes every six months. He has had two open heart surgeries. His last one was in 2022. So it's been two years and he's not had any. This is probably I almost don't even want to say it out loud because it's been the longest, no I understand, I understand.

Speaker 1: 21:15

I get it Gone yes.

Speaker 2: 21:17

Yeah, but no, he's doing really good. And then this year is the first time he ever played basketball, which is something that kind of just fills me with, you know, so much hope. Because when I was telling you that my son had gone into heart failure as a baby, he went into surgery. He had to have a balloon cath, so they kind of fed this thing up his leg into his heart and then inflated the balloon and forced his valve open because the flaps had like stuck together and that's why and it was, they said that it was just like a tiny, tiny hole left for, and it was his major valve, like it's the aortic one, so that's the one that pushes the blood to the rest of the body.

Speaker 2: 21:58

And one of the surgeons had told us afterwards that likely he would not play coach sports, that he would never be able to do that. And you know, harry is 12 years old and this is the first time he's been allowed to play basketball, which was, you know, that's a lot of running. Yeah, but we've been able to do it because we've had wonderful coaches that are willing to work with us. They watch him, they talk with him and he knows now, as a 12-year-old, he needs to advocate for himself. If he needs a break, he has to say I need to come out, and we're very fortunate that we've had coaches that will work with us so that he can play, even if maybe he may not be able to stay in the whole game.

Speaker 1: 22:43

Have you been able to tell him the amazing story of how you found out he even had this to share how good God is to him and how has that affected him.

Speaker 2: 22:57

Well, he's learned a lot more lately, especially after my book came out, because after I published it then I would read parts of it to him. And it was funny because when, when I first started reading it, I wasn't sure if it would kind of bother him to hear you know some of the things. And um, I was reading it to him and I said do you want me to stop? And he says no, I find it interesting, which I thought was kind of funny. But no, I think it's funny to watch him when I'm telling him.

Speaker 2: 23:31

Especially I was just telling him the other day about how we went into them and had to have emergency surgery and I guess I thought that he already was aware of it. He knew he had surgery, but I don't think he knew it was an emergency, because after I was telling him about it he said well, I don't think I knew about that one, you know, and so I think for him it's. He's amazed at some of the things, even though I know he's the one that's been through it all. A lot of it he experienced as a little kid and possibly may have suppressed it.

Speaker 2: 24:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:05

Wow, that's awesome that you were reading that too and that you wanted to hear more.

Speaker 2: 24:10

Yes.

Speaker 1: 24:11

That's even more awesome. So, since we're talking about the book, why don't you share what the title is and what it's about, who it's for? And where people can get it.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Okay, so the book is called Prayerful Warrior, mom Embracing Faith Through the Storms of your Child's Congenital Heart Journey, and I wrote it. I actually wrote it for moms, like I wrote it for myself.

Speaker 2: 24:39

If I had that book 12 years ago, it from myself if I had that book 12 years ago, and it was a book I actually searched for but couldn't find, because I wanted one from a mom's perspective. I wanted to know, like, what is my child's life going to look like? What does this mean for him? I wanted to know that he was going to have some type of normal childhood, especially after hearing that, oh, he's never going to play coach sports. I reached for different stories to kind of help me get a glimpse of. You know, what is that going to look like for him? What do we have to expect? You know, going forward, and also because you know he has siblings and so you know, I wanted to be able to explain to them what to expect or what was going to happen, but I couldn't find.

Speaker 2: 25:30

I found lots of medical books, you know, but nothing necessarily where it was sharing these stories of you know how I got through things, or even you know. So, yes, I do share the good, but I also share, you know, some of our most challenging times, and I also wrote it because it is a faith-based book. I also wrote it for people who may be searching for hope or maybe knew God as a child and maybe have kind of wandered away and are trying to get to know him again and to tell through our eyes how God has been there for us and how he has lifted us up in some of the times when I needed it most. I wanted to help others find that, and so that's kind of my core audience for the book and who I hope it helps.

Speaker 1: 26:32

It sounds like it's a wonderful tool, and I'm pretty sure you must have felt really alone when you couldn't find what you were looking for back then. You needed to know that you weren't the only one in the world going through something like this and no one had. I mean, it was probably before everyone was big on podcasts and internet communities and all that stuff, and to not find a book or somebody who could relate was probably really difficult. So I love that you took your experience and put it into a form for something you wish you had. And there's a lot more people, I'm sure, who feel like you felt alone. I must be going through this alone. I'm probably the only one but now they can look for information and they have your book and then they can see that they aren't alone and then they have a healthy way to help them through. So I am so glad that you chose to write that book from the heart of somebody realizing I needed this and I want to help others. So that is awesome. Where is it available?

Speaker 2: 27:32

So you can get it at Amazon. It's also available online Barnes and Noble or pretty much where any book is sold online. I do have a bookstore locally, logos Books in Kent, that actually carries it physically and then you can also check it out. I have a website and you can order directly from me at purplewarriorcom.

Speaker 1: 27:56

Okay. Thank you so much, tracy, for coming on and sharing your heart, your heart and everyone who's listening. If you know somebody who's got a child with this, maybe your own child has this CHD, is that how you say it. Yes, that's the abbreviation for it. If you have anyone or know anyone with it, you should definitely get this book. I have a feeling it's full of so much love, compassion, honesty and vulnerability, which is probably what you need right now, because it it can't be easy To deal with something like that, and to feel alone is even worse, especially when you're not. Thank you again, tracy, for coming on and sharing your story and your son's story having me