Through the Fire: My Miracle Birth, God’s Harvest, and the Testimony That Changed My Life

In this deeply personal episode, Maria shares the powerful story of how God met her in one of the most difficult and holy seasons of her life. What began with a ruptured appendix, emergency surgery, and a life-threatening infection became the backdrop for an unmistakable miracle: the premature birth of her daughter, Eliana Shalom, at just 29 weeks.

Woven through this testimony are themes of Purim, prophetic words, grief, generational healing, spiritual warfare, surrender, and harvest. Maria opens up about the fire her family walked through, the healing God has brought, and the ways He turned suffering into a living testimony of His faithfulness.

This episode is for anyone walking through pain, waiting, loss, or uncertainty and needing to be reminded that God is still present in the fire, still writing redemption stories, and still bringing life out of what looked like death.

Transcript

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Shalom friends. Today's episode is deeply personal. For years I shared many testimonies about what God has done in the lives of the people around me. I've shared about my husband Josh, who came from an agnostic Jewish background and had a miraculous encounter with Jesus. I've shared about redemption in my family. I've shared about my mother's tragic suicide and the healing journey God took me through afterward. But if I'm honest, most of my testimonies involved other people, my mom, my dad, my husband, and while those testimonies are powerful, there was always a part of me that longed for a testimony that was unmistakably mine, a bold one, a daring one, a story where God showed up in such a dramatic way that it would mark the rest of my life. And in the span of just two weeks, God gave me that testimony. Not a testimony I would have chosen, not a testimony I would have written for myself, but a testimony that could only have been authored by God. The kind that leaves no room for pride, only awe. The kind that reminds you that even in pain, God is still writing resurrection stories. Two weeks ago, my appendix burst. What followed was emergency surgery and an infection raging through my body. My white blood cell count shot up to nearly twenty-eight thousand. My body was literally in an internal war, and in the middle of that war, my daughter decided it was time to come into the world. Our precious miracle baby, Eliana Shalom, was born at just twenty nine weeks. Deliverance from death and the delivery of life. And her name itself feels prophetic. Eliana means my God has answered. Shalom means peace, wholeness, completeness. So even in the middle of trauma, pain, and uncertainty, the name over this child is a declaration. God has answered our prayers, and his peace is still speaking. And the timing of everything surrounding this moment has been nothing short of incredible. This all happened during Purim, the biblical celebration of Queen Esther, when God delivered his people from a death sentence. And in a way, my own story mirrored that. Deliverance from death and the birth of new life. Purim is a story of hidden providence. God's name is not even explicitly written in the book of Esther, and yet his hand is everywhere. And that's what this season has felt like for me. Even in the operating room, even in the Nikyu, even in the waiting. His hand was everywhere. But the miracle didn't stop there. Just one week later, my friend invited me last minute to a Shabbat gathering at Admiral's Cove. Something deep in my spirit told me I needed to go. During the gathering a rabbi began giving prophetic words. He asked if anyone needed a word. My hand shot straight up. He put his hands on me, took a deep breath, and then he said he saw a vision of me standing in a field of wheat. He said it looked like Kansas, and he declared something powerful. He said it's harvest time. He said the previous harvest had not come fully because there was too many tears. But he said I had just gone through an extremely difficult season and God had found me willing and flexible. He prayed healing over my body from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. He said the spiritual attacks where people twist my words were being broken off in Jesus' name. And when he asked if any of that resonated, I told him everything that had just happened, the ruptured appendix, the premature birth, the miracle baby, and he prayed over me and over Eliana. And what struck me most was that the word was not just about survival. It was about harvest, not merely making it through the fire, but coming out fruitful. Not merely being spared, but being marked. It reminded me that God does not waste suffering. He turns ashes into seed, he turns surrender into oil, he turns fire into testimony. That same night, Natalie, Eliana's godmother, and I went to the Nikkiu, and for the very first time since she was born, I got to hold my baby girl. For two hours. This tiny little miracle curled up on my chest. Heavenly. After everything my body had been through, rupture, infection, surgery, labor, fear, that moment felt like God's kindness made tangible, as if heaven was saying, You have walked through the valley, but you are not forgotten. Here is your promise, here is your reward, here is your daughter. I didn't die and go to heaven on the operating table, but I definitely went to heaven in the Nikkiu. But to really understand this moment, we have to go back to last summer. Last August, my friend Pastor Natalie gave me a prophetic word during a women's Zoom call. She said that she said something that struck me deeply. She said God was preparing me for something bigger. She said there was a record in heaven of the lives I was touching. She said people would begin being drawn to me like a magnet. But she also said something sobering. She said I was about to go through the fire, and she told me to prepare. Not long after that prophetic word, something happened that shook me to my core. I discovered the truth about my mother's suicide. For twenty years I had believed one version of the story, but suddenly the truth came out. My father had been the driving force behind the destruction that led to her death. My mother had an incredibly bright spirit. She had a bold light, a personality that drew people in. But my father, who struggled with deep narcissism and manipulation, was jealous of that light, and over time he crushed it. When I realized that truth, I screamed in the field, I screamed in the car, I felt like my heart was breaking all over again. But at the same time I realized something else. The light my mother had, she passed it to me. For a long time I think I carried pieces of grief I didn't even know how to name. But in this season, God has been showing me that generational brokenness does not get the final word. What was distorted in one generation he can restore in the next. What was stolen, he can redeem. What was crushed, he can cause to flourish again. And I believe part of my calling is to carry light faithfully where others were not able to. Just a few weeks after that realization, something beautiful happened. On August third, what would have been my mother's fifty fifth birthday, we hosted an incredible event. Seventy people gathered together on a farm. We celebrated her life, we prayed, we worshiped, we asked for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and something remarkable happened. That day landed on Tishab the ninth of Av, a day in Jewish history that represents mourning and destruction, but also the promise of redemption. At the exact same time, Pastor Todd at Christ Fellowship was also praying down the Holy Spirit over the congregation. It felt like heaven and earth were aligning. Isn't that just like God? To take a date marked by grief and wrap it in worship, to take a place of mourning and turn it into an altar, to take what the enemy meant as a grave and transform it into ground where resurrection begins. Around that same time, God was also bringing strategic relationships into my life. One of those was my friend Adrian, who owns Raptus Rare Books. Together we began working on ministry projects that would change lives. Through our nonprofit efforts, we combined our efforts in helping support orphanages in India and Uganda, and we began building something called the James one hundred twenty seven House. The verse says, Pure religion before God the Father is this, to care for orphans and widows in their distress. That vision is now becoming reality, and I don't think that is a coincidence. Because when God heals you, he often gives you greater compassion for the brokenhearted. When he carries you through suffering, he enlarges your capacity to carry others. This season was not this season has not just been about personal survival. It has been about preparation for deeper ministry. Then came the fire Pastor Natalie warned me about. For three awful months our family went through the hardest season of our lives. We were constantly sick. We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving with anyone, we didn't celebrate Christmas with anyone. Our babies were running high fevers, we were exhausted and scared. Financial stress hit our real estate business, family relationships were strained, some people close to us turned against us. It felt like the story of Job attacks on the mind, attacks on the body, attacks on the spirit, but through it all we kept doing the same thing prayer, worship, scripture, fixing our eyes on Jesus. We were not strong because life was easy, we were strong because Christ was sustaining us. Sometimes faith does not look loud or impressive, sometimes faith looks like whispering one more prayer, opening the Bible one more time, and choosing trust one more day. Then came the final trial, the ruptured appendix, the infection, the premature birth. But here's something interesting. During those seven days of contractions I prayed through every single one. The Lord's Prayer, Psalm twenty three, the promises of Jesus. Later I calculated it about a thousand contractions, but the actual time spent praying through them only totaled about seven hours. Seven hours in the fire, seven hours of refining, and on the other side of those seven hours, a miracle baby. Seven in Scripture is the number of completion, and I can't help but wonder if those seven hours were not random. As though heaven was declaring, the refining is accomplishing something. The fire has a limit. The story is not ending in destruction. Completion is coming, promise is coming, life is coming. Since then something incredible has been happening. Community has shown up for us in overwhelming ways. Meals, help, gifts, encouragement, friends filling our house, neighbors blessing our family. It feels like the bamboo tree. For a year it grows underground and then suddenly it shoots sixty feet in the air. It feels like that is what God is doing right now. There is an explosion in the spirit, and maybe that is why some of you, where some of you are right now, underground, unseen, watering a promise you have not yet seen break through the soil. But just because it hasn't appeared yet doesn't mean God is not growing it. Hidden does not mean abandoned. Delayed does not mean denied. And this testimony is not just for me. The Bible says we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. Your testimony matters. Every little miracle matters. God is writing a story in your life too. Everything is connected. Everything has meaning. You just have to open your eyes to see it. Ask, seek, knock, and the door will be opened. So if you are listening today from your own fire, from a hospital room, from a place of grief, from a place of confusion, from a place of waiting, I want you to know this. God is not absent from the fire. He is revealed in it. He is near to the brokenhearted. He is present in the pain, and he is still able to bring life out of what looked like death. And as for me, I know I'm not meant to do this life alone. I need God. I need my husband. I need my children. I need my sisters in Christ. I need my community. I'm learning what it means to surrender. Even right now, as I'm recording this, I'm using technology and it's just so easy. Earlier my car was driving itself down the road, technology was steering, and I'm just along for the ride. And that's exactly how I want my life with Jesus to be. Lord, take the wheel, lead the way, use me. Let my life be an instrument in your hands. And if this episode carries anything, I pray it carries courage. Courage for the woman who feels weak. Courage for the mother in the waiting room. Courage for the person walking through family pain. Courage for the believer who feels like they are in the middle of a long winter. Because the same God who met me in the fire will meet you in yours. Because my life is a testimony of God, and my witness is the witness of God. Let us pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us, and let us not succumb unto temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me besides the still waters, he restores my soul, he leads me in the paths of righteousness and for his namesake. Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days. And may God bless you and keep you, may he shine his face upon you and be gracious to you, may he look upon you kindly and give you peace. Shalom Shalom God bless you. Thank you for listening. Keep the fire burning and spark it.