Ouachita Stories

The following is a transcript of a message shared by Anna Katherine Green during Chapel on Nov. 28, 2023. Anna Katherine is a senior elementary education major from Little Rock, Ark.

 

I believe a testimony is a lot more than just when you came to know Jesus as your personal savior – it’s about everything the Lord has done in your life. So, I’m going to start at the very beginning of my life, when God miraculously saved my physical life before I was saved spiritually.

There are a lot of things you can probably tell about me from the outside and even just by my walking around on campus. I’m a senior, I’m an elementary education major, I love to go on walks, and I am a part of the Women of EEE. But there’s something that’s not as noticeable, and people are shocked when I tell them. It’s that I have half a heart!

I was born with what’s known as “half a heart with discontinuous pulmonary arteries and supracardiac total veins.” My aorta is on the wrong side of my heart, I have two heart chambers instead of four and I had no pulmonary artery. Based on ultrasound readings, my parents were told that my heart and lungs would not be connected to each other when I was born. I also have a condition called heterotaxy, which means my organs on the right side of my body duplicated themselves and caused me to have no spleen, my appendix to be up by my heart and my intestines to be “kinked.”

Basically, I did not have much chance of living.

My parents were told to prepare for the worst, and my mom was asked at the time if she didn’t want to just have an abortion in order to not have to endure the trauma of losing a child. However, as you can tell, none of the worst things happened.

When I was born, I had these little, tiny extra veins that ran from my heart to my lungs, which allowed me to breathe and sustain life for the short amount of time that I needed. One of the nurses at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, where I would later end up having surgery, called these my “Jesus veins.” I've never heard a more fitting name than that.

After I was born, I underwent three open heart surgeries – my first when I was 36 hours old, my second when I was eight months old and my third just before kindergarten. I also had a stomach surgery at two weeks old. After these surgeries, I performed like any other kid my age. The only differences were the scars on my chest and my inability to run a lot, which is still the same today.

I can’t mention this part of my life without acknowledging the miracle it is that I’m here. Job 5:9 says, “He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted.” This verse is talking about God, who has worked so many miracles in this earth’s timeline. We can read and know about miracles in the Bible, but it is important that we do not become blind to the miracles he continues to work even today.

I believe it’s popular to say that God worked a lot of miracles “back then” or “in Bible times” and only talk about the few miracles that happen today that make headlines. However, miracles happen every day, all around us. It’s a miracle that we all woke up with breath in our lungs this morning. It’s a miracle that it’s finally getting colder outside and changing into winter. It’s a miracle that you are here, right now, at Ouachita, in this room, because God is a miracle-working God.

Maybe God has done “big miracles” in your life, just like mine. Or maybe you feel like God is nowhere and he isn’t working how you want him to. But I want to encourage you to have an open heart, an open mind, and open eyes to see what God is doing around you, because a lot of it is miracles.

The greatest miracle we could ever know of, however, is the miracle of Jesus. No, we didn't see it happen with our own eyes, but it is a miracle that a loving God would send his one and only Son to live a perfect life, die a painful death and rise from the dead to defeat our sin just so we could know him, believe in him and have eternal life.

I pray that we are never blind to this greatest miracle of all and that we are always aware of God’s miracle-working power all around – because it is truly wondrous, unfathomable and cannot be counted.

Lead photo: Seniors Anna Katherine Green (left), an elementary education major from Little Rock, Ark.; Anna Hudson, an elementary education major from Charleston, Ark.; and Avery Womack, an art and education double major from St. Charles, Ark.; were among the students who attended Ouachita's 2023 Called To Teach conference. Photo by Anna Roussel

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