Bib's Story~Part 1

My name is Bibiana Shradar and I personally am a product of praying parents. My parents were married in 1945 after a whirlwind wartime courtship (a story for another time). They were madly in love and had big dreams for their future family. They set their sights on 6 children and planned to start right away. Just months after their wedding, they were pregnant with my sister. Dad was in college on the GI bill and mom settled in as a housewife. They were in newlywed bliss. How dramatically that would change in the delivery room.

My sister was born healthy but mom was hemorrhaging. In the delivery room, my sister was handed to a nurse aide (a high school classmate of my dad’s) so that mom could be prepped for surgery. That surgery was extensive and when mom woke up and asked for her baby, she was met with silence….the nurse aide had given my sister a bottle of water to quiet her down and my sister was drowned as her lungs took that water in. Not only did my parents have to deal with the grief of losing a child, but the doctor’s prognosis after mom’s surgery was that she most likely would never again be able to become pregnant. With an irrepressible spirit, they decided to go through whatever was available (some very difficult things both physically and emotionally) to see if that prognosis could be changed. Three years later, the doctor sat them down and said that the scar tissue from the surgery was too extensive; there was no way for the sperm to get to her eggs – no possible way for mom to get pregnant. But we do serve the “God of the impossible”, don’t we!

That very day – December 2, 1948 – they took the doctor’s report to church with them. Mom was raised Catholic and dad was a convert and both of them had a trust in a God who loved them and had planted the desire to have 6 children in their joined hearts. They laid their need before God, asking Him to do an impossible thing and give them a child. They even “made a deal “ with Him….December 2^nd was Saint Bibiana’s feast day (a Catholic tradition), so they told God that when they got pregnant, they would name the child Bibiana. I was born 9 months and 27 days later! Hence, my name being Bibiana. I have 5 siblings. The 6 of us were born in 7 years and 2 days. Mom was 32 when I was born and 39 when my baby sister was born. We do serve an Amazing God!!

There is a whole lot more to this story as God has given me a burning desire to pray for those who the world would call barren. Part 2 will soon follow………