A Modern Shunammite Woman Story: How I Learned To Trust God

Photo by Joanna Nix-Walkup on Unsplash

There are about five million personality quizzes online right now that can tell you which literary character you’re most like. Are you an Elizabeth Bennet? A Minerva McGonagall? Perhaps you’re a Katniss Everdeen? Those are wonderful women with bravery, sharp wits, and fine eyes. But I’m here today to give a shout-out to a lady that isn’t in any tests but to me is more relatable than any other Biblical character. You see, I’m most like the Shunammite woman. You can find her in the Bible, the book of 2nd Kings, chapter 4, starting in verse 8.

Maybe she’s not a well-known Biblical heroine like Ruth, Esther, or Mary. In fact, she’s not even given a name. She exists for about 30 verses and then she’s gone. But at the same time, once you’ve heard her story, it has a tendency to stick with you. It’s one of the most inspiring and encouraging stories in the Bible. And even though it’s an ancient story, it’s also my story. Bear with me while I draw some parallels—I promise it’ll be worth the read.

Let’s start with the Shunammite and the famous prophet and man of God, Elisha. 2nd Kings 4: verses 8 through 10:

“One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. So whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat. She said to her husband, “I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”

We live in Southern California, which as it happens, is one of the more expensive places to live on this green earth. I’ve also always been a woman who loved to host and care for others so right off the bat, I can understand this woman. But there’s another element that goes beyond what is written here. We have something more pressing which weighs on my heart. You see, my story starts when my husband and I were diagnosed with infertility.

Any woman who has faced that diagnosis is aware of how crippling it can be. It can be very difficult to not be consumed with bitterness. It can be even harder to find joy in just about anything. So here I was—a Bible-believing woman who was faced with the knowledge that I would never be able to carry life as any other “normal” woman can. Of course, in light of that, naturally, I wanted more than anything to be a mother. This was heartbreaking stuff to me, so I did the only thing to be done.

I had a good sob. Then I sat back and considered my situation. I thought of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah and Samson’s mother, and even Elizabeth. I thought of those miracles and how I wasn’t any less God’s daughter than those great women.

Why should I believe that God couldn’t answer my prayers? Why should I give up? Doesn’t love always hope? I straightened up and wiped my tears and carried on. I would just do what I could to honor God in my waiting and we’d try to see if we could have a miracle as He led us to seek help with some modern medicine.

We decided to try Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) which involved a great deal of hormone injections and a utensil that recalls a turkey baster, and we’d wait and see. In the meantime, I focused on other parts of life.

The Shunammite woman was the same. She took care of people. She didn’t wallow even though I’m sure she was devastated. In her culture, a woman’s value was found in her son. Women didn’t have many rights and they required offspring to take care of them. Still—she went about her life. Because she wasn’t defeated by her situation and instead focused on the good she could do, check out to her interaction with the prophet Elisha (starting in verse 12):

He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite.” So he called her, and she stood before him.

Elisha said to him, “Tell her, ‘You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’”

She replied, “I have a home among my own people.”

Don’t you love that answer? This lady was not a charity case. She had family. She had people who cared about her. She was doing her best to live her best life. Let’s read on:

“What can be done for her?” Elisha asked.

Gehazi said, “She has no son, and her husband is old.”

Then Elisha said, “Call her.” So he called her, and she stood in the doorway. “About this time next year,” Elisha said, “you will hold a son in your arms.”

“No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!”

I love that she straight up told Elisha “No, don’t get my hopes up!” I know that feeling. We had six failed IUIs and the final one was a double insemination. We were told we would have to try in vitro fertilization (IVF) and even then, there were no guarantees.

It looked grim. Not to mention, we had blown all our cash on these fruitless IUIs. It didn’t look like parenthood was for us. I came home from work one day and my husband surprised me with a rescue dog.

But the woman became pregnant, and the next year about that same time she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

And then my parents offered to help us afford the IVF (which we couldn’t have done without them). It was nothing short of a miracle (and I’m not from a family where large amounts of money are just thrown around). It was the first time as an adult woman I had experienced such a moving and immediately recognizable miracle. It affected me in a profound way. I knew I didn’t deserve this, and I was grateful. More than that, I was bursting with hope.

We started the IVF process. More hormone injections and medications and feeling crazy and suddenly we had something to hold on to. Here’s the math: they harvested 14 eggs from me. Eight of them became embryos. Five of those became advanced enough to be considered blastocysts and only three of those became transferrable. All the rest were thrown away. We took a deep breath and despite the adage not to put all our eggs in one basket, we transferred all three. I became pregnant.

I will never forget the day we had our first ultrasound. I was 10 weeks along and my doctor paused while looking at my uterus on the screen and smiled as she told me we were having more than one baby. In fact, two of those embryos had implanted themselves and developed (which is another bit of miracle that scientists can’t predict), and then one of them split in two. I had two babies in one sac and another in its own. Three little babies. We were over the moon. We started looking for a new car which would fit three car seats. I started researching strollers that would fit three babies.

And then, in the blink of an eye, that was it. Sadly, we lost the twins before the end of the first trimester. Any woman who has lost a child can tell you that you lose more than just blood, more than just dreams.

Miscarriage is a subject that most of the world never wants to discuss but it must be discussed for the sanity of the woman who lost her child. We owe it to the lives of those we lost to recognize them. To give them a name and give them a place to be loved and acknowledged is part of our duty as their parents. God gave these little ones to us, even if it was only for a few months—every heartbeat belongs to Him and we must honor that.

There is a problem with being able to properly grieve a miscarriage while you’re also still in a very delicate pregnancy. I found myself feeling extremely conflicted. You want to cry for those sweet ones that you will never hold but you also want to be joyful for the sweet one who remains.

It made for a challenging pregnancy, and I can’t help but wonder if it was also contributing to my hyperemesis (a rare form of morning sickness that can be life-threatening), which led me to be hospitalized while they rehydrated me via IV. Of course, that was nothing compared to the emergency C-section which awaited me at the end of the pregnancy due to complications from that incomplete miscarriage. I don’t believe details are required here, but the result was that I had a son who was miraculously healthy and well. I also had some devastating post-partum depression.

For months I battled depression while also navigating the rapids of new motherhood. There are things you can’t prepare for until you’re in them, like trying to breastfeed when you’re an under-producer. I just couldn’t seem to make enough milk to have a stash. We lived feeding to feeding and I never slept while trying to pump and keep my son fed. 

To complicate matters, it turned out we had a baby who has allergies to dairy products so I couldn’t eat anything with dairy while breastfeeding (I lived without cheese for 17 months total by the end). Our precious little one was also blessed with hypersensitive skin and the slightest environmental change gave him eczema. It made for a rough start to his little life.

I was also drowning in grief until I finally dealt with the miscarriage (with a great deal of help from my mother who steadfastly pointed me to a God who never wavers and always loves) and the postpartum slowly went away. After 4 months, my son and I hit our stride. My husband, who could only do so much while I had this internal battle, finally got to see me looking joyful and at ease.

As our son aged, we learned more about our miracle child. Our boy was allergic to a huge list of things (and we had to do several not fun tests to uncover the full list) but with daily medication and the constant carrying of an epi-pen, we were just like any other family. At least, as much as any family where a kid has severe allergies.

I didn’t care if he had maintenance. I had my boy. I had my miracle. We were a family, and I was full of joy. Just like my friend the Shunammite. Let’s pick her story up again at verse 18:

The child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers.

My sweet boy was five years old when things started getting weird. The first sign that something was wrong was in his vision. He had one eye that focused on you and the other one just sort of drifted off. When questioned about this oddity, he claimed he couldn’t help it and it was doing it all on its own. We were alarmed and had his eyes checked.

His father and I had just moved our little family into our brand-new home. We had to sort out our new community and find new doctors. I had googled local doctor recommendations but was trusting God that we’d get a good one. In the end, the pediatric ophthalmologist we met with looked at his eyes, gave us a massive prescription and his professional opinion that a brain scan was recommended. We didn’t know what to think about such a dramatic suggestion. We deferred to our brand-new pediatrician.

She looked at our little boy and passed him on his annual healthy child exam. Yes, he still had severe allergies which resulted in eczema and now he had these giant coke-bottle glasses, but he was otherwise healthy enough to be okay to go to school. The thing was, even as he passed this exam, he had started complaining about headaches. I had never had a five-year-old before and didn’t know how very unusual headaches were. Then came his balance issues, and the walking like a drunken sailor. He had never been graceful, what five-year-old is though? We just thought he was a particularly clumsy kid.

Verse 19:

He said to his father, “My head! My head!”

His father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.”

About two weeks after school had begun, a quiet Sunday evening brought that peace to a screeching halt. We had been watching tv and hanging out when suddenly he held his head and shrieked that his head hurt. He held the back of his head and sobbed. His father and I knew this wasn’t normal behavior. We immediately called the pediatrician who said we should bring him in first thing in the morning.

The next morning the pediatrician examined him and this time her face showed she agreed with the ophthalmologist’s recommendation. She ordered a brain scan immediately. We put our boy into the car and drove an hour and a half to the nearest hospital that did sedated imaging.

After eight hours of waiting, we finally got a room in the emergency room. This was during the days of Covid so we were packed into this busy ER, masked and uncomfortable the whole time. Two hours after that they took him to do an MRI. His father and I waited for the typical thirty minutes for them to come and get us. Then it became an hour. Then two hours. I knew in my spirit that something was wrong. I was familiar with the MRI process as I’d had several before myself and I knew this was taking too long.

About the time I was starting to climb the walls with concern, the doors opened, but they didn’t take us right to our son. They took us to another room in the ER with boxes of Kleenexes and cat posters and stacks of Bibles. We braced ourselves and asked what was going on.

It was the worst news a parent can get. They’d found a large mass in my little boy’s head, and we clarified that they were saying it was a tumor. We didn’t know what sort of tumor it was, but at that moment, all that mattered was it needed to come out immediately.

My husband called our families while I sat in the room with my sleeping son. I’ll never forget those first few minutes. It was past midnight, and I was exhausted. I felt like I was going to explode. My only son, the one for whom I had endured so much just to conceive and carry. My boy, who had already been through so much. He was in pain. This giant tumor was pressing against his little brain.

He was going to die if they didn’t get this tumor out. He could die anyway, even if they did get it out, if this was brain cancer. Not to mention, brain surgery is risky and dangerous. The thoughts of death and pain and suffering suffocated me. I fell on my knees in that ER and prayed. I didn’t know where to start or what words to say. But from somewhere deep within myself, I felt these words come tumbling out.

“Lord God, thank you for my son. I know this child is yours. He has always been yours. You’ve lent him to me for these past five years and if that’s it—if that’s all I get with him—thank you. But Lord, if it is in Your will, please let me keep him. Please let me keep my boy. I know Your plan is best, but please don’t take my boy away. Lord, please remember this child was a gift and I am not prepared to part with him. But if you must take him, Lord, prepare my heart for this.”

What happened next, I don’t know if I have adequate words to describe. It was more than just a feeling of peace. It was nearly tangible. It was as if there was someone standing next to me, hovering over me with a warm, soft blanket. Side note, not long after my sister-in-law brought me a fluffy jacket (which I lived in for the next week) which gave me a very similar sense of comfort—one cannot have enough warmth in a hospital setting. But this comfort was more than just a soft jacket. I felt it in my soul. This comfort, this peace and assurance. I wasn’t alone there in that room with my son (even though to the naked eye, I was). My Jesus was with me. He had wrapped his arms around me, and it had warmed me through to my very soul. I was renewed in an instant.

They immediately checked us into the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and scheduled a surgery. We had doctors and nurses in and out that night and the next day. They showed my son a model of his brain and explained to him that there was something there that ought not to be, and they were going to remove it. He took it all in stride. He was uncomfortable and wanted to go home, but understood he couldn’t. I sat next to his hospital bed and read to him and kissed him and played with him—soaking up every second, not knowing if it would be the last. I knew the next morning they were taking him into surgery.

Verses 20-26:

After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and went out.

She called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.”

“Why go to him today?” he asked. “It’s not the New Moon or the Sabbath.”

“That’s all right,” she said.

She saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Lead on; don’t slow down for me unless I tell you.” So she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.

When he saw her in the distance, the man of God said to his servant Gehazi, “Look! There’s the Shunammite! Run to meet her and ask her, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?’”

“Everything is all right,” she said.

What sort of woman sees her child dead, or on death’s doorstep and musters herself to carry on? A woman who has a peace that passes all understanding. It doesn’t make sense, to say “everything is all right” when you’re listening to all the beeps and monitors of an intensive care unit. But as I prayed over him that night, I was washed over with peace. I crawled up onto a shelf and I curled up to sleep. I remembered the Psalms—chapter four, verse eight:

In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

It didn’t make sense, but I was fine. Everything was all right. My parents had flown in to be with us. My in-laws had come to the hospital. Everyone was choking with sorrow and distress, and they sobbed and hugged me. But I was all right.

They took my son into surgery and a five-hour surgery turned into an eight-hour surgery. We waited and we prayed. My sister started a go-fund-me campaign for us. Everyone I’d ever known messaged me on social media and let me know they were praying. I couldn’t even think about them, I gave my sister my socials and I gave God the rest. I just basked in this peace. I had coffee and donuts and enjoyed the wind blowing through the palm tree. I opened my Bible and read the passage for the day.

Isaiah 26:3: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.

It was fine. This was fine. God was Lord of all.

Let’s check back in with the Shunammite, verse 27.

When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why.”

“Did I ask you for a son, my lord?” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?”

Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run. Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy’s face.”

But the child’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.

Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”

When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.

The nurse came out of surgery and announced the best possible outcome: that the surgery was successful, and my son was doing great. They’d removed the full tumor from his little head and everything looked good. Everyone around me cried with joy and hugged me. But I had this secret feeling inside—I had already known everything was going to be okay. I just stood there grinning while the tears of joy poured down my face.

When we finally got to see him post-surgery, he was kicking, mad at the discomfort of coming out of surgery. The doctors were overjoyed that he was showing personality and strength so soon after the surgery. He immediately fully recovered as far as the occupational therapist said. He had received a complex Lego set from a friend and had built it the day after his surgery. He was telling jokes and smiling and laughing. The second MRI showed no left-over tumor. I lost count of how many miracles I’d seen from my Lord.

He was given back to me. It was well and so was he. We got the results from pathology two weeks later and the tumor was benign. My boy was cancer-free, tumor-free, and on his way to a normal healthy childhood. But none of us will ever be the same. I will never be able to fully explain to people how great our God is. I will never be able to fully explain what a blessing it is to be able to trust and rest in the Lord. But I stand here today, like the Shunammite, with my son.

We end the story starting at verse 36:

Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” And he did. When she came, he said, “Take your son.” She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.

We all have moments when we face something terrible. Not always is it a brain tumor in your son’s head. Sometimes it’s something much worse. But be encouraged today by this story of this Shunammite woman and me. You can find a peace that passes all understanding. It comes from God and from the knowledge that He alone can hold you through this storm and no matter the result in the end, you will always have Him and He is enough.

Let Jesus be your peace, like He said in the book of John, chapter 14 verse 27: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

I’d love to talk more about this, but my son is calling for me. Gotta go!