Choreographed by God: Morning Center and Ezekiel Lansberry

For well over a year, January 22, 2013, the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, was my goal for the Memphis launch of the Morning Center’s very first mobile care unit. As we got closer to that day, it became clear that even the dedication of the Morning Center team wasn’t going to make a launch happen on that historic date. There were still more legal “i”s to dot, more procedural “t”s to cross, and the core mission staff to put in place.

As it turns out, God had planned for a very different launch on that same day.

Ezekiel Jens Lansberry, our ninth child, was born in near chaos at 3:07 a.m. January 22, 2013. His name, which means “God’s strength,” had been settled on before we came to the hospital. The weeks leading up to and following his birth affirmed how much we need His strength!

I say “born in near chaos” because it was, from my perspective, out of control. From God’s perspective, every microsecond was orchestrated, right down to Ezekiel’s first moment ex utero.

He was stillborn. When the neonatal resident recounted the initial hours of his life to the neonatologist the next morning, her report was that his initial heart rate was zero. His first half hour of life was dedicated to resuscitating him from death. My son, who will have no memory of those moments that were excruciatingly long for me, will hear the Gospel in the context of his birth. He was dead, and now he lives.

In hopes of eliminating brain damage from this initial trauma, Ezekiel lived his first 72 hours on a blanket that kept his body cooled to between 91 and 92 degrees Fahrenheit. After those three days, we were finally able to hold and cuddle him.

This was certainly not the birth we had planned. We had expected that Ezekiel would be born gently at home, as several of his older siblings were. However, a few weeks before his due date, symptoms developed that led to a diagnosis of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy, a potential danger to the baby the longer he remained in the womb. We decided to induce labor. My wife, Theresa, began induction the afternoon of the diagnosis. Contractions ebbed and flowed as the Pitocin drip was slowly increased. Early the next morning, the labor changed suddenly from normal to emergency.

At about 2:30 a.m., Theresa’s uterus ruptured severely. She was rushed to the operating room. It was almost 3:45 before they came out with Ezekiel, to take him to the neonatal intensive care unit. It was the longest 45 minutes of my life. It was more than two hours after that before I found out for sure that my wife had come out of surgery and was all right.

Six weeks later, I am enormously blessed to have a healthy wife and a newborn son at home. I wish I had room to tell you all of the many details that, in looking back, were obviously orchestrated by God to put us in the right place, at the right time, with the right people to care for us.

All of those providentially planned details are a beautiful thing to remember as we are in the throes of the launch of the Memphis Morning Center mobile care unit. We have been grateful for your prayers, as decisions have been made and details ironed out. By God’s grace and through the help of you, His people, Samaritan Ministries’ Morning Center vision to provide maternity care, free of charge, to pregnant women in need, is close to becoming reality. Let me share with you some of the things that have been happening in recent months.

In the past eight months, we have received more than $150,000 in gifts, mostly from generous Samaritan members. In addition, we have been given $55,000 in grants. We have formed friendships with other believers already involved in being the hands and feet of Jesus in Memphis. We have seen God build bridges between our work and the churches in the poorest, harshest neighborhoods in Memphis’ inner city.

One of the key decisions has been hiring Morning Center staff for Memphis. Interviewing the candidates for Morning Center positions has been an amazing process. We know that the right doctors and midwives are crucial to the Morning Center’s mission. They will not only be administering medical protocols, but showing God’s love and mercy to pregnant mothers. They must have compassion, courage, and wisdom in addition to great medical skills.

Because the candidates we sought clearly knew that the Morning Center is a gospel-driven ministry, the resumes that we received were from some extraordinary mission-minded individuals. Now two staff members have been hired: Camille Clark as executive director and Davin Perkins as nurse midwife.

The seed for this dream was in a comment I made during a lecture in Georgia, which grew to a passion in our family and in the leadership at Samaritan—a passion that many of you now share as well. What started as “Let’s put a pro-life birthing center next to every abortion clinic in the USA,” has been molded into a plan that starts with the Morning Center mobile maternity care unit in Memphis, Tennessee.

I love Memphis. Every time I visit, I see something new and exciting about this city. I love the Memphis way of barbecue, the river view, the skyline. And I love the people. And what’s more important: Jesus loves Memphis, and He has put us in a special place to proclaim His truth, His love, and His grace to needy women in this city.

This next month or two will be extremely busy for the Morning Center team as we work toward actually seeing patients. As this project enters the labor pains of its true birth into action in Memphis, we are aware that things can, and probably will, change quickly in these last moments. For instance, the recent estimates for malpractice insurance that exceed $50,000 per year are daunting.

It’s like childbirth.

But just as with Ezekiel’s birth, all these things that feel like chaos at the moment are really beautifully choreographed. It’s all a part of the plan. Every penny we need, every person who will join us—these have all been foreseen by our loving Father from the very beginning, long before I made that offhand comment while speaking in Georgia.

Will you join us in praying for this launch? We have funds to start paying our staff, but we will need enough to keep moving forward, not only in Memphis but, Lord permitting, in cities like Charlotte, North Carolina; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Orlando, Florida. We have funds to lease our first mobile care unit, but we will need to maintain it for years to come and will need funds as we expand our fleet of mobile units. Please join us in praying, giving, and believing. Join in watching to see what God will do in Memphis and then the world beyond, by His grace and for His glory.

Note: If you want to continue to follow the ongoing ministry of the Morning Center, you can sign up for news updates at www.morningcenter.org or follow the events by “liking” us at www.facebook.com/morningcenter. If you want to give to the work of the Morning Center, you can do so through the web site.