My son’s healing was a miracle for our marriage

Cassie and Rick Littlejohn were on the brink of separation. Their newborn’s struggle for life held a hidden purpose in the pain.

Cassie Littlejohn and her husband, Rick, wouldn’t have chosen this season to be pregnant.

When they learned they were expecting their third child, Levi, their marriage of 12 years was struggling — deeply.

Rick had made a business decision without consulting her, and it left Cassie feeling as though her trust had been broken. The situation heaped hurt on pre-existing anger and disappointment.

“It really just tore our marriage apart,” she says. “It was a really bad spot for us.”

They tried counseling, but Cassie was ready to leave.

A Christian from an early age, Cassie knew marriage was forever and divorce wasn’t an option. But she didn’t know what else to do. The chasm between them seemed too wide.

“I felt so broken. I really lost hope and was doubting God’s purpose … and wondering what God was doing.”

The circumstances surrounding Levi’s troubled birth seemed like the worst possible strain to place on a fragile marriage.

But God had a better plan.

The pain, the brokenness, and the not trusting was completely put aside.

The storm sweeps in

Cassie knows the moment when everything changed.

Levi was wheeled into the recovery room in a transport unit with wires everywhere. Suddenly, her 6-foot-1 husband collapsed to his knees sobbing, surrounded by friends and family members also in tears.

Cassie had always prayed for her husband to experience God like she experienced Him.

“I wanted him to know [God] fully,” she says. “I wanted him to be dependent on Him.”

READ: The prayer for a miracle that saved our baby son.

God used the birth of a baby to break him to his core and draw Rick to Himself, Cassie says.

“He completely surrendered his life to Jesus. His whole spiritual walk changed, and it brought us closer together as a couple — closer than we had ever been,” she says.

During the pain and uncertainty of Levi’s 30-day stay in the NICU, the distance between them melted away, Cassie says.

“The division and hardships that our marriage was facing before the birth of Levi … it was almost minuscule compared to what we had just experienced,” Cassie says. “God completely wiped those away … The pain, the brokenness, and the not trusting was completely put aside, and just brought healing to my heart.”

 

My husband was a completely different man in his faith

A new intimacy

The couple leaned into one another and into God as their sick little boy faced new, life-threatening health complications daily during their monthlong stay in the NICU.

The prayer that, literally overnight, brought miraculous healing to Levi spurred on Rick to more and more intimacy with God once the storm had passed.

“My husband was a completely different man in his faith. He loved God and prayed and went to church, but after Levi he was different,” Cassie says. “He had a softness; he had a gentleness. I’m married to a man that seeks God first and humbles himself to pray for everyone.”

In the mysterious way that only God works, He used little Levi Asher to renew his parents’ marriage.

Levi means attached to; united as one; joined in harmony. Asher means happy and blessed.

Their baby brought unity the Littlejohns had never known.

“He took this pain to bring restoration to our marriage,” she says about God’s redeeming purpose.