My Teacher
by Annabelle Dunbar, grade 7
My teacher’s cross to bear came over a period of years, with many struggles. Mrs. Einhorn had a difficult time getting pregnant. She endured four years of attempting to get pregnant and each pregnancy came with a miscarriage. With six babies in heaven, she finally found herself pregnant with triplets. She and her husband, Greg, rejoiced in this miracle. Believing that her cross to bear was near its end, she could have never imagined the pain that lay ahead of her.
During her 15th week of pregnancy, she and her husband found that one heartbeat was gone. One of the three had joined Jesus in heaven. With courage in their hearts and the strength of their faith, they concentrated on the remaining two babies. The following week, her specialist found one baby to be considerably smaller. He believed she had twin-to-twin transfusion. This is a condition where babies of the same gender share one sac. Generally, one baby will deplete the other of all nutrients. Mrs. Einhorn and her husband were told to abort the weaker baby. After years of prayers and heartache, their options were to abort and come home with one baby or come home with none. She would have two weeks to decide before the next ultrasound. She prayed and prayed for those next two weeks. Before the appointment, she and her husband decided that these babies were in God’s hands. They decided not to abort. At the ultrasound, miraculously, the twins did not have twin-to-twin transfusion. Mrs. Einhorn and her husband had held tight to their faith, and God’s will prevailed.
When a baby is miscarried at a certain week, it should be absorbed into the walls of the mother’s abdomen. At 17 weeks, she began to pass the third baby, whose heartbeat was lost, in blood clots. While passing the clots, that lost baby put a little hole into the 2nd baby’s sac. Weeks later, Mrs. Einhorn started leaking amniotic fluid and her husband rushed her to the hospital. She was only 20 weeks at the time and she was immediately put onto hospital bed rest. That hospital room in Newburgh, IN, would be her home until the babies were born. On September 17, 2010, at 26 weeks, Mrs. Einhorn and her husband welcomed Hudson and Harper into the world. She believed that helping these premature, two-pound babies to grow and be safe would be her final cross to bear on the journey to becoming a mom. Hudson’s PDA heart valve shut, just as it should have, but Harper’s did not. Harper was given liquid medicine to help close it. If it did not shut, she would be sent in for heart surgery. Mrs. Einhorn and Greg praised God when they heard the medicine had worked for their little girl. This entire time, two months, my teacher had been sleeping in a tiny closet room in the hospital. The Ronald McDonald House was full, so she took up camp in this tiny closet with a bed. Once the valve was shut on Harper, she was ready to venture the three hours back home for a night of rest for the first time in two months. As she approached Newton, IL, she had a sick feeling in her stomach like something was wrong. She passed it off that it was just because she was leaving her babies behind and had never done this before. She could not shake the feeling all night. While she and her husband were sleeping, they got a call from the NICU stating that they needed to hurry back. Harper was having complications. She and her husband rushed into the doors of the hospital only to meet the nurses and the doctors. The doctor gave them the news that Harper had died. She dropped to her knees and began to wail in anger. How many more crosses could one person bear? All these times she kept her faith that God would take care of her and her babies. She was angry and struggled with the hurt. Two days later, they had Harper’s funeral. That morning, before they laid their daughter to rest, they received a call from the NICU doctors. Hudson was off the breathing tubes and breathing on his own. It was in that moment that Mrs. Einhorn and her husband knew that Harper was Hudson’s little angel.
Every time my teacher had a struggle, she would trust in God that it was a cross to bear. She struggled through infertility, miscarriages, difficult abortion decisions, premature babies, and the untimely death of her daughter. She has taught me that everyone has to have faith in God. Struggles do not make a life worthless. Every life is worth living; faith in God is needed, and struggles make our faith. Abortion is never the answer. Only God can choose when a life should be taken, and it is not our decision. Innocent babies should never be aborted because they are lives that are supposed to be here. Their lives are for God and God only to take, if it fulfills His will. “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” This Bible quote means that it is not your decision to abort, it is only God who can take the baby’s life. It is not the mother’s decision, not the father’s, and not the doctor’s. We all have crosses to bear and struggles to push through. Abortion robs the world of God’s intentions, and He provides us with struggles so that we can have a better relationship with Him.
© 2018Annabelle Dunbar. Published with permission.