The Power of Our Stories: Mindy Crawford

Written by Mindy Crawford

For a long time I took my relationship with God for granted.  I grew up in a Christian family.  I was baptized Methodist, but raised Presbyterian. I was involved in my church.  I believed in God and I was sure he knew me, but after enduring an abusive marriage for 7 years, my life was shredded. 

I stopped attending church when I got married.  It felt like it was too late for me to go back.  I was living in another city, and I didn’t have any friends that went to church.  I decided that I would try praying, and if I thought God answered my prayers, I felt like He was seeing me again.

I married Bob, a wonderful man. He was raised Catholic, but we married in the First Presbyterian Church in downtown St. Pete. Shortly after we got married, we moved to Baltimore, MD. Bob had been married previously too, and had 2 children from that marriage. Bob wanted to be where his children lived. When our son Cuinn was born, we decided we needed to attend a church so we would have a place to baptize him--it seemed hypocritical to get him baptized without actually belonging to a church, so we picked one and gradually started to become involved.  I was on my way to a restored relationship with God, but little did I know that, a couple years later, something would happen to bring me all the way back.  

In 2001,  when Cuinn was four-years-old, he was life-flighted to Johns Hopkins Pediatric Intensive Care Unit in Baltimore with life-threatening pneumonia.  He had more than a liter of fluid removed from one lung during emergency surgery.  Both lungs then collapsed, and the doctors told us the situation was much worse than they had originally believed. 

We were praying with our minister in a room down the hall when the doctor burst into the room.  He told  us that “for no medical reason” one lung had reinflated.  A half hour later, they told us his other lung had reinflated. We knew the reason, and we claimed it as a miracle.  I felt God’s presence in the room with us, and I knew at that moment that Cuinn would survive.  That one moment changed everything for our faith and our family.

In 2012, I had a massive stroke.  My church family from Heritage came along us in unbelievable ways.  They paid all our bills for a month.  We had meals delivered every other day for five months.  Eight ladies in the church paid for two women to clean our home every two weeks.  A woman from church came to mow our lawn, and when Cuinn was deemed old enough to do it himself, she gave us her mower.  All our needs were met, and we were able to thrive.

I see God’s love for me every day.  He didn’t abandon me, He didn’t punish me, He didn’t reject me.  We credit God with every good thing in our lives, and we turn to Him in prayer about the difficult stuff too. I am married to a man who is with me on my spiritual journey. We tithe, and have found that our money worries are diminished.  I don’t feel like I need to answer every altar call anymore.  I belong to God and He knows that.