AISHA
“On the 11th of February 1980, life began for me and life forever changed for my parents. I was born with a very rare condition known as ectopia cordis - my heart was fully on the outside of my chest. It did not have anything covering it, it was just a muscle beating on the outside of my chest, fully exposed. As well as this, I was also born with clubbed feet. My parents already had 2 sons who were physically healthy and because there were no scans in those days, it wasn’t until I was born that the reality of my physical body was revealed.
“I was immediately rushed to Greenlane Hospital in Auckland, and my parents were simply told that I had been born with a very rare condition and that there was no way I would survive the night. My mother though had faith, she responded with “nah, she’s meant to be here, if God wanted to take her, He would have taken her by now”. When I was a couple of days old, a skin graft was done to place skin over my heart. I was then in Greenlane Hospital for 9 months before my parents decided to take me home.
“Some had told my parents that I was curse for all that they had done wrong and that they should put me in a home and forget that I exist, my parents though had now given their lives to Christ as a result of having me and He was leading them and guiding them and filling them with the faith to raise me. So their responses to such people were intentional and they were embracing a new life in God that some didn’t understand, but that I would grow up in and find my identity in.
“My childhood was happy. It became very obvious that I was different to other children, I looked different - I had to wear a custom-made fibre-glass shield that strapped around my heart underneath my clothes to protect my heart from being bumped. I had to wear plastic callipers that strapped around my legs and specially made shoes. I moved differently - I was slow, couldn’t run, couldn’t ride a bike. I felt different - I knew I wasn’t like anyone else and although my parents taught me about the one true living God who could perform miracles, He wasn’t doing that for me. I would pray to Him every night because I so desperately wanted to be like everyone else but that was not His plan for me.
“At 10 years old, I decided I didn’t want to be here anymore. I begged God to speak to me or to show me why He had made me this way. In some strange way, He let me know that I had been born this way to demonstrate that miracles still happen today, that God is real and that He loves me and He loves you. He had created me this way so that when people looked at me, they could see and marvel at Him. For the longest time, I had been praying for a miracle and now He was revealing to me that I was the miracle.
“As I grew older, I developed a very real, close and intimate relationship with the Lord. I could talk to Him about everything I was going through, struggling with, angry at - nothing was off limits. At 26 years of age, I got a brain abscess due to my heart condition. From this I learned that as well as my heart being on the outside of my body, there are things that are wrong on the inside of my heart. My heart and lungs do not filter out infection very well, the valve that takes oxygen to my lungs is narrow. As I grow older my heart will have to work harder. I have had 2 brain abscesses. It is true of me now at 46 years of age that my heart is working harder and that it struggles to pump oxygen around my body. In 2023, I was diagnosed with heart failure.
“There is much more to this story than what you are reading here, but these parts are the parts worth telling because at each of these places, when it was most difficult and dark, at these places - Jesus stepped in. The details are not the point, my life, just like yours has a beginning, a middle and an end. At the beginning of my life, my parents chose Jesus, then they gave Him to me as best as they could despite all of my anger, confusion, disillusionment and fear. My parents taught me about the one true living God who still performs miracles.
“My heart is still on the outside of my body, my feet are still clubbed feet, there are still challenges I navigate each day. Those are all the things that have not changed. But through it all, I have been transformed, renewed, healed and made whole within this jar of clay. My story is for you, that you might read it and be encouraged to know that faith in Jesus is the way, the truth and the life that we’re all looking for.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:7-9
With love in Jesus’ name, Aisha”