Katie’s heart-stopping miracles

It was Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007, and 24-year-old Katie Hill had reached the nadir of her young life. She was morbidly obese, going through a divorce, and virtually without self-esteem. So dark were those days that she told God that she didn’t care if she died.

By the time she got home from church that night, the emotional and physical pressure she was feeling came crashing down on her. When she woke up the next morning, something told her to get up and go to the hospital emergency room. Katie didn’t know it, but God was about to perform several miracles in her life.

Katie followed her instinct and went to her local hospital. They ran a few tests and found nothing more than the current medical issues with which she had been dealing. However, while sitting on the emergency room bed waiting for discharge orders, she passed out. The next thing she knew, two days had passed and she was in a different hospital room hooked up to machines. When her family later apprised her of what had happened, she was in disbelief.

While sitting in the ER room earlier, her heart had stopped beating. Doctors and nurses rushed in and started working on her right away. They spent the better part of that night keeping Katie alive. She has never been told how many times her heart stopped that night, but they used a defibrillator on her several times to shock her back to life.

The doctors didn’t know if Katie was going to make it, so they told her mother to call her family and friends to come and say their goodbye’s. When the family arrived, they prayed and prayed and prayed some more. With each prayer session, a peace settled over Katie, and she was less agitated in her unconscious state.

When she was stable enough, they transferred Katie to a larger hospital. That’s where she woke up — in the ICU, and that’s where she remained for the next seven days.

Although it was risky, while Katie was in the second hospital, they implanted an ICD (implantable cardiac defibrillator) in her. One of her ICU doctors told her mother that they didn’t think she would make it five more days, let alone five more years.

Ironically, it was five years later that God performed Katie’s next miracle. Having saved her life, now He was going to transform it.

Katie was finally discharged from the hospital, and although her life had been spared, she was still carrying the emotional and physical scars that had burdened her for so many years. She remained morbidly obese, constrained from normal activities, and depressed.

In March 2012, after being hospitalized for a month with a severe respiratory virus, Katie attended a church service. She was at the end of her emotional rope and needed a second touch from Above. Folks prayed for her that night, and Katie, recognizing that she had no other place to turn, yielded to Someone greater than herself.

“I gave it all to God that night,” she says. “I was tired. I was tired of carrying the physical weight, carrying the emotional weight, carrying the mental weight. I was ready for God to take over and use me. To guide me. To show what He can do using my life.”

With that surrender, God led Katie on to her next miracle. Two months after that church service she opted to have a weight loss surgery, but she had difficulty finding a doctor who would take a chance operating on her. The risk was just too great. Finally, a physician stepped up and performed the surgery. It was successful, and over the next year and a half, Katie lost over half of her body weight. Now she was ready for her third miracle.

The doctors had told Katie that she would never have children, but they all reckoned without the resources and mercy of the Almighty.

In March 2014, she met Mark. There was an immediate connection between the two. Over the next two years, they fell in love, and in 2016 they were married. At that point Katie became a mother, for Mark had four beautiful children from a previous marriage, and Katie wrapped her arms around all of them.

In a display of Divine love, God miraculously intervened in her life—in Mark’s life—and in the lives of four children. He created a family, which few would have thought possible.

So God reached down and turned Katie’s life around in several ways. He kept her alive in 2007. He made possible her phenomenal weight loss in 2012, and in 2016, He enriched her life with her husband and four precious children. Katie felt so blessed, but God wasn’t finished.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and Katie’s doctors warned that if the virus struck her, it would be life threatening. In August 2021, that fear materialized. She came down with COVID. However, contrary to medical expectations and after many fervent prayers, Katie breezed through the attack with relative ease.

Looking back, Katie sums it all up this way, “I’m so thankful for the grace and peace from God. A God who loves me so much that He performs these miracles and has blessed me with life and more abundantly. I pray for those that read this and find that God loves them too.”