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Drowning 2-Year-old Inspires Resurrection Power

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The backyard pool party had been a fun, Father’s Day’s celebration for the small group of families. Then, as they were saying their goodbyes, Katie Trotman noticed her two-year-old daughter was missing.

Katie recalls, “I looked around and heard a voice say to me, where is Nora, and I realized I hadn’t seen her."

Ron, Katie's husband, remembers, “I checked for her outside, and called her name and she didn’t answer. That’s when Katie said, 'Check the pool.'"

“What I remember next," Katie says, "is hearing somebody yell, 'Oh my gosh!' And then I heard my husband kind of make a scream.”  

“I saw her floating next to the edge. She wasn’t breathing. She had no life to her. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. It was unbearable to see,” said Ron.

“I remember her face," Katie says. "She wasn’t there anymore. That’s when I dropped to my knees. I said, 'Nora, come back to your body in the name of Jesus.' I cried, 'Jesus, help!'"

Ron says that he was pleading with God. “I’m crying out too, 'Please bring her back, please bring her back!'"

Katie called 911, while two nurses at the party started CPR. One of them was Alicia Moseley. Alicia recalls, “I knew that she was gone. But I knew if I could just get blood moving, that she might have a chance. Everyone was crying, the kids were crying, Olivia asked, 'Is my sister going to die?'"

Moments later, paramedics arrived on the scene. Joshua Farrell, a firefighter, and paramedic said, “We determined that she did not have a pulse and was not breathing.” After working for several minutes, Douglas Jones, also a paramedic said, “We saw a heartbeat on the monitor. We knew there was electrical activity.” 

“They got something, a faint pulse,"Ron says. “I knew she was alive. There was a chance.”

By then, Nora had been without a heartbeat for at least 12 minutes. As she hovered between life and death, the ambulance raced toward VCU Medical Center in Richmond, VA.

“I was in a trauma state of shock," Katie remembers. "I knew that anything could happen. I remember calling people, texting people, making a plea on Facebook for prayer.”

“I was expecting the worst-case scenario," Ron admits. "I just thought that we had lost our child.”

As they rushed into the emergency room, they learned Nora was still alive, but barely hanging on. Doctors put her in a medically induced coma to calm the toddler and prevent brain swelling. Doctors said the next 48 hours were critical.

Katie remembers, “They said, 'She’s in such critical condition, it could go either way at this point.'"

To get through those dark, 48 hours, the couple leaned on each other, and a global ground swell of prayer. 

“God prepared people to pray with us and come along side of us. Then, Katie says, 'God gave me a vision. I saw the prayers coming up from the earth and going into the throne room of God and He was breathing life onto the prayers.” Katie continues, “She still wasn’t breathing the way she needed to, she wasn’t sitting up, she couldn’t hold her head upright and she didn’t have any balance; she couldn’t grab things.”

Katie will never forget the prognosis delivered by the neurologist. “He came in with his whole team, and he said, 'She has brain damage. That is why these things are happening.'"

Ron remembers the doctor’s chilling words. He said, “She is not going to able to walk and she’s not going to be to be able to talk.” 

Katie says, “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to hear in my entire life.” Ron remembers, “I am trying to be strong. I’m like, 'Jesus, this is in your hands now.'"

Because of Covd-19 restrictions, Katie and Ron had been taking shifts at Nora's bedside. They had just received the news when it was Ron's turn to stay while Katie went home.

"I was so broken and defeated," recalls Katie. "I missed Nora and I got in her bed and I cried and cried. All of a sudden something rose up in me and I put on a worship song and I praised Jesus. But I also commanded Nora to come out of her grave."

Meanwhile, doctors decided to monitor Nora overnight for seizures.

Later, Ron was told, “There were no seizures. I remember Nora waking up, she just opened her eyes and she said, 'Mommy.'"

Later that morning, when Katie returned to Nora’s room, she saw the answer to prayer. “She was standing up in her hospital crib bed pulling up, literally trying to climb out of the crib. She laughed, and she smiled so huge when she saw me. I was very surprised. I literally said, 'Has she been doing this all morning?'"

With a sly grin, Ron said, "Yes.” He had decided it would be better for Katie to see for herself. And she did. 

“She was crawling around, getting tangled in her tubes. She was not walking yet, but I could tell she knew how. The next day or that evening, she started running around her room. I was very overjoyed. I was so thankful.”

Ron adds, “We got to hold her. She was making all the nurses happy and smiling. It was like, that’s my girl! It was a blessing come true; a blessing come true.”

17 days after drowning in a backyard pool, Nora was released from the hospital. In fact, she was doing so well, she didn’t even need the physical therapy the doctors prescribed. Before long, she started talking …and hasn’t stopped talking since. She doesn’t hesitate to tell people what happened to her that day. Little Nora says, “I sink in the pool and Jesus saved me.”

Katie says, “People reach out to me after the story and say, 'I need you to pray for me' and the thing is, you don’t need me, you have the
authority. I should come alongside you and pray with you, but everyone has the authority. You don’t need to beg God, just use the authority that Christ has given you.”

Ron says, “I look at my daughter, that’s GOD, that’s a miracle.”

“Jesus is doing miracles every day," Katie says. “Literally, the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. I’ve seen it!”

(For more information on Nora's recovery and to read other similar answer-to-prayer stories, please visit the Facebook page: Prayer Warriors for Nora: https://m.facebook.com/Prayer-Warriors-for-Nora-102862638151698/photos/?ref=page_internal).

 


 

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About The Author

Debbie White
Debbie
White

Debbie is proud to be a “home grown” 700 Club producer. She gives all the credit for her skills to mentors who are the “best in the biz”, and a company like CBN that invested in developing her talent. Joining CBN as a freshly minted college graduate with a BS in Psychology and the zest of a new Christian, she was eager to learn television. Over the next 20 years, she held many challenging roles, but found her “home” producing testimonies for The 700 Club. Like Eric Liddell as he ran in “Chariots of Fire,” she feels “His pleasure” when she produces one of God’s life-changing stories.