Marty Copeland breathed a contented sigh as she climbed onto the exam table in preparation for a sonogram. Her husband, John, held her hand and laughed at the antics of their 4-year-old daughter, Courtney.
“I’m gonna see our baby!” Courtney beamed as she made the announcement.
“That’s right, honey,” Marty said. “We’re all going to see our baby.”
Courtney was a living, loving, wiggling, giggling testimony to the goodness of God. Many times over the past few years, just looking at Courtney had given Marty the strength to hang on to her faith for more children.
It had been with a sense of divine destiny that Marty had married John, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland’s only son. Marty and John desired to have a large family. Not only that, they were also acutely aware that the Copeland name would end with John unless Marty gave birth to a son.
She and John stood on the Word of God and released their faith for children. At every meal, John prayed, “Father, I thank You that Marty’s pregnant. We have a perfect child.”
Marty had been stunned as year after year passed and they had remained childless. She fought discouragement as she set only two places at the dinner table each night. She made herself smile and answer politely when well-meaning friends asked, “Why don’t you have a baby yet? I thought you were going to get pregnant last year.”
No. Marty would not be defeated. She made a conscious decision to sow more love into the children around her. She gave baby showers to honor and bless her friends. Every day without fail, she stood on the Word of God in faith. She loved the story of Hannah and knew God was no respecter of persons and what He had done for Hannah He would do for her.
Still by 1991, four years after she and John married, she had not conceived. No toys littered her floor. There was no first step, no first tooth and no first word. There was no laughing, crying or giggling—just the quiet order of adult life.
That year at the West Coast Believers’ Convention in Anaheim, Kenneth Copeland prophesied over her. “Because of your faith,” he said, “the Word has taken root in you, and it won’t be much longer.”
Two years later, in 1993, Marty gave birth to Courtney. John took one look at his daughter and said the same thing he’d spoken over her every day for years. “She’s perfect.”
Grateful that they’d won the war against infertility, two years later John and Marty decided to have a second child. Before she even realized that she was pregnant, Marty suffered a spontaneous miscarriage.
“Don’t worry, this happens all the time,” her doctor said. “You’ll get pregnant again.”
Later the same year, she conceived a second time, only to miscarry.
Was it a boy or a girl? Marty wondered, her heart lurching.
The following year, Marty conceived for the third time since Courtney’s birth. The pregnancy progressed normally, and the child within her grew and moved.
But, once again she miscarried. Depression tried to take her captive. She fought it with all her strength. Three pregnancies and three lost babies took a toll on Marty physically, mentally and emotionally.
I don’t think I can do this again.
Clinging to God, Marty resisted the temptation to give in to the depression and despair that fought her faith. She dug into the Word and refused to budge. She searched for and found a doctor willing to go the extra mile to find out why she’d lost three children.
Now, a year later, she was pregnant again. This time everything was different. Her new doctor monitored her closely. All the sonograms showed a newly forming baby. She was far enough along to share the experience of this latest sonogram with John and Courtney.
“Is that our baby?” Courtney asked, pointing to the wavy lines on the monitor. “Not yet,” Marty said. “Be patient.”
The probe circled her abdomen, pressing gently. John held Courtney and the three of them watched the monitor in quiet fascination. As the picture came into focus, Marty felt her heart sink.
She could see the sac which should have surrounded her baby…it was only a cocoon of warm liquid. There was no baby curled around its fist, no tiny heartbeat pounding…there was no life.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Courtney asked.
Marty tried to speak, but couldn’t form the words.
As tears started rolling down her face, she attempted a smile for Courtney, and thought, What am I going to tell her? Will this affect her faith in God?
Hard Pressed yet Not Crushed
“It was devastating,” Marty recalls. “I was honest enough to realize that the loss of that fourth baby had shaken my faith.
“I had been physically and emotionally weakened by four miscarriages. The enemy had hit me hard. I knew I needed time to regroup. So during the following year, I drew strength from God and His Word while guarding my words.
“I got pregnant the same year, and this time I knew beyond a doubt that I was fighting a spiritual battle for our children. I immersed myself in the Word. I checked my hormone levels every day. I fought for this baby with everything I had in me, and the pregnancy progressed normally. In June, I traveled to Anaheim for the West Coast Believers’ Convention, which involved a lot of walking in the convention center, and keeping up with Courtney. While I was there, I had some spotting. The only people I told were Gloria and John.”
Marty flew home from Anaheim with a deep sense of relief—the child within her was safe. Not long afterward, she loaded Courtney into the car with the warm sun kissing her cheeks and Courtney’s happy chatter filling her heart. As she drove toward town, suddenly, inexplicably, excruciating pain ripped through her body. Marty gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.
Struck Down but Not Destroyed
That day, in a fog of debilitating pain, Marty Copeland lost her fifth child of promise. The emotional blow equaled or surpassed the physical pain.
Desperate to discover the cause of Marty’s problem, her doctor researched the latest medical studies on the subject. He found an infertility specialist who’d identified a particular antibody—the antiphospholipid antibody—which was present in some women who miscarried. No one knew what caused the antibody to form, but when present in a pregnant woman it eventually crossed the placenta and killed the child.
Marty’s doctor sent a sample of her blood to the specialist and asked him to test it. Not only did she have the antibody present in her blood, it was the highest level the specialist had ever seen. The only known treatment was to be injected every 12 hours during the entire pregnancy with heparin—a potent blood thinner.
The treatment was not well-known and there were potential risks involved.
Marty discussed the treatment with another doctor who said, “Marty, if you were my wife and taking these injections was the only way you could have children, I’d say don’t do it.”
“If having a son was just something I wanted to do, I would have quit right then,” Marty says. “But I firmly believed it was God’s plan. I wasn’t willing to let the devil win, no matter what personal price I had to pay. However, I knew I wasn’t physically or emotionally ready to step back into the battle. By now I fully understood that this wasn’t just a fight—it was a full-fledged war. The Lord gave me the wisdom to know that I needed to allow Him to heal and strengthen me before I confronted the enemy. Multiple miscarriages and fluctuating hormones had taken a toll. I was battle-weary and didn’t have the strength to fight.
“I knew the words I chose to speak would decide what would come to pass in my life, so after that miscarriage I went to John and said, ‘I can’t talk about having a baby in faith, so please don’t mention it to me for at least a year.’ John understood, and he honored my request. Because of the way he had been raised he didn’t operate in doubt or fear.”
God comforted Marty and confirmed that it was His plan—not her plan—for them to have a son.
During a meeting in 1998, Dr. Leroy Thompson gave her a word from the Lord. “You are going to have another child,” he declared.
From the time of her fifth miscarriage, Marty spent two full years basking in God’s presence and drinking in His healing balm.
She also developed a mindset for war.
A determined Marty went back to her doctor and discovered that while blood thinners have inherent risk, the prescribed dosage of heparin was very small.
With confidence, Marty agreed to the treatment.
“I firmly believe that finding and treating the antibody the devil had used to rob me of my children came straight from the throne of God,” Marty explained. “And here’s why: the Bible says, ‘All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made’ (John 1:3).”
Perplexed but Not in Despair
As soon as Marty conceived, she began the ordeal of giving herself heparin injections in her abdomen and thighs every 12 hours. After days, weeks and months of injections, those areas were bruised and quite painful, but Marty kept her focus on their son of promise.
And the heir to God’s promise grew and thrived, heart thumping with promise in each sonogram. Because of the danger associated with long-term blood thinners, Marty’s labor was induced so she could be taken off the heparin 48 hours before giving birth.
Nine months and more than 540 injections later, Jonathan David Copeland was born on April 25, 2000.
When Kenneth Copeland walked into the hospital room, Marty smiled, handed her son to his grandfather and said, “There he is. I’m done!”
Seven pregnancies had given John and Marty two perfect children, a girl and a boy. She’d fought the good fight of faith, and she’d won. Marty was 37 years old, and ready to enjoy the children God had given her. John, in total agreement with her, took permanent steps to prevent further conception.
What neither of them realized was the power and momentum their faith had generated. Stopping it was like trying to stop a speeding locomotive. Eleven months later, Marty Copeland was pregnant again.
“Oh…” she whispered as she realized that not only did the fulfillment of God’s destiny involve a son, His plan for the next generation included a third child. Nine months and more than 540 heparin shots later, Marty gave birth to a daughter, Alexandria Nicole on February 14, 2002.
“The war being waged against believers having the children God has promised us in our covenant is every bit as real as the ongoing war of terror,” Marty explained.
“Satan is the terrorist who is trying desperately to destroy your children before they’re even born. If you find yourself in this life and death struggle, be proactive. Do everything you know to do spiritually, and everything God leads you to do in the natural. Don’t let the enemy win!
“As we love our children, we expand our understanding of how very much God loves us.”
Our children are covenant blessings. They are our heritage. We must love them and train them in the admonition of the Lord—we must fight for life and we must fight victoriously—not just for ourselves but for our future.
Marty also has a CD available, Hannah’s Miracle Child, where Marty shares how Hannah’s great faith and God’s faithfulness motivated her to believe for the birth of her own children. In this message, Marty shows you how to stand for the miracle you need and offers encouraging answers to difficult questions. The CD is available under Store and CDs for $5.00.
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