Before Their Time: Lessons in Living from Those Born Too Soon

"Lord, have mercy." This was Alliette's simple but profound plea as she drove herself to the hospital. She had been standing in her kitchen doing dishes. . . . Her husband and older daughters were not at home. Suddenly she felt something like water running down her leg.

Alliette knew what it meant, but she couldn't believe it. She was only twenty-two weeks along. . . . She decided to drive herself to the hospital. She soon regretted it.

In these pages you will find five stories of babies born before their time, fifteen to eighteen weeks short of the nine months allotted to form a child. Written by Daniel Taylor from extensive interviews, each story arises out of the practice of Dr. Ronald Hoekstra at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

You will enter the neonatal intensive care unit, a quietly crowded place of babies, doctors, nurses, parents and machines. A place of drama, heartache, waiting and joy. And a place where God is found.

The questions raised by the stories of these smallest of infants are as large as life itself. What makes life worth living? What is the balance of medicine and faith?

This book is not a collection of case studies but the stories of women, men and tiny children with whom we explore the meaning of life, death and faith. Here is a book to encourage and inspire, a book about both the struggle and joy of life.

"In the high-tech intensive care nursery of a major American hospital, we meet six premature babies, their devoted parents and a praying doctor. Their miraculous stories told in Before Their Time remind us that the most important formula we can feed our children is faith." Diane M. Komp, M.D., author of Images of Grace: A Pediatrician's Trilogy of Faith, Hope & Love

"Daniel Taylor is one of the finest writers of our age. . . . The stories read like mysteries of grace which rivet us to the seasons of our own lives that feel premature and incomplete. What I learned not only brought me to tears of joy but to a deeper passion for the glorious timing of God's plan in my life." Dan B. Allender, coauthor of The Cry of the Soul

Daniel Taylor, Ph.D., is married and the father of four children. He is a professor of English at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the author of The Myth of Certainty, The Healing Power of Stories and Letters to My Children.

Ronald Hoekstra, M.D., is a neonatologist at the Children's Hospital and Clinic--Minneapolis, specializing in the care of sick and premature newborns. Ron is married and the father of three adult sons.