Daniel and I met when we were sophomores at UT. After I graduated, I moved to Atlanta and taught second grade while he was finishing law school. After he finished law school, we got married in Nashville and moved here. We later had two kids.

Madeline was four, and William was two and a half. We kind of thought we had it all. We had a boy and a girl, we were done having kids, and everything was going really well.

It was in December 2015 that I woke up early one morning and spent a little more time in prayer. I was praying for God’s will to be done, and then I went to work. Daniel had gone to work, and our kids, Madeline and William, were here with a nanny.

It was about lunchtime when two coworkers came to my door. As soon as I saw them, I saw the looks on their faces and knew something was wrong. They said, “Something has happened with William, and he’s not breathing. He choked at lunch.”

Instantly, when they said that to me, I knew it was not good. I knew then that the Lord had woken me up early on purpose and had me spend time praying for His will to be done.

I immediately left work and took off. I called some friends on my way and said, “I need you praying.” I kept repeating, “Lord, I just want Your will to be done. I just want Your will to be done.”

When I got to the hospital, I met the ambulance there. I saw his little eyes, and they looked so empty. I just knew that he was gone.

In that moment, I experienced something that felt familiar. Three months before Daniel and I got married, my dad had called me. My parents divorced when I was in fifth grade, and I grew up with my dad. We had been having some issues when he called and said, “I just want to tell you that I love you.”

I instantly knew something was wrong in that moment, too. He said, “I just want you to know I love you.” I called a neighbor, and a little while after my neighbor arrived, my dad went into the bedroom and shot himself.

In the way that I responded to that situation, I was so angry at God. I wondered why this was happening to me, and I couldn’t make sense of it.

The Lord prepared me during those next several years, after losing my dad and starting a family, for what happened with William. He led us to a church that preached the truth. He brought me deeper into my faith. I had been in the Word, and He truly brought me to a place where I thought, “Whatever it is You have for me, I’m here for it.”

The only thing that was different was that my faith was deeper.

When I saw William’s face, I knew he was gone and that he was in the arms of Jesus. He ended up being transferred to Vanderbilt, and his heart started beating again, but there was never any sign of brain activity.

We were surrounded in the hospital by friends and family, and it was such a dark, sad time.

The next morning, Saturday morning, we woke up at Vanderbilt and were presented with the option of organ donation. Immediately, we saw a little glimmer of hope. Daniel and I looked at each other, nodded our heads and said, “Absolutely.”

It was an answered prayer. The Lord answered our prayers for comfort and helped us understand why. Our prayer immediately shifted to William helping as many people as possible.

After we left the hospital, a few days after the transplant, we returned to the house. Some friends were there, and we were making memory boards for William’s memorial when someone said they had heard about Ava.

At the hospital, we had heard that William’s heart was going to Chicago, his liver was going to Texas and his kidneys were going together to North Carolina.

I asked, “Who’s Ava?”

They said, “We think we know where William’s heart went.”

We watched an online news story that detailed William’s heart going to Chicago. We watched a cooler being wheeled into the operating room and saw the surgeon take the heart out of the cooler and place it into an 18-month-old baby girl named Ava, saying, “Welcome to your new home.”

We watched Ava’s parents, Amy and Brian, being interviewed. They said, “We are so grateful, and we will honor the family that chose to give life in their darkest time to our little girl. We will honor them every day of her life.”

I instantly loved them. I thought, “I don’t even know if this is it, but I love them.”

I reached out to Amy through Facebook, and she wrote back within 20 minutes. We figured it out. She said that Ava’s was the only pediatric heart transplant performed the day before, and so we knew.

We immediately started sending messages to each other. We each had another daughter, and we have since become best friends with their family.

That happened in December, and we flew to meet them in March. We met them, along with 300 of their closest friends, at a fundraiser they held for Ava.

We have become incredibly close. We take couples’ trips together. Every summer, our families visit Amy’s parents in Michigan. We spend holidays together, and God has been so faithful through the time of losing William and everything that followed.

We also went on to have another little girl, Annie. We had thought we were done having children after Madeline and William, but after William died, we knew our family wasn’t complete. So, we went on to have Annie.

I can tell you about God’s faithfulness.

I didn’t see it when my dad died. I thought it was all about me and wondered, “Why is this happening to me?” But as my faith deepened, I saw God for who He is and gained an eternal perspective.

I am truly living for Heaven and trusting in His plan. Whatever He has for me, trusting Him has made such a difference.

There are going to be more people in Heaven because of William’s story. As a mom, there is no greater joy than seeing your children bring people to Christ.

I truly believe my entire life was preparing me for losing William.

I want people to know that God is faithful, that there is hope and that they are not alone. That is why we started Faithfully Restored: to remind women that they are loved, they are not alone and there is hope in Jesus.