Switched At Birth

Kay Rene Qualls and DeeAnn Shafer made a shocking discovery recently – they weren’t who they thought they were. Their story goes back over five decades to a small hospital in Heppner, Oregon. The two women were born on the same day, May 3, at Pioneer Memorial Hospital. The two infants closely resembled each other and, when nurses took them and bathed them together, an unintentional but tragic mistake was made. The babies were switched and returned to the wrong mother. One mother was too heavily medicated to be aware of the problem. The other mother insisted that the wrong baby had been returned to her, but nurses brushed off her concerns. And so, when the time came to be released from the hospital, each mother went home with the baby girl that had been born to the other.

Through an odd set of circumstances and the results of modern DNA testing, the persistent rumors of the switch were finally proven to be true after 56 years. By this time, both sets of birth parents were deceased. And the two women are now struggling to process this new bit of information in their life. Thankfully, in spite of the “what ifs,” both families have reached out to each other and are making the best of a difficult and confusing situation (www.eastoregonian.com; 5-11-09).

If you are a child of God, you also were switched at birth. Note how the Scriptures describe the swap: God “…rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13). If we are people of faith, we have “…passed out of death into life” (John 5:24). If we are in Christ, we are “…a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

How thankful we can be that our merciful God “…caused us to be born again to a living hope...” (1 Peter 1:3). This is no tragic mistake – God desired to make the exchange from the very beginning. Praise God for switching us at birth!

God loves you!
Mike