Can a Baby in the Womb Carry Trauma?

I shared about my brother’s extreme healing from skull fracture when he was a toddler. You can find that here.

The testimony continues, but is an extreme healing in an entirely different direction.

When my brother fractured his skull, my mother was expecting. My sister came along a few months later, and all seemed well.

Thirty-five years later, I went to a Christian Healing Ministries conference.

There they led us in a prayer I had never heard of, a prayer I had no real grid for, a “Conception to Birth Prayer.” We prayed through a prewritten prayer that begins with conception and walks through the pregnancy through birth, praying through gestation, month by month. (The CHM website has several helpful prayers under “Ministry” and “Sample Prayers.” I want to honor CHM for making these resources available for free on their website. What a gift to us.)

I found this idea fascinating, that even a prenatal child might experience things in the womb that need some healing.

This was so beautiful in my own life, I told my sister that we should pray through her gestation, too.

I had a rough timeline in my head of when my brother’s accident happened. I was curious to see if she would notice something in the spirit. She, on the other hand, had no conscious recollection of this traumatic event.

We started praying.

The first month, most parents don’t yet know that their child is coming, but it’s still a happy month.

As we prayed through the second month, Jonelle still felt nothing but love, happiness, and joy.

Same with the third month, and the fourth month. Even though Mom had severe morning sickness, her physical symptoms didn’t affect the excitement of new life.

And then we came to month five.

Instantly Jonelle said—and this was not in a detached voice, but from a place of intensity—“Oh! What is this blackness? It’s like a deep pit of sorrow and fear. I can hardly handle it.”

Beautifully, then, Jesus came and healed that trauma that she carried, without even knowing that she carried it.

So this is the extreme healing testimony.

It’s extreme because our bodies carry things, even below our conscious level.

It’s extreme because it sounds crazy. Or at least, unlike normal Christian testimony.

It’s extreme because God’s goodness is so stunning, that Jesus can heal our memories and emotions.

This, too, is a healing.

I invite you to find a pocket of time and pray through this prayer for yourself.

Jesus, thank you that what you reveal, you will heal. Thank you for your amazing power to restore. May we seek your wholeness in all things. Amen.

Amy Joy

P.S. I invite you to sign up for the Prayer Refresh, an email series with short prayers to pray as you go about your day. The first five readers all wrote me at different times and said, “This is changing my life.”