Giving Birth: Both a Vision and a Person

When I was probably about 19 years old, while visiting a friend, I had a dream that has stayed with me ever since. In the dream, I was in labor in a hospital room. The atmosphere was completely peaceful—deeply calm and filled with expectation. People were present, as they would be in any delivery room. Then Jesus walked in—His entrance was surprising. The profound peace remained, now powerfully coupled with strength and energetic authority, mirroring an energy that could calm any storm.

He firmly asked everyone else to leave. No one resisted. They simply and willingly obeyed. He then announced that He would be delivering the child by His own hand-that phrase seemed important, but I am not totally sure why. His actions were deliberate, gentle, and kind. There was no haste, no clinical feel—only care. I felt humbled and filled with a profound sense of honor that He was there. The person I knew as the Lord of the universe had chosen to be personally present, not observing from a distance, but stepping in to guide this sacred process Himself. I felt no fear, only deep love and being completely seen.

Once the baby was born, Jesus placed him gently on my chest. Then He knelt beside me, looked at me with tenderness, and said, “I want you to name him Ira.”

The dream ended there. I woke up with the name on my mind. I had heard it before—it felt familiar—but I didn’t know where from, and I had no idea what it meant. So I started researching.

The Meaning That Unfolded

Ira is a Hebrew name meaning “watchful” or “vigilant.” In the Bible, it appears as the name of one of King David’s mighty men and a trusted priestly figure close to the king. It carries the sense of one who is alert, awake, and faithful in service. His felt like a commission—a promise being spoken over my future. About a decade later, after I got married, my husband and I conceived our first son. When the time came, I gave birth to him, and we named him Ira—exactly as instructed.

That dream wasn’t just symbolic. It was prophetic. It had foreshadowed the actual arrival of our son. Yet what began as the fulfillment of that divine promise suddenly turned into heartache. Our son Ira passed away unexpectedly, within the first couple hours of birth. The word spoken by Jesus Himself now felt like a promise that died, leaving us in shattering grief. The significance around his conception and brief life had carried such sacred weight— and then my baby was just gone.

In the midst of that loss, I cried out to the Lord and asked Him to show me what had happened. Instantly, I was taken into a heavenly courtroom scene, reminiscent of the story of Job. Just as the accuser stood before God in the opening chapters of Job—challenging the faithfulness of a righteous man and asking permission to afflict him—someone I identified as the devil approached God the Father and requested permission to take our son. The Father allowed it, but with a clear and sobering condition: if this accuser was wrong, and I did not turn away from God in my grief, then He would cause everything to happen much faster than it would have otherwise—and the day would come when they would deeply regret asking for permission to take my son from me. This revelation carried both pain and profound hope.

Like the heavenly courtroom of Job, where the adversary could only act within the limits God sovereignly set, and where the test ultimately served God’s greater purposes. Ira was innocent—pure and untouched by the brokenness of this world.

In ancient Jewish temple rituals, lambs were offered as sacrifices precisely because of their spotless innocence. They had to be perfect, without blemish, and presented only at the Temple in Jerusalem—the one place God had ordained for atonement. Yet the combination of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD—which brought the entire sacrificial system to a permanent end—and the finished work of Jesus Christ, the true Lamb of God, who paid the ultimate price once and for all, should mean that no more innocent blood should ever be required.

According to Christian doctrine, the cross should have accomplished what every temple sacrifice had only pointed toward. On a spiritual level, the vision revealed what felt to me like some sort of clandestine, illegal attempt to claim Ira as a someone's sacrifice—something that, to my knowledge, should no longer be possible in the Heavenly redemptive order.

I know that things like this happen, and some may see this as me reading into it all too deeply, but the journey in this led me to a on a decade of exploration. If my theology was accurate, then why are we still here? Why is this still happening? If Jesus accomplished all of it, then why haven't wars, famine, and suffering of the innocent been ended with finality? None of the Sunday school answers have sufficed, leaving me with the conclusion that we must be missing something, or at the very least I must be missing something.

Both that dream and later vision has continued to speak. To me, it is a reminder not to stand back from labor, delivery, or pain. It is a reminder to enter the room and clear out the noise. It is a reminder to be unafraid of placing my own hand on what is being born—without expectation of whether my touch will last decades or moments; knowing that alongside of the Father, my own partnership can help bring about what He is seeing through to completion, initiated by what Christ intended to accomplish on the cross.

He names what is His.

In my story that name, in part, is represented by the life our son, Ira. 

Watchful. Awake. Promised.

Our son’s life was short on earth, but I believe it is eternally significant. The One who knelt beside me in the dream is the same One who is beside Ira now, and who has held me in my grief. He is still somehow the One who is with me through every transition—including the ones we never wanted to walk through, teaching me how to co-labor with the Father to bring about His promises during my time here on earth. And He is the One whom I believe advocating for me, ensuring that no unauthorized claim in the heavenly realms go unanswered, or are allowed to bear bad fruit.

I believe that anything our accusers intend to use against us, whether simply in attempt to accomplish their own goals, to harm us, or both truly will be used for our good; ultimately bringing about the final fulfillment of His promise to His People.

-K