Courtney Smallbone, wife of For King and Country’s Luke Smallbone, is sharing a stunning miracle story about the time her baby died suddenly – a story of resurrection and God’s miraculous timing.
On CBN’s “Heaven Meets Earth Podcast,” Smallbone shared the amazing testimony with hosts Abigail Robertson and Ryan Bethea.
She described the horrifying moment she found little Leo’s gray, lifeless body. And as she screamed and wept over him, her husband scrambled to call 911. In the chaos, she began praying in the Spirit and then said a simple prayer that God answered immediately.
Courtney previously shared with CBN News about a time in her life when she had overcome a traumatic health crisis that led to prescription drug addiction and panic attacks.
FULL TESTIMONY For KING & COUNTRY Star’s Wife Freed from Agony of Anxiety Attacks and Addiction: ‘God Is Healer’
God had spared her life, and in the years and the other struggles that followed, her faith had grown. That’s when the next test came her way, and it was terrifying.
Leo was just an infant when it happened. She had put her 8-week-old son down for a nap, along with her two other children at the time.
“I finally got all three down, which was like a miracle in and of itself, and I put them down for a nap and you know had the monitor, and went out to have a cup of coffee and to read. And I was out there for a little while, and I was reading this book, and it’s like my vision kept blurring like I couldn’t focus,” she recalls.
“And it was actually on the anniversary of when I was healed and raised to life from this rare disease. And I knew that. I kind of woke up that day, and I think I journaled, ‘Lord, what are You going to do today?’ And I think I just had anticipation of like, ‘Thank You, Lord, for life.’ Like, ‘You gave me a longer lif,e and You didn’t have to do that. I could have died at 18.’ Like that, you know…I didn’t expect to live. And so I woke up that morning just thankful.”
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“And so I’m sitting there trying to read, I can’t focus, and I just, you know, the Holy Spirit in a mother is a strong thing, right? And I hear this voice say, ‘Go check on Leo. And don’t believe what you’re going to see.'”
“And so I ran, I ran into where he was napping, I ran in, and I found him. And he was blue and gray, cold, sunken in chest, and blood all over his face and limp, and I just started screaming. And so I picked him up, and I ran outside, and my husband was mowing. And he saw me. And he saw what Leo looked like. And he just got off and ran and called 911.”
“And I put him on the ground, and it’s just very out of body, right, like you’re just, I’m making sounds that aren’t humanly possible. You’re just like what is, what is this and just looking at him, just blurry eyes like death, you’re looking at death,” she recalls. “Your biggest fear is like right in front of your face; that was my biggest, that was one of my biggest fears. And I remember looking at him, and I tried CPR and nothing, and I just started praying. I started praying in tongues.”
“I felt like wind around us. I felt just not… it was just an interesting thing. And so I, I was laying hands, I was praying,” she continues. “Luke’s on the phone and he’s like, ‘Hey, they’re on their way. They’re like a few minutes away.’ And you can tell on the other side of the phone, like they’re coming to pick up a dead baby. Like that’s what… and he’s just looking at me like they’re coming, but like, you know.”
“And so my hands are off and he’s lying on the ground, sunken in chest, death, blurry eyes. And I literally am just on the ground with him. And I say very quietly, my hands again off; I’m like, ‘Only You can do this. Only You can do this.'”
Immediately, her prayer of surrender was answered. Leo came back to life.
“And literally in that moment, like his chest expands, he starts crying,” she recalls. “He turns pink. His eyes go from foggy to clear, and he’s, yeah, crying, fills his diaper. I mean, it’s like a, like a on, like on, off, on, off. That’s all I can describe in that moment. And… he starts breathing, breathing. And I’m just like screaming and Luke’s still on the phone. He’s like, ‘Ah, he’s breathing, he’s breathing, he’s breathing.’ And they’re like, ‘What?’ And so I just was… it’s miraculous.”
“It’s when heaven and earth touch. It’s like, this is who Jesus is, but I didn’t expect to see him this way. Right. In my deepest, darkest fear that he would touch my baby, in front of me. And so he, he comes alive. I get in the ambulance. They’re like, ‘We need to go check’ because you know, I guess when they’re newborns, you know, they’re like, ‘Oh well it could be failure to thrive, it could be all these things, we need to really watch him because it could happen again,'” she recalls.
“And I was like, I’m sorry, I’ve just seen this, if God, if God wants to, He’s in charge,” she says. “I felt so like, tunnel vision, like you know I’m just gonna trust God with his life. It was a surrender of even just him, right, it’s this guttural parental surrender that you really know like this is not, they’re not mine. I’m stewarding this life, but they’re all Yours.”
When they got to the hospital, doctors told her Leo had a skull deformity called craniosynostosis.
“Babies have soft spots, and his head closed, and the deformity was like a football, so it’s really heavy and pressurized, and so they were like, ‘Hey, he actually has, there’s an issue. We need to run these scans, he’s going to have to have open surgery,’ this whole thing. And honestly, at that point too, I was just so surrendered, like, okay, it’ll be okay. You know, after that, I’m just like, I think we’re going to be all right. Like God has his hand on his life and he’s not, he’s actually not going to let any of us go until it’s time. I actually truly believe that where I’m, ‘If it’s not my time, if it’s not my child’s,’ and you know, it, it removes that, that fear and that worry.”
“We only see in part. And so that was a moment in my life where I’m like, ‘I’m not the same.’ When you see the glory of God, I’m just like, ‘Nothing’s impossible.’ If God wants to do it, He will do it, and I will partner with Him wherever he wants to go and whatever He wants to do,” she says.
As her faith has grown, so has little Leo. He’s now eight years old and is turning into a bold evangelist. Courtney even compares his outspoken courage to John the Baptist.
“And to see Leo, now he’s eight, and he loves the Lord. He actually gave a sermon at church a few months ago. He wanted to, he’s the youngest one to do it. And to hear his heart, he remembers actually, he sat on Jesus’s lap, he saw my grandpa, and he never met my grandpa (before). And he said, ‘Oh yeah, Papaw told me I had to go back, but he said I’ll see you at the end of the world when the dead are raised.’ And I said, ‘Who told you that?’ It’s in the Bible, but he’s like, ‘Well, Papaw did.'”
“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ He remembers, he sees, he has dreams. He loves the Word of God. He cries. One time we were at a concert and I took him to the bathroom before the concert because we’re in music, and he started crying and I said, ‘Why are you crying?’ And he said, ‘There’s people out there that don’t know Jesus, and they will die eternally if they don’t know Jesus.’ And he’s sobbing uncontrollably, can’t calm him down. People are like, ‘Oh, what’s wrong? Is he a normal kid?’ And I’m like, ‘This is actually intercession that has hit his little heart with this understanding of who God is and His love for people.'”
“And so every day is a gift with him. Every day I am so aware, I am so aware that life is a gift. Children are a gift.”
Courtney says she’s a different person after that experience, and through it all, God has taught her to remain humble and surrendered to Him.
“It keeps you on your face, because you’re like, I’m dead without You. I can’t do anything without the presence of God, nor do I want to.”
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During the rest of the conversation, Bethea and Robertson spoke with Courtney and her close friend Kerry Hasenbalg, spiritual director and author The Way of Becoming, about other significant issues from their lives, like leaning on Jesus for freedom from addiction, turning to God in their worst nightmares, and finding emotional healing and faith renewal in our Heavenly Father.
Click here to listen to the entire podcast, including a powerful resurrection story from Hasenbalg’s life as well.
