Telling the Testimony

Everly Cove Winter

God gave us her name before we were ever even pregnant. Everly Cove stands for “Everlasting Covenant.”

One night, I was lying in bed, pondering how God is a God of covenant. A covenant is like a promise, but even stronger. A promise can be broken. We make promises that we can’t keep because we are human. We make mistakes, and we are imperfect. The difference in covenant is that even when I fail to uphold my end of the agreement, when the agreement would normally become void, God is still faithful to fulfill His word.

God made a covenant with Abraham, but it didn’t stop there. It didn’t end with Abraham. It didn’t end with Isaac. It didn’t end with the nation of Israel. It didn’t end with the apostles. It didn’t end with the first century Christians. It didn’t even end once I gave my life to Jesus. Praise God, His covenant has no end!

God said, “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you.” Genesis 17:7

With that covenant promise in mind, God created our precious little Cove.

I had just started my first week of my first year of teaching when I noticed some symptoms. We found out that we were pregnant on August 17, 2024.

It just so happened that we got to hear her heartbeat and see her on the screen for the first time on Walker’s birthday, September 18th.

In December, we did a gingerbread-themed gender reveal, or a “gender-bread” reveal, if you will. We were so convinced that we were having a boy, so when the pink confetti exploded out of our homemade cardboard gingerbread house, my mouth opened about as wide as my face. I was genuinely surprised and so excited to be a girl mom once again!

Right before Christmas, we met a quirky woman in Walmart who sparked up a conversation with us. She shared a little bit with us about her beliefs and her background. Then before leaving, she asked us, “what miracles have you seen God do in your life?” We thought for a second and proceeded to talk about salvation and childbirth and financial provision. She responded, “absolutely, that’s God too, but I mean the miraculous—something that could only be explained by God.” We both left just pondering on that. We were honestly a little stumped. Out of the quietness of our drive home, Walker asked me, “do you think we were entertaining an angel?” I wasn’t so sure we weren’t.

Over the new year, Walker and I prayed that God would just take us so much deeper in our faith. My word for the year was “connect,” and his word for the year was, “alive.” We were desperate to experience God.

On January 9th, 2025, at our 24-week prenatal checkup, the doctor saw something she really didn’t like. Immediately, we were referred to specialists, then to cardiologists at UMMC. Something was wrong with Cove’s heart and possibly other things too. Strangely, we had such a strong conviction that God was taking us on a journey to answer those prayers we had been praying over the new year.

All of a sudden, the joyful and exciting pregnancy became a battlefield. Walker and I began waking up early every morning to pray over Cove. We were going to the doctor every few weeks. We were planning and preparing for what would come after she was born.

As we prayed throughout that season, the Lord really laid it on our hearts to pray for a miracle—something that could only be explained by God. So, that’s what we were expecting.

Then, Cove was born on April 2nd, 2025 at UMMC in Jackson, MS. We got to see her and hear her soft cry for just a few seconds before they rushed her back to another room with a team of medical staff. She was perfect. She weighed 5lbs and 14 oz, had a head full of dark red hair, and looked so much like her big sister Manna. I finally got to go see her in the PICU around 9:30 that night. A miracle she was, and she had already been through so much as a tender newborn baby.

She had her first major heart surgery on April 9th at a mere 7 days old. Seeing her all hooked up and swollen beyond recognition was hard for me. I began questioning, “God, what happened to the miracle we’ve been praying for?” I felt like it must have been my fault. I must have prayed for the wrong thing, not prayed hard enough, or in the right way. It must have been God’s discipline for something wrong in my life. I questioned, “if I prayed for something and nothing changed, why pray at all then?”

I was mad, sad, confused, hurt. It was hard to pray again. I wasn’t sure what to even pray anymore! But God was patient with me in my hurting. Somewhere along the way, I cried out to God. I was brutally honest with Him, and He lovingly answered all of my hard questions. I’ve learned that God honors the wrestle because it’s in the wrestle that we are seeking Him the most. From that, He gave me the courage to walk this season out and trust Him while doing so. So, we embraced even the hardest parts of it, and we kept praying for a miracle.

Cove began her recovery journey and within a few weeks after her first big surgery, she had weaned off of most medicines, gotten off of the ventilator, and had even started taking a bottle! I remember being amazed seeing two pictures of her only 3 weeks apart. In the first one, she seemed almost lifeless, and in the second one, she was sitting up in my lap taking a bottle.

Cove had to stay in the PICU between her big heart surgeries to receive certain medications and a close watch at all times. While in the PICU, she grew and grew and grew! And while she grew, so did her eyelashes. She had the most beautiful, luscious eyelashes ever. She had a head full of auburn red hair that stood straight up in the back. She constantly had the cutest bed head. So, to contain the bedhead, we started doing pigtails with it. That became her own style! She never grew out of those big dark blue eyes, and she intently watched everyone who walked in the room. Dr. Vishwa talked about how she would just stare right into his soul.

She was so observant and curious. She loved having people come in the room with her. I’ve had so many of her nurses talk about how she would get a little fussy and immediately calm down when they simply walked into the room. She liked to people-watch from her bouncer, watching everyone walk through the hallway by her room. She always looked like such a big girl sitting up in her bouncer.

Cove was such a happy baby, and I’m not just saying that! I remember early on thinking, “isn’t she supposed to be crying?” But I guess she had learned to be content where she was because it was all she had ever known. Her nurses loved having her because she was so easy and fun to take care of. She loved being swaddled, and she slept often.

As she got older, she loved being talked to. In her last couple of months, she really began cooing and talking. I was even able to get a couple of laughs on video in the weeks leading up to her big heart surgery. She did not like her nighttime bath, but she would sleep so good afterwards. She would often sleep through the night!

She was so well-loved by her medical staff. From her nurses to her doctors, from her therapists to her social worker, and even the ECMO team before they were even involved with her case. I would often walk in and find some new toy, a new homemade craft, or a new bow that a nurse was responsible for. She would babble and talk to the nurses at their desk and smile real big when they came in and talked back to her.

For the 180 days of her life in the hospital, I had the greatest honor and privilege of getting to see her most of those days. I was the one that got to spend the most time with her, and it is one of my greatest honors that God chose me to be the one that got to show her love in that capacity. We would read books, play with toys, sit and talk, rock in the chair, sing worship music, and dream about finally getting out of the hospital. I couldn’t wait to be able to hold her without any wires, without needing permission, or without a monitor sounding off.

She was supposed to have her next big heart surgery at the end of August, but due to an infection, it was postponed until September. We were anxiously waiting to take those steps that would finally bring us all home together—a family of four.

Walker and I could both sense the changing of the seasons—physically and spiritually. When we first had Cove, it was still cool outside, just starting to warm up for Spring. As we stepped into September, we could feel the crispness in the morning air. We believed that God was also bringing us into a new season of life…that things would soon be different!

As the time for her surgery came about, we prayed again for God to work a miracle in Cove. We asked that if God was willing, to deliver her from surgery altogether…as we had prayed before every surgery she had already been through. On September 11th, she had her next major heart surgery, called the “Glenn.” When we got the call that they had gotten started with the surgery, we said “okay, we’re doing this,” believing that it was what God intended. It was a long day, but when they finished and said everything had went well, we rejoiced with such thankfulness!

The next few days, Cove was doing well. Walker and I went to grab some breakfast, came back in an hour, and all of a sudden, something was wrong. They decided to do another heart cath to see what was going on, and then decided to bring her back to surgery. It felt like a whirlwind. So unexpected. So quickly it happened. Cove endured another major heart surgery on September 15th.

After that, it was all they could do to just maintain her state. She wasn’t declining quickly, but she also wasn’t recovering or improving. I remember one night, I stayed up just watching her numbers thinking, “God, is this really it?” The next morning, they decided that it would be best for Cove to be put on ECMO, which was the highest amount of support that they could offer her. We quickly realized, we were in desperate need of a miracle. We found such comfort and assurance in the fact that we had been praying for a miracle since the very beginning of this journey, before we ever knew that we’d be in that position.

The doctors decided that taking Cove back to surgery would be the best chance she had. So, on September 23rd, Cove endured a third major heart surgery within the span of 2 weeks. It went as well as it could have, but her little body just couldn’t take anymore. Strangely enough, her heart was doing pretty well, but all her other organs were failing her.

On September 29th, God graced us with the opportunity to hold our baby Cove as she left this life behind and stepped into the presence of Jesus. We prayed for a miracle until the very end, but what we found at that end was so much more miraculous than we could have ever imagined.

I’ve never been face to face with death quite like that, but in that very moment, I witnessed the miracle of her death. I saw death and victory all in one glorious final breath. Cove was healed…fully, perfectly. She no longer needed surgeries. She no longer felt pain. She finally left the hospital. She finally got to go home. And Walker and I got to lead our baby to Jesus, holding her hand while Jesus met her. It was the purest depiction of the gospel message, and that message had never been truer to me than in that moment.

It was the most beautiful moment I have ever witnessed.

Yes, it hurts. We are grieving our loss, but we are praising Heaven’s gain. We are clinging to Jesus because He is the One who saves. We are holding each other tight and appreciating each other’s presence so much more than we did before. We are seeing more and more that God’s ways are higher, and His love is stronger than we realized.

God sent Cove with a purpose for such a time as this. Even though it seems like her life was too short…it wasn’t. She fulfilled every purpose that God had for her life.

As if it wasn’t enough for my own life to be transformed….look at all the good that God has done through Cove’s story! I believe there are people here that may have never heard the message of the gospel before. God brought you here. I believe there are people who hadn’t prayed in a long time that prayed for Cove. God used that as a tool to draw you back to Him. I believe that there are people whose faith has been restored because they’ve seen Walker and I walk through the fire and still believe that God is good. God brought beauty from the ashes! I believe that there are people who don’t even believe in God that have began to wrestle. God took everything that the enemy meant for evil, and He turned it for good.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.” ‭‭

1 Thessalonians‬ ‭4‬:‭13‬-‭14‬ ‭‭

‭“But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians‬ ‭15‬:‭54‬-‭57‬

That’s the powerful message of the gospel.

That’s Cove’s story. It can be your story, too.