A parent's worst nightmare - my neighbour's only daughter was in a deep coma following a car accident and doctors feared that she would be severely brain damaged.

I had one precious child and, as a mother, felt utterly distraught.

Time passed, we went on holiday and then returned to the joyous news that, against all the odds, our neighbour's child had made a complete recovery.

But, instead of feeling joy, I was overcome with selfish guilt and fear. How could I tell my husband that I had made a bargain with God?

It's not that I was a Christian then or knew anything about the ways of God - but I'd pleaded and I'd begged that if He'd make the child completely well, I'd give up having what I wanted most in the world - more children of my own.

But what right had I to bargain over something which was also my husband's desire?

As it happened he wasn't a bit bothered claiming that God, if He existed, wouldn't make His choice of miracles depend on a bargain with me. But I wasn't consoled or reassured I longed for at least another three children!

A few weeks later a new neighbour and her baby son moved in across the road. We soon became firm friends to the extent that she asked if we would be her baby's guardians if anything should happen to her.

We readily agreed and she wrote a letter confirming this wish. She eventually moved away from my village, but we kept in touch.

One day we had all been out to town and on the way home she asked us to pull up at the pub for her to buy cigarettes. She left the baby in the car with me.

She never returned to the car and to this day, twenty two years on, we have never seen her again. We adopted her beautiful son - Social Services accepting her letter as proof that it was her wish.

I never did give birth to any more children; but just maybe God does make bargains, because over the next few years I was to be given two more beautiful babies - one on the Island of Mauritius and another found in the forest in Zambia.

So what does my husband make of this? Well in those days he was a Civil Engineer, but now he's an ordained Minister of two churches in south Wales.

Coral Smith - Merthyr Tydfil - 2002