MEMPHIS, Tenn– Lizzie Gray is only 3 years old,

“It’s a little baby camera and it’s big, big camera,” Josh Gray said.

But she already knows the camera loves her, and she loves posing for it.

“Cheese!” Lizzie said.

Lizzie’s young life hasn’t always been picture perfect. She was born in May 2011. Her parents, Josh and Laurie, thought she was a healthy baby.

“A nurse came in and said something is wrong with Lizzie and we had to send her down to the NICU. Her color is bad,” Josh said.

Lizzie had to be connected to wires and machines as her doctors figured out what was wrong.

“He said it’s her heart and Le Bonheur has seen cases like this and that’s where she’s going to go,” Laurie said.

The Le Bonheur Pedi-Flite team had come to Lizzie’s delivery hospital to transport her when they noticed a problem.

“She was on the elevator, she had stopped breathing,” Laurie said.

Lizzie was stabilized and taken to Le Bonheur.  Doctors determined she needed to be in the cardiovascular ICU.

“To carry a baby for nine months and then to say we’re going to take her away, I don’t know if words can express what’s that like. It was tough,” Lauie said.

The Grays were also living in Kennett, Missouri, at the time, but knew Memphis would be where they should be living and that Le Bonheur was where Lizzie needed to have her major surgery.

“Her pulmonary artery and her aorta were on opposite sides and they needed to be swapped,” Josh said.

Dr. Vijay Joshi is Le Bonheur’s interim cardiology chief.

“We could take a situation that could have been life and death and made it into preserving life and focused on that,” Joshi said.

Lizzie’s family turned to prayer and her dad, who’s also a pastor, remembers reading from his bible. Daniel, chapter three.

“If we’re thrown into the blazing fire, the God whom we serve is able to save us,” Josh said.

Their prayers seemed to be answered. Lizzie was improving and she was now ready for surgery to repair a hole in her heart.

“It was trying, but it went as planned and after that she had a successful heart surgery,” Joshi said.

But there would be setback. Lizzie was given a newborn hearing test and failed it. She had severe hearing loss.

“We asked God, you’ve gotten us this far, why do we have to go through one more thing and why can’t my baby hear me when I sing to her?” Laurie said.

Months later, she qualified for cochlear implants and had surgery at Le Bonheur.

Her parents remember how she cried when her implants were turned on for the first time at the Memphis Oral School for the Deaf.

“Lizzie just screamed bloody murder for about three hours,” Josh said.

But the Grays say a miracle happened when doctors told Laurie to speak to Lizzie.

“I said, ‘Lizzie, baby,’ and she looked up at me and her pacifier fell out of her mouth and this precious grin come across her face,” Laurie said.

Lizzie is happy, and her parents say it’s because of Le Bonheur, the hospital Lizzie says has her heart.

“When we drive by Le Bonheur and we’ll look up and Lizzie will say, ‘Heart, heart. Lizzie heart…Lizzie heart, and that’s Lizzie heart,'” Josh said.