Our story of a promise long waited for. A journey through pain, heartache, faith, a hope restored, and joy! God is faithful and His promises are true!
I’ve written this post in my head thousands of times. I’ve thought of every word I would say and how I would say it, but now that it’s actually time to write it and all I can do is cry.
This picture means more to me than you will ever know. It’s kinda crazy to for me to think that we have been struggling with infertility for as long as I’ve had my blog.
This journey has been one of joy, heartbreak, confusion, faith, anger, restored hope, and then promises fulfilled. I wrote the words that way on purpose because it has literally been a roller coaster of emotion as the Lord has gently walked us through each season over the past 4 years.
I can still remember that day in August of 2013, we had just had a miscarriage and I desperately needed comfort. I walked into a women’s all day prayer event… and to be honest I didn’t want to be there. But there was something calling me to this event, and as I walked in, the room was dark, so it made me feel safe. I could blend into the darkness and not be seen.
We spend most of the day in worship and I hid behind the singing … avoiding talking to God. Then the “host” said, ‘ok ladies we are going to spend some time in quiet prayer. I want you to find a place in the sanctuary and get comfy to talk to the Lord. Ask him what he has for you.’
I found a quiet place in the corner, laid down and just started to cry. Those were the only words I could muster at the moment, tears… I felt like I heard the Lord say “Do you think I’m big enough? I’m the God who breathed life in Mary and she bore a child. Ask me. Ask me to breathe life into you. Do you think I’m big enough?”
Through the tears I started to ask… still laying on the ground, eyes closed, head facing up.
Before I even finished the words I can remember seeing our church ceiling opening up and a bright light coming through. I didn’t recognize the light, but I could tell that it was slowly coming towards me. Finally the light reached me and I saw a bright face, the face came towards my face and pressed its lips to mine and breathed a CPR breathe of life into me. Then slowly the bright light went back towards the ceiling and the ceiling closed back up. I just laid there shocked and remembering the words I heard
Ask me to breathe life into you.
I thought for sure He had literally breathed life into me and that we would soon be pregnant. Soon he would allow this blessing of new life to come into our lives. The next month I learned that was not the case. But I still remembered those words and the words, “do you think I’m big enough?” It was almost like I had stuck God in this box I could manage and he was challenging the way I thought about Him through this process.
Fast forward a year to a September 2014, we had visited the doctor after trying for a year and they decided to put us on a couple of rounds of clomid. Clomid is basically a drug to help women ovulate and according to the doctor, my body was not doing that on it’s own so this drug was meant to help “kickstart” it.
As we started the first round of clomid, I remembered those words. Do you think I’m big enough? My heart was focused on the Lord, I felt like He wanted me to believe that He was a God of the impossible. And I did. Right before we had left for a trip to celebrate my parents 25th wedding anniversary I went to the doctor and had a 21 day blood test done. This test basically tells the doctor if I’m ovulating or not. I was confident I was… and I kept hearing the words.
Ask me to breathe life in to you. For the first time in a year and half I dared to hope and believe again. I let me heart go there. You know, thinking of the joy and feeling you will experience when you see that positive sign on the pregnancy test. I can still remember walking out of Walmart in Redmond, Oregon. My phone rang and it was the nurse from my doctors office, she said that I had not ovulated that month. My heart sank and I couldn’t control it, I burst into tears walking in the parking lot.
I can remember sitting down in the car thinking, “but you are bigger than the doctors. Who cares if they say I didn’t ovulate, you don’t need that. You created the world out of nothing. You can just say the word and I’ll be pregnant. I believe you not the doctors.”
Later that month. Still not pregnant.
From that day I have struggled with, why would the Lord give you promises, bring hope, cast vision and then not fulfill his promise. That seems hurtful. My faith took a huge hit after that trial. And honestly, the hits just kept on coming. Not only with pregnancy but things with my husbands work. Family stuff. Having to let go of some of the dreams we had and plans we were starting to make.
I just decided. I’m gonna enjoy what’s in front of me. And what’s in front of me is my husband and my sweet baby boy. So that’s what I did. We focused on our family, took trips that brought joy to our life, and poured ourselves into this new church we had helped start. However, I still felt spiritually that I was at an all time low. I didn’t understand God. I didn’t understand what He was doing. Why we have had to walk such a hard journey and why other people around me continue to have struggle after struggle? That doesn’t seem like a good God.
I had no idea that even then He was still after my heart.
October 2016 rolled around and we decided … ok. Let’s go to the fertility doctor and see what’s going on. I mean, we were able to get pregnant twice without an issue and now nothing.. something must be off. We went and the doctor said, “Honestly, there is nothing blatantly wrong. You’ll be able to get pregnant eventually, it’s just taking longer for some reason this time. But if you would like to try to ‘speed the process up’ there are other options.” Immediately I tuned him out.
To preface this, I had never wanted to, nor was I interested in IVF. I know myself, I’m Type A.. I like to take control of the situation and I didn’t want to go there. Plus I was already emotionally exhausted from trying for 3 years. I knew the amount of toll it would take and I wasn’t ready for it. I had written the IVF process off before even walking into the room.
As Mike and I are sitting in the chair, the doctor tells us. “Right now we are running a study on IVF, it’s for a drug that we already use. One of the drug companies just wants to say that they’re better than the other. You guys would be a perfect fit for this study. Both of you are healthy and have great ranges, so most likely it will stick the first time. But if not, you have the eggs for the next time. The great news is with this study it drops the cost from $25K to $3500 total.”
I still wasn’t convinced but Mike strongly encouraged me to pray about. So I did and felt peace about it. Which was a huge shocker because I was SOOO against it before. We both felt like this was from the Lord and we were even the last couple to get signed into the study on the last day they were accepting people. We started the process and even the shots every day weren’t bad. I was honestly stress free. I felt like we were in line with what the Lord had for us. The days got closer and closer to the egg transfer day and I just got more excited. We were going to have a baby. The Lord was so good. He had restored my faith and my hope in him. I trusted Him with my heart again, after all the damage and shots it took over the past 3 years. I think the biggest game changer for me, was I felt the Lord’s presence and peace again and that changed me.
In my mind, we were already pregnant when we got that egg transfer. Mike was even hoping for twins. Both of us let our guard down and fell head first in God’s plan.
Then we got the call that the rest of the eggs they had saved to try and freeze did not make it. They had deteriorated after the second day. No more eggs. We had to wait 10 days before we could see if the eggs they had transferred to me “stuck.” The day we got that call I was sitting on the floor with my son making a astronaut book. I picked up the phone and it was the nurse we had worked with, she said that blood tests came back and we weren’t pregnant.
I didn’t know what to say. How to respond. I just hung up and burst into tears, curled up on the floor into a fetus and cried. Again, why Lord. Why let us hope to only bring heartache?
Just then Cason looks at me and without skipping a beat says, “it’s okay mommy, God is gonna give you a baby.” Such faith in such a tiny vessel!
Mike’s parents took Cason for the night and we took some time to grieve. I remember asking so many questions of the Lord. Feeling angry, hurt, confused… pain. And in the parking lot at Cheesecake Factory I told Mike through tears. “He knows the desires of our hearts. I know that we made the right decision, I felt peace about it and felt closer to God. I feel like we trusted Him with our hearts again. He knows that I wanted to have another baby naturally. He knows that desire of my heart.”
We left it at that. And honestly didn’t put much thought into it. The holidays came, the new year, Cason’s birthday, and then we found out we had to move so our minds were going a million miles a minute just trying to keep up. I clearly remember walking into our new house for the first time as owners and feeling newness and a fresh start. We got the house set up and then 14 days later left for Jamaica.
When we got back I knew that I was late, but that wasn’t new. I had been late before. A week passes and I start to get hopefully, but don’t really let my mind go there. I started to notice that I would be a lot more winded during my workouts and honestly my stomach felt weird. Day 10 arrived and I told Mike that I needed to take a test. Either I was pregnant or something was wrong with me and I needed to go to the doctor.
It was Sunday morning, and right after service I headed out to the drug store and Mike stuck around with Cason to break down church and pack it into trailers (which is what we do every Sunday). I got home and with shaking hands took the test and literally within a minute it said PREGNANT. We were pregnant and it was natural! I just started crying. So many times I had seen negative that to finally see positive I was shocked. I ran to my car, hopped in, and through tears streaming down my face headed back to church. I found Mike finishing up and as I walked across the room he saw me, he saw my face, and he mouthed to me “are we?” And I just burst into tears and shook my head yes. Then he started crying. I ran and just collapsed into his arms.
God’s promises over the past 4 years had finally come to fruition. All the heartache and the pain brought us back to him, to his faithfulness. He never gives up and never disappoints. There may be sorrow in the night but joy comes in the morning. And his timing couldn’t be more perfect. We are so excited to announce that Cason will be a BIG brother and that we are due on January 24th. And don’t worry, we’ll be a doing a gender reveal party the second week of August, I can’t wait to find out what it’s gonna be. Team Blue or Team Pink 🙂
