Our Baby Story - Part 1 - You Will be Pregnant

I shared this story on June 29^th with my church.  It took 30 minutes to share in church, and I didn’t share everything, so I put these in several posts, and back dated them so that you can read along at your own pace.  My Dad, Sister and Mother-In-Law have all asked me over the past month or two to write down our story to share… so this is my attempt at doing so.  I wrote it over the week, but I did it quickly, so I’m sorry if there is not as much heart in it as there should be… or if you find at times there is too much heart.

To start off this story, you need to know why having a child has been so important to my husband and I, especially if you are reading this and have not personally met us.

We got married in 2008.  We didn’t want to start off our marriage with kids, but we did hope to get pregnant near the end of our first year.

2010, October 18^th, we got a positive pregnancy test.  We were over the moon.  I was standing when I read the results, and was so shocked, I literally fell on our bed behind us.

20 weeks in, my cervix opened, and we lost our son just two hours after he was born.

The year after that was hard. At first, we wanted nothing to do with having another child.  Some people understood that and stood behind us.  Others, (a small but vocal group) became really mean and severely judged us.  Some even told us that to not want more children said we had no faith, no trust in God, or that we were just being selfish.  This made an already hard time, going through postpartum and grief, even harder.

But over time, maybe about six months, we started wanting children again.  After all the attacks and judgements, we felt we couldn’t share that, I was too afraid to share my heart’s desires with anyone.  So many people supported us, those that attacked us were not large in numbers, yet I let them have more power over me than I should have.  

So, once we admitted to each other that we were willing to try again, I admitted it to God.  So in the fall of 2011 I prayed about it.  I admitted my fears of wanting another child, of going through another pregnancy that might not end well, but that my heart still wanted another child.

I prayed, and asked God if there was any way He’d share with me if I should keep wanting another child, or if I should give up the dream altogether.  God answered me, and told me there would be another pregnancy in a few years.  You would think that would have given me hope, and it did to some degree.  But God told me I would be pregnant, and nothing more.  That actually left me very unsettled.  I didn’t want just another pregnancy.  At that point I didn’t have the strength to lose another child.  I don’t know if I even have that strength right now.  So, I am ashamed to admit that I let fear get the better part of me for a while.

In September of 2012 we had a ladies retreat, and I finally broke down and admitted to the women in the room, about a dozen of them, that I did indeed want another baby, but that I couldn’t go through losing another one.  We prayed for each other and I asked for prayer that God would either give me peace, or give me an answer to how the pregnancy would end.  I didn’t want to force God’s hand, but I also needed to find a way to give over the worry.

We did not get any answers that day.  But just a few days later, I got together with three other women.  We had been on a Pastor Search Team together, and had just gotten our new pastor to sign the papers to make him our pastor.  We went to the home of one of the ladies to pray about next steps in our individual lives.  Well, one woman, when we were praying for next steps for me, got the verse Luke 1:14 in prayer.  No one in the room knew what that verse was, so we looked it up.

Luke 1:14 says “He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.”

Those verses had to be about Jesus' birth, and I had to focus on being glad to be God's child... Except, those verses were about John the Baptist when we read it in context. 

“He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.”

I thought I’d feel an overwhelming joy at those words, my dreams were going to come true.  But all I felt was an amazing peace.  I felt God’s peace settle all over me and my breath just settled softly in my chest.  To me, that verse meant that if God was sharing it with me after knowing my prayers over the past while, He was affirming that not only would there be a pregnancy, but that many would rejoice because of his birth, and he would be a joy and delight to me.  To me, that meant that baby was coming home with us.  He had not forgotten about us.  He was keeping His promise.

That verse has kept me company through the almost two years since I’ve heard it, and something I’m still clinging too.  My story is not near done.  God has done so many amazing things since then, in ways He’s been there for us, provided for us, challenged us.  I hope you’ll continue reading our story, and that somehow it touches or blesses you.