A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to share our story with our church. Our uncle/preacher called and said he was doing a sermon on waiting on God, and he thought our story would be a great example to share. Just wanted to share what I shared with the church.
I
feel very inadequate and intimidated to try to sufficiently give God the praise
and the glory that He is due. But Brother Steve asked me to share our story, so
my prayer is that my words will glorify God and maybe help encourage some of
you.
Michael
and I got married here in this church about 5 ½ years ago. Just like most young
married couples, we dreamed of a family.
We longed to have children (that’s probably an understatement…I was
actually pretty obsessed with getting pregnant). We anxiously awaited my
graduation from grad school, so we could begin our perfect little family in our
perfect timing. But, we soon realized that our timing and God’s timing was not
the same.
For
almost 3 years, we struggled with infertility, and we were unable to get pregnant.
We spent thousands of dollars, had multiple procedures and surgeries, took
fertility medications, prayed a million prayers, and cried countless tears. I
won’t lie…I hit a low point. I was discouraged, depressed, and I questioned
God. I was mad at God. I dreaded going to baby showers and avoided the baby
departments in the stores. I couldn’t understand why God would allow teenagers,
prostitutes, and drug users to get pregnant but here we were doing everything
right, living for Him, and He just wasn’t coming through for us.
Somewhere
in the midst of all that, God, with His amazing grace and love for me, began to
change my heart. I began to learn to trust Him and His plan for my life. I
slowly began to turn over control to him and believe in my heart that His plan
for me was better than my plan. For the first time in a while, I had hope. Our
faith in Him strengthened and our marriage grew stronger. We began to see this
“infertility curse” as a blessing as we watched God move in our lives. We
became more involved in the church and dove into His word. In our hopeless
situation, God gave us hope and a peace that transcends all understanding. We
realized how truly blessed we were, and we thanked Him daily. God began to open
our hearts to adoption, and although I was resistant at first because it was
hard for me to let go of my lifelong dream of bearing a child, He eventually
got my heart 100% on board, and we dove into the adoption process with a new
found purpose. We had finally discovered God’s will for us, and we were beyond excited!
We had waited almost 3 years to figure this out and would now probably wait
another 2 years throughout the complicated adoption process.
The bible says that good
things come to those who wait on the Lord.
On June 25th, 2012, we experienced God’s amazing
grace on a whole new level when we discovered that we were pregnant. I fell to
my knees and cried out to God in thanksgiving. We were focused on the adoption
and had decided to get off the fertility meds, and BAM, God got us pregnant. In
HIS perfect timing, in HIS perfect plan, once He had opened our eyes to HIS
perfect will for us. We were so completely overwhelmed by His love and
sovereignty.
For so long, as we waited on the Lord, I questioned Him.
It’s so crazy for us to actually think that we could know better than Him. But
so often, in our impatience, we forget that God knows EVERYTHING. He can see
things that we are blind to. Looking back on it, it is so clear to us why God
had us wait. First and foremost, He wanted to draw us closer to Him and have us
depend on Him in a way we never had before. In addition, our marriage and love
for each other only grew stronger. He gave us a testimony that we can share
with and encourage others. We went on our first foreign mission trip that
drastically changed our lives forever (that we never would have gone on had we
gotten pregnant when we had wanted to). And finally, He opened our hearts up to
adoption, something that sadly I probably never would have considered had He
not brought us through this journey. We plan on following through with God’s
calling and adopting a child once this baby is born. Only God could have known
all that He could do in us while we waited on Him.
Last
week we sat in our doctor’s office holding a sonogram picture of our beautiful miracle
baby, a gift from God. For those of you who don’t know, pregnant women can be
slightly emotional at times. I stared at the picture in disbelief, and I cried
the ugly cry. I sobbed to Michael, “I just don’t understand why God would do
this for us. I feel so undeserving. I just don’t see why He would give us this
gift.” My husband’s simple and perfect response, “because He loves us”. Love is
the answer for everything. Why did He die on the cross for us? Because He loves
us. Why does He give us heart ache and trials and make us wait for what we want
right then? Because He loves us. Why on earth does the God of the universe
continue to give us amazing grace? Because he loves us.
Thank
you for letting me share our story.
