Part of Your History #5

One year ago today, I stood with disbelief and blurry tear-filled eyes as I stared down at the test in my hands. A single word on its tiny digital screen changed everything: PREGNANT.

Hannah - "For This Child I Prayed" by Elspeth Young

Our journey to have baby #1 did not happen as quickly or as easily as I thought or hoped it would. When Spencer and I first got married, we determined when we thought we wanted to have our first baby and each one after that. But clearly we should have known better than to think that we could plan things out and have them happen exactly as we hoped and anticipated. For months we tried and (I) underwent tests, medications, and medical procedures to try to help us have a child. During that time I mostly was able to remain positive about things and felt strongly that despite our roadblocks, children would still come into our family -- it was just a matter of how and when. Spencer and I prayed daily and fasted on several occasions that we would be blessed with children.

Although the period of longing for a baby now seems like a distant, blurry memory, I remember one day quite clearly. It was a Sunday and I was teaching the Sunday School lesson on Abraham and Isaac. A large part of the lesson focused on Abraham and Sarah, and the years that they waited for a blessing of their own child. They came up with their own ideas -- on several occasions -- of how this child would come into their family, doubting that it could happen on its own without their creative intervention. Eventually Isaac was born to his parents in their old age. I wondered why the Lord told them about this son so far in advance of his coming. Was it to prepare them? To test their faith? Their patience? Perhaps it was for all of these reasons.  But there was another important lesson here too -- they had to wait so they could truly see the Lord's hand in their life. What could otherwise have been a rather commonplace event took years for them to accomplish.

It's certainly not an everyday event for anyone to have a child, but in the midst of bearing what seemed to be one of life's heavier crosses, I became grateful for the chance to really involve the Lord in the process.  The times that we have to truly wait on the Lord after doing all that we can do are when we can often feel the most desperate.  But they are also the times when we can see the most clearly that He is over all - mindful of our most basic needs and our deepest desires.  God is in His heaven and miracles abound; sometimes it just takes some desperation -- and patience -- to see them.