...but you might want to, because it's April.
According to our plan in early marriage (well, since my husband is more laid back than me, I should clarify that I'm the one who saw it as a firm plan) - but according to our original plan we would have had our first baby in the spring of 2011. That didn't happen.
I've written extensively about our years of infertility, and you can find blog posts and my first book at www.hopeduringinfertility.com for the back story. But I'm going to fast forward to this week one year ago - the first week of April 2017.
For several years I felt as if God was highlighting the month of March as a time having to do with our baby. Maybe she'd be conceived in March? Or born in March? Each year, March came and went, with no baby.
That first week of April last year was busy: I met up with a Facebook friend from the West Coast. She was pregnant with her long-awaited miracle baby after infertility, and we had connected through an online infertility support group called Moms in the Making. I met her on Tuesday. She prayed for my womb, as many people have done over the years.
On Wednesday I was given the opportunity to share my testimony - my life story - with the women in the Bible study I attended. I spoke for a while, sharing freely about my love for writing and our hope of having a baby and all that God was doing in our lives. I had originally been scheduled to share in March, but God had other plans, so the day was bumped back to April 5.
Either that day or the following week, a woman who I barely knew at the time told me she had been praying for someone to have a baby, and she had a word for us. She said she had been reading the Bible story of the Shunnamite woman, who was promised a baby within a year. She said, “God told me that you will have a baby by this time next year.”
I responded with a “thank you,” but in my heart I was thinking other things:
“I’ve seen people get this word before and NOT have a baby.”
“Four years ago we were given a prophetic word that we’d have children very soon.
“We’ve been trying to have a baby for nearly 7 years, I can’t get my hopes up about this.”
I was all too familiar with the Shunnamite woman. I had written this blog post about her years before, where I imagined the emotions she was feeling: I want to have hope! But this hurts! This is my greatest desire, my unfulfilled dream, a tender place in my heart that just HURTS! Don’t tell me that it will happen. Can’t you see that it hasn’t happened after all this time!?
I tucked this woman's hopeful words away in the back of my mind and didn’t think about them again for a while.
A couple of months later, on the last Sunday of June, the topic of the sermon at our church was breakthrough and people were invited up for prayer after the service.
June had been an emotionally difficult month: Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are really hard when you’re unable to have children. June marked 7 years of trying to conceive without a pregnancy, and we'd just spent the past 2 months pursuing treatment with a fertility treatment.
I needed prayer that weekend. Then the woman who prayed for us at the altar that morning emailed me the following day, a longer email that included these words: “I see God walking up to you both and peeling off this great big label that is plastered on you that says INFERTILE. Then He puts His arms around the two of you and the love of His presence washes away all traces of that falsehood so that the fullness of His blessings can begin to flow unhindered in your life.”
Something happened at our home church in North Carolina that same Sunday. Mike and I had met at church, we were married there, and our first couple of years experiencing infertility happened there. On the last Sunday morning in June, our pastor's wife prayed briefly at the end of the service for women wanting to have children. She encouraged people to stand in the gap for family members or others who wanted to have children. A friend and a family member in that service that day each told me that they were praying for me in that moment.
We didn’t realize that something literally shifted that week.
Our July schedules didn’t allow time for fertility treatment, and God decided that opportunitynwas His perfect timing. On a month when it didn’t seem likely that we’d be pregnant, I still had a glimmer of hope, so I still took a pregnancy test. It happened to be a test with words that show up on a digital screen instead of the usual cheap one I kept in my cabinet.
For the first time ever, the word on the screen said “YES.” (Here's our pregnancy announcement from last fall: Jesus Said YES!)
Remember that word from the woman at Bible study, who said that I would have a baby within a year? I’d shared our story with her on April 5, and our due date for this baby is April 3, 2018. (I'm writing this blog post on April 2.) God's perfect timing of this April due date reassured me throughout pregnancy anytime I began to worry about whether or not this baby would make it. It reassures me in these last days of waiting for our baby - God knew the year and the week she would be born - He surely knows the day and the hour!
I'm in the final days of a really long wait. 9 months + 7 years, and honestly, I'm tired of waiting. For years I was disappointed month after month when my body did not become pregnant, and I grew in my trust in God. These past few days have been difficult because I feel so ready to have this baby we've waited for. So today, I remind myself through the power of testimony, that our daughter will be born right on time, because God has ordained her birth so perfectly.
And the baby or child or dream you're asking God to bring to fruition? It will come right on time as well - because He knows what He's doing.
If you're feeling doubt or discouragement, don't forget the power of testimony. Tell someone a piece of the story God is writing in your life.
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| photo credit Karen Saunders photography |
My first book, Embracing Hope During Infertility is intended to infuse hope into your heart! My other books can be found on Amazon as well.
I'd love for you to follow my Hope During Infertility Facebook page or my Betsy Herman, Writer Facebook page. Thanks so much for reading this post!
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