For this week's assignment we are to share “personal miracles” that have happened... or a serious answer to prayer.
Well this is long, but how about I share my testimony. It is certainly a huge answer to prayer.
I’ve always known what I wanted to be when I grew up, ever since I was a little girl. I toyed with the idea of being the “best” computer consultant, even better than my Dad for awhile. But deep down my heart’s desire was to be a Mom. Each year growing up, my Mom would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. She had a little school book that had a few of the typecast roles printed in it like nurse, teacher, secretary and then it had a space for other. Every year I would say, “I want to be a Mom”. And my Mom would write that in the ‘other’ slot.
When I was dating my “now husband” he said that he never wanted to have kids. I just looked him straight in the face and said, “Well then…I don’t want to date you.” I knew what I wanted. And obviously he did too, since he changed his mind real quick. We had planned to wait 5 years after we were married to have children. The 5 year mark was coming up and I was starting to get anxious. I finally had his consent. The 5 year mark passed, the 6 year mark passed, and the 7th year and even the 8th year passed. I was hurt. I was angry. I was downright devastated. All of our friends were having their 4th and even 5th babies. Why couldn’t I get pregnant? We are good faithful Christians, responsible, loving…Why not us? Oh and when I heard stories of people getting pregnant and not even wanting the child it would just throw me into a deep depression. I prayed and prayed. I had our church pray for me. We went to the elder’s meeting and had them pray over us. Our parent’s churches and friends prayed for us. If we visited another church, I would even write a prayer request card for them to pray for us. Week after week, year after year and I just couldn’t understand why God wouldn’t bless us with a child.
It got to be so hard that even going to church was difficult. Well actually church was the hardest place to be. Everyone in my Sunday school class were having babies left and right. And everyone knew we wanted to have children. I really wanted to be happy for them. And I was happy for them, except I was so jealous and hurt that I just couldn’t show it. Many times when a pregnancy was announced I had to leave the room. Unfortunately, I wear my feelings on my sleeve and I couldn’t control myself from not crying. No one seemed to really understand, except for those few who had been there. The comments people gave were well meaning, but just hurt even more. On New Arrival’s Day and Mother’s Day…I couldn’t even go to church. I was at the absolute lowest point in my life.
One day at Wednesday night church, I asked my class to pray for me. I started out saying, my birthday is on Sunday and I know that 30 is not old. At that point I got lots of laughter, which then made me break down and say, it’s going to be a really hard day for me, because I thought by this time in my life I would already have children. My class prayed with me and it was not long after that, that we decided to go through in vitro fertilization.
In Vitro is very difficult! Not only is it physically and mentally hard and painful and VERY expensive but, also many hard decisions have to be made within a matter of days. You have to know spiritually what you believe in. WHEN is a child conceived? What will you do if you have embryos left over? Is it killing a child or is it even a child at that point? How many embryos should we put in? If I should die or have an emergency hysterectomy and we have embryos leftover, what do we do with those embryos? If you believe that each embryo is a child then how will you feel if someone else is a surrogate for your children? The list goes on and on.
However when we were going through this whole ordeal, our church of 2000 people were praying for us. My husband worked with approximately 180 4th thru 6th graders at church. And those children learned what in vitro meant and all those kids prayed fervently for us to have 3 or less. I had never seen a church come together like this and bring people closer to each other than I had seen 5 years ago. On New Year’s Eve 2001, I found out I was pregnant. It wasn’t that much longer until I found out we were having triplets. We told our preacher on Sunday morning and we had no idea he was going to do this but he announced it in the church service. I was only 7 weeks pregnant and he announced it. However, my prayers had been answered. OUR whole church’s prayers had been answered. They took very good care of us after the children were born. We had meals for 5 months, we had people come in shifts and help us feed and care for the babies for several months. We were given money. Someone gave us a diaper drive; we had diapers for a year. Two classes pulled funds together to buy a triplet stroller for us. We were given a gift of someone cleaning our house for 1 ½ years. I was given a day a week to run errands or sleep, while a family watched the kids for 1 ½ years. A friend of mine, who was a night owl, came every Wednesday night for 6 months and fed the kids at night, washed dishes and laundry and let me sleep all night long. It was truly amazing and a huge blessing how everyone chipped in to help.
I really don’t know why God took so long to answer our prayers, but I suspect that part of it was to bring our church together and let them be able to see their answered prayer. I am blessed with my heart’s desire and I thank God every night for them!!!
February Cocoa Daisy Project Shares!
10 years ago
