Believing For a Miracle

A picture from three years ago when we were in Iowa for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately those two pink lines never showed up and my hope of wearing a cute Thanksgiving bump shirt was nothing more than a dream.

It has been over 3 years since we began trying to grow our family biologically. The past 3 years have taken us on a journey I never thought I would go on. We have experienced countless doctor’s offices, fertility clinics, home remedies, and other medical professionals, all of whom have tried in their own way to get my body in tip top shape to conceive a child. Yet three years have passed and we still have yet to see two pink lines on a pregnancy test.

To be honest with you since we started fostering the desire to become a biological mother has dwindled at times. Most recently that desire has not been a main focus. I have two beautiful girls who call me “Mommy” and their love and joy has filled that all consuming void. But sometimes, when the days are tough, or things happen in their case that remind me they are not really ours forever I become angry for not being any closer to carrying a child in my womb.

As many of you know, a year ago the Lord gave me a promise that a sweet child would be brought into our family forever. He gave me that sweet girl’s name (yes, it’s a girl) and her age. For a year I’ve been clinging to that promise He so graciously poured out on me. I’ve prayed for her, wept over her, and cried out to our Abba Father in her name, wondering, hoping, pleading with the Lord that He would protect her wherever she may be. But then something happened a few short months ago that shook everything in me that I had known about this promise. My dear husband spoke truth into my life one night and shared how he just felt we would be pregnant before 2017 came to an end. He didn’t know where the feeling came from but he just knew it to be true. He also proceeded to tell me that he felt this sweet child the Lord had promised me was a biological child, not a foster child that we would eventually adopt. Everything I once knew about this sweet girl, the one whose name I wear on my wrist everyday, was no more.

With only 2 months left in the year I began to really contemplate what these last few days of 2017 held for our family. It was in this time that I really began thinking about our journey 3 years ago to grow our family. Josh and I were still newly married and finally into our groove of our new life together. I remember lying on the couch in our cute, one bedroom apartment, the sun shining in through the large window in the den, as I sat on the computer browsing Pinterest, finding the cutest Thanksgiving shirts that would reveal to my family we were expecting. We had just begun trying to have a baby and I was so hopeful. We were putting forth every possible effort we could: timing intercourse, tracking fertility, eating the right things, and not subjecting our bodies to the wrong thing. I just KNEW we would see those two pink lines before we caught our flight home to see my family. I think back to that time, how naive I was, but how hopeful I truly was as well. I really believed we wouldn’t struggle at that time, it wasn’t a facade I was forcing upon myself, it was true belief.

What I didn’t know at the time is that 3 years later I would be sitting in the same position, just a few short weeks before Thanksgiving, still hoping and praying that a child would form in my womb, but this time there would be 2 children sleeping sweetly upstairs in their room, both of whom call me “Mommy”. The special thing about these two beautiful children though is that neither of them came from my womb, nor do they share my last name. No, I didn’t think life would ever look like this and many times I’m still surprised at how many children I’ve been a mommy to over the last two years. As surprising as it is though I know it was all God’s perfect plan, and I know His plan for giving us a forever child, whether through pregnancy or adoption, is still perfect.

This time around though, I know more than ever if my womb is not filled with our sweet Baby Hughes by the end of 2017 it’s truly okay. And if there’s anything I’ve learned over these years of waiting it’s that God’s timing is always perfect, no matter what.