The Singer's: Sanctification in Waiting

Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed about the day I would get married and have a family. By high school I had a pretty perfect plan for my life. I would get married by the time I was 25 and before I turned 30 I would have at least one baby. I had even planned out how many kids I would have and if they would be boys or girls. Somehow I did get married about two months before my 25^th Birthday and so my life was going according to my plan.

When we first got married I really had no desire to have children. I very much desired to learn how to be a wife before a became a mom and so I wanted at least three years for it to just be Todd and I. Every time people would ask if we were going to have kids soon I would shake my head and say ‘NO! Not for awhile!’ pretty emphatically. I’ve always thought that being pregnant did not look like any fun. It looks miserable and uncomfortable, and did not seem appealing to me at all. I also wanted to spend as much time on campus doing ministry as possible, because I love working with college students and I knew that once we would have kids that part of my life would change.

After about 3 years of marriage my desires to have a baby began to change. I was actually starting to want to have a baby, maybe some of this was that my 30^th Birthday was approaching in a year or two, and if I was going to have a baby before 30 it needed to happen soon.

By January 2015 we decided we were ready to start trying to have a family and by March of that year we found out we were pregnant. We were so excited and so thankful that we got pregnant so quickly. Easter weekend, we told our families and they were so excited!

We patiently waited for our first appointment on April 20. When that Monday came, we went to the doctors office excited to hear our baby’s heartbeat. While we were there, the doctor struggled to find the heartbeat and sent us to get an ultra sound, telling us “This is pretty normal, don’t worry!” After the ultra sound we were sent back to the doctor’s office where she told us they weren’t sure if the baby would make it as it only measured at 6 weeks when we should have been 12 weeks. She told us to come back for a blood draw on Wednesday to see if my HCG level increased or decreased and then we would know if it was a miscarriage or not.

Those two days of waiting were awful. After the blood draw we found out that my HCG levels were indeed going down and that it was a MISCARRIAGE. I could not believe it. I was heartbroken. I was finally so excited to have a baby and just like that we lost it. All I wanted to do for days was cry.

Over the next weeks and months we grieved. I do not even think I can count the number of days I cried. Before this loss, I never realized how messy grief is. Some days are good and some days are bad. Some days all I wanted to do is cry and be mad at God for taking our baby away. However, in the midst of the loss and grief, I knew the only place that I would find comfort and strength was with my Heavenly Father. Each day I would start my day by spending time reading His Word and journaling, because I knew that it was only His strength that would get me through each day. I spent hours journaling with tears streaming down my cheeks asking God:

· “Why did you take our baby away?”

· “Why do other people get to have healthy babies when we don’t?”

· “Why do I deserve this? I am faithful, I serve you and walk with you.”

We left for summer mission in North Myrtle Beach (NMB) where we continued to grieve. Some days continued to be good and some continued to be hard, and I continued to seek the Lord daily and meditate on His Word. To my surprise the Lord blessed me with great women on our staff team that summer. One of which was my best friend, and others who were moms that have struggled with infertility and even another who had lost multiple babies. It was so sweet of the Lord to put me in a place with other women who understood and had experienced similar things and were willing to talk with me and share their experiences. One of these women shared with me a passage from Psalms that continues to speak to my heart:

Psalm 73:21-28

²¹When my soul was embittered,
when I was pricked in heart,
²²I was brutish and ignorant;
I was like a beast toward you.

²³Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
    you hold my right hand.
²⁴You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will receive me to glory.
²⁵Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
²⁶My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

²⁷For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
    you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
²⁸But for me it is good to be near God;
    I have made the Lord God my refuge,
    that I may tell of all your works.

Never in my life have a meditated on a passage like I have this one. I’ve gone back to it over and over again, because it is such a good reminder of what the desires of my heart should be. In so many ways I desire to be a mom and have a baby and yet there should be nothing I desire on earth more than my Heavenly Father. Oh, how I long for my heart to only desire my Heavenly Father. It’s also been a sweet reminder that it is good for me to be near God, because even when my flesh fails, He is my strength and portion forever.

Throughout our summer in NMB we continued to wait, desiring to get pregnant again, but my body seemingly wasn’t functioning normally. The waiting didn’t end when we left NMB, we continued to wait and grieve and trust that the Lord had a better plan than we did.

I was dreading November of 2015 because it was the month our baby would have been born, but we were thrilled to find out that we were pregnant again! While we were excited, we also were a bit fearful because of the miscarriage we had in April.

The day before Thanksgiving we woke up to leave for our parent’s houses, but I was bleeding, causing us to spend over 5 hours in Urgent Care, where we found out that it was an ectopic pregnancy. We were devastated that we were losing yet another baby.

I couldn’t believe this was happening for the second time in one year. And once again we began to grieve all over again the loss of another child. I was sad, angry confused, frustrated, and broken hearted. I cried out to God, “Why have you chosen to take another child from us? Why me, Lord, why me? Why can’t I have a healthy, growing baby? Why do I not get a chance to be a mom?”

There was no part of me that wanted to walk this journey again. I didn’t want to spend months grieving and crying. However, I knew that the only place I would find strength to make it through each day was in the Lord. And so I clung to Him and His Word. I spent many mornings reading the Word and journaling in tears. Tears that revealed the pain of loss, tears that revealed my frustration and anger, tears that showed my desire and longing to be a mom and for my life to look different than it currently did. Tears angry at God because He had taken two babies away from us in one year. In the midst of my tears, it was good for my heart to be near to God and His Word. I revisited that passage in Psalm 73 over and over again to remind myself that the only thing on earth worthy of desiring is God, my Father, who loves and cares for me and has good plans for me.

This time around, the Lord provided me with a sweet friend to walk the journey with. One week before our ectopic pregnancy, my best friend had an ectopic pregnancy too. And while I would never desire for anyone experience this grief and loss, it was so sweet of the Lord to give us each other to walk with through this difficult season. We loved and cared for each other, cried together, and pointed each other to Jesus.

As I continued to spend time seeking the Lord during this year of loss and grief, the Lord began to reveal so many areas of sin in my life. Areas of sin that I don’t think I ever would have dealt with or been aware of had I not experienced these losses. I began to see my selfishness and my desire for control. I had a plan and I wanted things to happen in my way and in my timing and if they didn’t, I would get angry and frustrated because I wasn’t in control. The Lord began to reveal my lack of trust in Him and His plan for my life. I had a plan for what our family should look like and when it should happen, and I didn’t really care what He thought or planned. I didn’t trust Him for what He had for us. God began to reveal to me my sense of entitlement. In so many ways, I tend to think that because I love God and follow Him, because I serve Him and am faithful to Him that I am entitled to get my way. This is not true and it is sinful and I began to realize how entitled I often feel. While becoming aware of all these areas of sin was not easy, it was good for my heart to realize them so that I could confess them to God and begin to deal with them. He was growing me and sanctifying me and allowing me to become more like Him.

Although the Lord continued to teach me and grow me in this season of loss and grief, we continued to wait for God’s timing for our family. Winter and spring of 2016 came and went and still we waited. Summer came, I turned 30 (the age that I wanted to have at least one child by) and still we waited, trying to trust that God knew what He was doing. As we waited, some days were good and some were hard. Harder days came when I saw another person announce on Facebook that they were pregnant or a close friend would call to tell me she was pregnant. So often it didn’t seem fair that everyone else could be pregnant when we had been trying for so long.

Over the summer our doctor recommended that maybe we should see a Reproductive Medicine doctor. I cringed at the thought, not wanting to have to give in to that, maybe I just didn’t want to admit that we needed to. I wasn’t convinced, but we decided that it might be worth it and made an appointment for the fall.

When we finally went to the appointment in September we were so thankful for how caring and helpful the doctor was. He actually cared and wanted to help. After sharing our story with him, he said, “This is going to be easy, we just need to tell your body what to do.” I think in that moment I almost fell off of my chair because our journey had been anything but easy, but we trusted that if we wanted to grow our family, this was the next step we need to take.

After the miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, my body didn’t start functioning regularly and so the doctor gave me some medicine to help my body get back to normal. That month was full of doctor’s visits and ultra sounds, and taking different medications. We did everything they told us to do and a little over a month later, in October of 2016, we found out we were indeed PREGNANT! We were shocked and overjoyed that everything the doctors did worked so quickly.

While we wanted to be excited, we were also extremely fearful that we would lose this baby too! So we proceeded with caution, telling our immediate family so they could pray with us for a healthy baby. We had many early ultra sounds to make sure everything looked good and that we could hear the heartbeat. The report always was that everything looked great! Our little baby continues to be growing and healthy and is expected to arrive at the END OF JUNE!!!

Although everything has been going well, I have still been very fearful of what could happen or what our next doctor’s appointment might tell us. In the midst of my fear I have continued to learn to trust the Lord and His plan and not my own. My fears finally began to subside when we had our 20 week ultra sound and everything looked normal and we found out the gender of our baby (find out below!) There are days where I still fear what might happen and if we will lose this baby too, but I continue to trust that the Lord is in control and has better plans than I do.

It has been a long journey of loss, grief, and waiting to get to this point. I never would have imagined that it would take over 2 ½ years to welcome a child into our family. I have a whole new understanding for people who struggle with infertility and miscarriage now. It’s miserable to long to be a mom and have a child and not see it happen. While I wish our story was different, I am so grateful that this is our story! God has used the loss of our two babies, our grief, and our period of waiting to grow me to desire Him more, to reveal sin in my life, and to sanctify me to be more like Him. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything! I also believe that because I’ve walked this journey, I am more thankful that the Lord has blessed us with this child and allowed us the chance to be his/her parents!

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This past summer when we took Biblical Communication, we had to study a passage of scripture and write a talk on it. When I began the class I never imagined that the passage I chose would teach me so much and lead me to share our story in my talk, but it fit so well with the passage I had no choice. This fall I gave that same talk at our weekly Cru meeting. If you would like to watch/hear it, please feel free to watch it below: