By God’s Grace

“I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth… When I called, you answered me; you built up strength within me.” -Psalm 138

The news I have to share is pretty hard to believe. So much so that I want to cling to it in secret – have it be mine for fear that somehow “too good to be true” will risk it becoming untrue.

It has been a long 6 years of prayer, despair, hope, “not my will but thy will”, “not in my time, but your time”, and a myriad of emotions and efforts and ups and downs to get here. But by God’s Grace we are here – 12 weeks into growing a new life within me.

I was pretty sure at this point it was impossible – but what’s that saying again? “Nothing is impossible for God.” At this point I don’t think I was clinging to any real hope and I tried to keep my heart’s desires at arm’s length from my mind. But God probes the mind and tests the heart, doesn’t He?

If He probed my mind He found a wall, fortressed around my deepest longings. To keep the disappointment at bay. To keep me going despite the plans I had for myself and that I thought He had for me.

But if He tested my heart, ahh-well, there He found a part which wanted something so deeply, rooted firm, waiting for fulfillment. Hoping against hope that despite all the evidence saying that my heart was wrong, that it could still be.

Over 6 years I’ve worked on accepting what God had in store for me. To be a mom of 1. By God’s Grace I at least had 1! That was something to be so entirely, thoroughly thankful for –especially since I’ve been learning that my body is pretty much all the wrong things for being able to become pregnant.

But through the grace of friendship I was introduced to someone who got us individualized care via Creighton Method consultations followed by a Catholic hospital which we’ve been traveling far distances to for personalized care.

The doctors cared about us as people, our problems as addressable problems, and instead of “unexplained infertility” and trying to pump me full of drugs and steer me to IVF these caring doctors looked at me as a person and said, “You are not normal. This chart is not normal.”

Perhaps most people would not like being told that they are not normal. But for Ryan and I it was a Godsend. I spent 5 years telling my doctors I didn’t think my body was normal. And they didn’t care. They had their processes. Their plans. Their “well most people are like this” approaches and their “well, at this point it’s just ‘unexplained infertility'” explanations. And here we were, with a doctor who saw me not as “most people” but as an individual with individual issues.

For more than a year they helped to identify and treat my thyroid condition and my progesterone issues and completed a surgery to correct an assortment of things wrong with my reproductive organs. (Other doctors said my tubes were fine – They weren’t. Other doctors said “Well, if it’s endometriosis it’s so small it’s likely not causing issues.” – It was.)

All it took was actual effort to see me as a person and not just another woman facing the same-old-same infertility issues because they waited too long to have kids. True, I am old now – I’ll be 37 when this baby is born – But 6 years ago I wasn’t too old. And yet most doctors just did not actually care.

But by God’s grace Ryan and I are where we are today – On a journey of bringing a new, precious life into this world. Nora will get to be a Big Sister – which she confessed to us is something she has always wanted and prayed for (Thanks for the prayers, Nora!) – and we know she will be an amazing big sister to her future brother or sister.

So this day I give thanks to God with all my heart for He has heard the words of my mouth. He built up strength within me to keep going despite all the challenges. When I called He answered me – perhaps not as quickly as I would have liked, but in His own perfect time.

God has a plan for us and I can’t wait to discover why God has chosen now as the time to turn our family of 3 into a family of 4.