One of my favorite quotes is “Hope is not a granted wish or a favor performed…It is a zany, unpredictable dependence on a God who loves to surprise us out of our socks.”- Max Lucado
Hope is always the word that comes to mind when I think of our journey to parenthood. My good friend Stephanie gave me a silver stone that has the word hope on it when our first IVF failed and it has sat on my bathroom sink ever since then and I see it everyday. Hope was all I had after that devastating time in our life and at times I barely held onto it, thank goodness my Hope held on to me. And He definitely surprised us out of our socks when we found out we were expecting our precious Ava Kate! We both hoped we would be blessed with more children but at the same time we felt so much gratitude for our precious miracle baby that we knew if that was the completion of His plan for our life we would be complete. After experiencing the disappointment of having my own plan and trying so hard to make it happen and constantly being brought back to Jer 29:11 and the knowledge that it is His plan that will prevail and then watching His marvelous plan be revealed and experiencing what I had knowledge of, that His plan is far better than any plan I could ever dream up, I have just had so much peace about the future for our family of 3. As Ava has gotten older people had started asking about our plans for more children and if we would be doing IVF again or adopting and I never really had an answer for them except that there was no plan and I couldn’t bring myself to make a plan all I could do was trust. A few months back I shared with my ladies bible study group that we were feeling ready for another baby and that every week at the end of church when they read off the list of things they felt God wanted the prayer team to pray over I always hoped they would say infertility. One Sunday after that we were at church and sure enough when Pastor David read off the list of things the prayer team had felt God was calling them to pray over, one of them was couples dealing with infertility. I looked at Justin and said we have to go down. When we got to the front we were met by one of the girls from my bible study who is on the prayer team, Jennifer, I asked her if she was the one who had put infertility on the list and she said no it was another one of the members of the prayer team that had really felt God was wanting to do some healing in the area of infertility in our church. She then prayed over us, for healing and for our future children. She even sent me a letter of words of encouragement and scriptures in the mail that next week. I just continued to feel God’s peace. And Justin and I both really felt after that time that God was going to give us a baby naturally this time around even though we both knew if He did it was going to take a miracle. At times I would start to think to myself okay maybe we do need to make a plan, I am getting older and I would like our children to be close in age but every single time I started to feel the need to rush and try to make my own plan I was brought back to my Hope. He is all I need, His plan is perfect for us just as I saw with Ava Kate, He knows my age, He knows how close in age our children need to be, He knows better than me so just let Him lead.
Sunday night I was laying in bed and realized I was late this month, then I began to realize I had been really tired, I had been sick at night and other symptoms and signs of pregnancy kept popping in my head. As my mom said it was as if God whispered to me Sunday night “You’re pregnant.” I didn’t sleep very well that night thinking about the possibility of being pregnant. Monday morning when I woke up I just knew I had to take a test so I asked Justin if he would go get one before work, he say “why?” I said “I just have a feeling.” So being the sweet husband he is he went and got me a test. I hurried to take it before he had to leave for work. I tried not to stare at the test while I waited for the result. I kept looking for the N for Not Pregnant and then all of the sudden I realized there was no N because it said Pregnant! I yelled to Justin who was in Ava’s room changing her diaper and said “This says I am Pregnant!” He said “What?!?!” and came quickly into the bathroom holding Ava in his arms. I said “This does say pregnant right?” to which he replied “yes!” Then the tears began to flow and we embraced each other and Ava. After our celebratory tears and hugs Justin put his hand up for me to give him a high five, I love it! I knew I couldn’t go to work after finding out news that big so I sent my boss a message that something had come up and I might be in later. We called Justin’s mom first since he had to hurry and get to work and since she lives in Houston so we couldn’t tell her in person. When I told her Ava was going to be a big sister, she said “what” in a very puzzled voice and I said “I’m pregnant!” She was ecstatic and shocked! I decided to go out and tell my parents in person and with the suggestion of my friend Kimberly stopped at Kohl’s on the way out to pick up a Big Sister shirt. I had no idea Kohl’s was open that early in the morning and when we walked in they had one Big Sister shirt in Ava’s size. We put it on her in the parking lot and headed out to my parents. When we got there mom said “What’s your shirt say Ava?” as she read it outloud, “Big Sister” and then said “Where’d you get that?” with a look that expressed what in the world are you wearing a big sister shirt for? Then she looked up at my face and I was smiling and nodding my head yes and all of the sudden her jaw dropped and the tears began to flow. Then dad walked in and we basically had the same response with my dad and my grandparents. I think it was so unexpected that none of them even thought to realize the Big Sister shirt meant Ava was going to be a big sister. I went in for bloodwork that afternoon which confirmed again the wonderful miracle God had done! Initially I told Justin I was going to try and wait a while before sharing the news with everyone else but when God does something this big it is just about impossible to not shout it from the rooftops! I am not very far along and we would love to have you join along with us in praying for a healthy and smooth pregnancy and delivery in November when our family becomes a party of 4! We know the power of prayer! God is so good!
