We’ve been enjoying this great song with the toddlers at Busy Bees.
This is my story of how God has really been my rock in the hardest of times 🙂
When Stu (my husband) and I began trying to start a family we were full of optimism. Over the next few years that confidence and expectation ebbed away – it just wasn’t hap- pening for us. God seemed far away as we became more and more obsessed with our own situation. Finally, we discovered what was wrong. A burst appendix in my teens had left me unable to conceive naturally.
A favourite Bible verse of mine has always been the famous one from Jeremiah: “‘I know the plans that I have for you’ says the Lord ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.’” Now though, it became increasingly difficult to trust this promise and the hundreds of others like it. For the first time in my Christian life I came up against a conflict between head and heart. I knew in my head all about trusting in God’s love, and in the promise that He would bring good out of every situation. The trouble was that I’d never been in a situation that hurt this much before. I’d never had to trust God with this much fear.
Over the next few years Stu and I had four unsuccessful attempts at IVF – a rollercoast- er of emotion that had highs of optimism and the bitterest lows of each failure. However, during our last attempt I began to realise that God had brought me on a journey. I had to trust Him as my rock, my safe place, my security. I had to trust Him with my emotions minute by minute, and He faithfully brought me through terrible disappointments. His promises, and a new realisation of His presence, were always there to comfort me. When we stopped IVF for good both Stu and I had a new sense of peace, and of giving ourselves up to God’s will.
After some time we applied to adopt a child. We were told from the start not to expect to adopt a baby. I battled with my emotions over this. I so desperately wanted to be a mother to a young baby. In my distress I cried out to God, my rock. I did something then that I had almost never done. I asked a direct question: “Will we adopt a baby?” I was shocked to hear a voice clearly in my head saying “Yes” and then “Six months, two days”. I believed that God was telling me that our baby would be six months and two days old. I wrote it down in my prayer diary and waited. Six months later our daughter, Nell was placed with us. On the day that we brought her home she was exactly six months and two days old.
Four years after this we applied to adopt again, but in the back of my mind were some promises that God had given to me and others, that we would conceive our own child.
We were about to start on the process of adopting a little boy, and I said to God “It is now or never Lord”. Two days later I found out that I was miraculously pregnant with our son, Theo. From the point, before we started trying for a family, of longing to know God better, I had come on such a journey. I had discovered that God is my rock. He is with me in the toughest times. I had experienced his presence and heard his voice. I had seen a miracle performed (confirmed by the amazement of the consultant who delivered Theo by C-section that someone with my insides had ever conceived).
The journey continues with new pressures and joys, but with no doubt whatsoever that God, my Father, is real, active and totally trustworthy.
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