A New Thing...Part I

It’s been about 6 months since the last time I visited and shared, and I know the story that God has been writing in me, is not just for me, and so I share because I hope my story will speak life and truth to someone. 

Six months ago, I was in a place of not understanding why I was asking and seeking God for the desires of my heart and they continued to go unanswered month after month.  We had started trying to have a second child a year before.  I had an incredibly painful miscarriage at 12 weeks…utter heartbreak.   Unexpectedly, we got pregnant again about four months later, and again I lost the baby – this time, even earlier.  We decided to wait awhile before trying again.  End of summer comes, and we start trying.  This time, for the first time ever, I’m doing everything right, and can’t even get pregnant.  Many dear friends have stories with long bouts of infertility, but that has never been an issue with us.  So after a couple of months, I knew something was up, and again began to seek God about what else was going on.  I realized that I was coming to a new broken place.  As though my heart hadn’t broken enough after a year of dashed hope, God again brought me back to this place.  I sought Him hard – harder than I’d ever sought before.  Harder than I did in the lonely days after the miscarriages…when He taught me the hard lessons about being thankful in ALL things…when I learned that ALL is GRACE.  Even the things that we don’t fully understand. 

I prayed a dangerous prayer – and I meant every word. 

I told God that no longer was I seeking Him for just a baby…I was seeking to find HIM – to know WHY there seemed to be a divide between us, after the journey we had made together in the past year.  He had walked with me through the sorrow, had been closer than my skin, and now I couldn’t understand what else I needed to close the gap between us.  I prayed the desperate prayer of David from the Psalms:

Search me, O God, and know my heart:  try me, and know my thoughts:

And see if there be any wicked way in me.”

Psalm 139:23-24

I wept.  I really let go of my agenda. I got no answers that night as I prayed in the shower.  I just felt empty…like part of me had died.  I went to bed exhausted, and awoke the next morning…feeling exactly the same.  The heaviness lay on me like a thick blanket.  I repeated my heart to God.  My decision hadn’t changed.  Whether He gave me another child or not, I would seek Him hard.  So I got up and went to work.  Somewhere in the course of that morning, God spoke.  Having been strangely silent through my sorrow, in the midst of my busy morning at work, He told me the hard truth that I wasn’t prepared for until that day. 

He showed me that as a young teenager, I had made a vow that I’d never have an only child, because I so hated being an only child myself.  I never realized the grave truth of Proverbs 18:21 “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those that love it will eat its fruit.”  By making that judgement and vow, I had predestined myself to become that which I had promised to never be…the mother of an only child.  I knew I had to repent from my rash judgements, and break that vow.  It held me where I was and was choking the life out of me.  I prayed.  I asked for forgiveness.  I took it all back.  God forgave.  He broke the power of my thoughtless words.  He gave me incredible peace, that I cannot describe. 

Then His grace stepped in.  He showed me that, though my own sin held me captive for years, He allowed me to have a beautiful little boy, who is brilliant and amazing.  He let me see that he allowed those pregnancies, so that He could get to the real brokenness within me…and, in His infinite grace and love for me, He spared me from having the many miscarriages I could have had, by allowing a season of infertility.  It isn’t very often that we get to see the mind of God…to understand, in such a limited way, His great love for us, and the purpose for our pain in this life.  For this I am thankful.  Thankful that, that day in September, he sealed a work in me, and began a new work.  He gave peace that He was not finished with me, but that my story was just getting started… 

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wilderness.

Isaiah 43:19