Our Romans 8:28 Day

June 5, 2012 By 6 Comments

I laid on a gurney, in just a thin hospital gown and big huge socks that were to ward off blood clots, the scariest part of surgery it seemed, waiting to be taken back. Waiting for the surgery that we hoped and prayed would restore my fertility. The memories of that day, now three years old, are fuzzy. The rounded corners soft. But I remember my husband standing beside me, and I remember the nurse’s kind eyes. How she held my hand when she told me that something came back in my blood work. The way the words sounded when she formed them—“You’re pregnant.”

I got up off that gurney and walked out of that hospital with life beating in the very place they were planning to invade.

That afternoon, when I should have been recovering in a downtown hospital bed, we waded in the lake while our dogs splashed about and I said to my husband, again and again the words I thought I’d never get to say, “I’m pregnant.”

It was over as quickly as it began, but those days taste sweet to me now. Oh what a gift to have it, for even just a moment.

Those June days in 2009 are marked on a map in my memory.

That weekend, after the end began, we walked to a local festival, and on the way there, I saw one perfect blooming pink peony. I snapped a picture of it, and I knew even then, as I lost our one and only pregnancy that He was at work. That He had to be.

164: A Peony

In that flower, in its pink unfolding life, I was reminded that my God is a good God. He’s a mighty God. He’s promised that He works all things for good for those who are called according to His purposes.

And He did.

This weekend we’ll attend that festival again, only this time I’ll carry an 18-month-old toddler on my back. We’ll wave at the parade goers and we’ll share cheese curds and our sweet boy will pet baby animals.

Trusting God to build our family; having to rely completely on Him, because I am physically unable to do it any other way, has been hard. My womb is very literally shut; sealed up by scar tissue. But better my womb than my heart.

A few weeks ago, one perfect deep red peony bloomed in our front yard.

Keep trusting Me, He whispers. I am still working.

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And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, Romans 8:28. (NIV)

 
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Across the River (And Other Thoughts on a Sunday)

September 25, 2011 By 6 Comments

It’s been so long since I’ve just sat down and written anything here. Just written. Just said whatever it was that I wanted to say in that moment.

Most of the time, thoughts come to me at night right before I go to bed, but I let them go, because I’m tired. (There is always more to be done than can get done.)

But I have been thinking, a lot, almost every day, what it is like to be on this side of the river, delivered to the land for which I prayed.

The problem with being on this side of the river is that it’s filled with the business of living, which leaves less time for reflection.

Because all of a sudden you’re married or you’re parenting or you’re working hard at that job you longed for or you are studying at the school you worked hard and prayed fervently to be able to attend.

The thing about being delivered is that it happens in an instant. One day I was single and the next day, there he was. Just a guy I met at the dog park.

One day we were childless; waiting and preparing. The next day, our son was born and we journeyed across the country to get to him.

Those are the stories that I wish I could go back in time and tell to myself.

How frustrated God must have been with me at times (if God gets frustrated, which maybe he doesn’t?) when I cried and whined and felt persecuted. When will it be my turn??  I so often asked.

I bet He shook His head and said, “Johanna, I am working. It is coming. It will be worth the wait. Would I give you anything less?”

And that’s what I want you to know: God cannot give you a bad gift. If evil fathers give their children bread, rather than the snakes and scorpions they perhaps deserve, HOW MUCH MORE will God give you when you ask him for something? (Matthew 7)

If you are still waiting. If you are still in the desert. Your river crossing is coming. It may take a wild act of faith (step into the rushing river, Joshua!), but you will cross that river. The land on the other side may not look how you imagined or even wished for, but there is land on the other side of that river, and it is filled with the exact thing that you need. And it will be good.

Even thought we are now parents—I am now someone’s mother—I feel like our story is still being written.

Our house is not full yet.

My friend Amy, a prayer warrior if there ever was one, e-mailed me a few months ago to tell me she was already praying for the continued building of our family. She said, I’m not sure if you’re ready for more kids, but I am calling out for them!

He settles the barren woman in her home, the happy mother of children (Psalm 113:9).

I see a house bursting with children. Harry a big brother to many. Can you imagine?

We may be old. We may have gotten started later. We may still have little ones when most of our friends are sending their kids off to college.

I don’t know.

I can’t see everything, but I see a glimpse.

I am trusting Him to write our story, because why wouldn’t I? Look at what He has written so far!

Jesus saved me, the worst of all sinners, so that you would see what He says and what He has done is TRUE. (1 Tim 1:16, paraphrase).

I don’t know what your story looks like or what you are waiting for.

I know that life is terribly hard. This world that we live in is mightily unfair.

But He longs for you, sisters. His heart breaks for you. He wants you desperately.

A few months ago, a member of our church lost her baby at 15 weeks gestation. It was her second loss; her first was also born too early and in between her two angels she gave birth to two more sons.

They held a short memorial service to remember their fourth baby, and the pastor told the story she’d relayed to him after she’d lost their first baby, before she was a believer.

She said that she related to the analogy of Jesus being a shepherd, because of one of the ways a shepherd draws his sheep.

The reason we often see shepherds holding baby lambs over their shoulders is because the sheep will follow wherever their babies go. So when the shepherd wants to move the flock, he wraps a baby around his neck, and the flock follows. She said that when they lost Aiden, it was as if Jesus gathered up her baby, placed him on His shoulders and took him to heaven.

“And I followed,” she said.

I don’t know what pain you are suffering today, but I know what if you trust Him with it, He will redeem it.

I want you to remember that we are already more than conquerors.

 
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Onesies and Promises

May 31, 2011 By 9 Comments

Two years ago, when we were still trying to get pregnant, I had to run into a Walgreen’s on my lunch break to buy a box of ovulation predictor kits. (Which can we talk about how criminally expensive those things are? I shudder to think of the amount of money I spent on things I ultimately peed on.)

While I was there, they had a stack of “clever sayings” onesies by the registers. I guess because we were still not even a year in, I was feeling optimistic, so I picked one up and bought it.

A few months later, when we found out that we were (briefly) pregnant, I folded it up and laid it on Aaron’s pillow. A little red onesie that read “My Dad Rocks.”

It seemed impossibly tiny to me at the time; what kind of little creature could even fit in it?

And though that sweet baby wasn’t meant for the here and now, another sweet baby found his way to us.

And it fits him perfectly.

 
Filed Under: Making a Family Tagged With: ,

To Life

June 6, 2010 By 1 Comment

It’s been exactly one year since what happened, happened.

Today was a normal day, like many Saturdays around here. I had a session this morning (peek here), so we cleaned a bit beforehand. We walked the dogs a few times, and hit Super Target for weekly groceries and various sundries.

For dinner we opted to head over to an area we haven’t explored all that much to go to a new restaurant. Well, everyone else in our suburb had the same idea! So we went to a different, still-new-to-us place. A place with white table cloths, but where diners are mostly wearing jeans and shorts.

As the waitress was opening our pinot noir, she asked if we were celebrating anything special. “Just life,” Aaron told her.

And as I lifted my glass and clinked it against my husband’s, and we said “to life,” I could tell we were thinking of the same thing. The same one.

We toasted to the little life that we lost, but also to our wonderful life together. We toasted to life yet to be.

We are blessed. Life is good.

 
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Preparation Deja Vu

January 11, 2010 By 7 Comments

I am experiencing a bit of deja vu, as I’m once again preparing for surgery; the surgery that didn’t happen in June.

I go in on Thursday. At this point, I’m just ready to finally have it over with. But in going through all the pre-op motions again—doctor’s appointment and packing the hospital bag—I’m taken back again to the loss. It’s strange to me how it was harder later; harder than it was at first. Maybe I was in shock?

The day I was officially diagnosed as ectopic, I wrote this in my paper journal

So I’m losing the baby. They think the pregnancy is ectopic, and at the very least the numbers show that it is not progressing. How I went from prepping for surgery to preparing for a miscarriage in less than a week, I don’t know. But life is like that, and it isn’t easy for anyone. We are no exception. But I got to be pregnant, even if it was only for a moment. And we’ll have a child waiting for us in heaven, and I’m going to be so happy to see her! His ways are not my ways. I’ll never understand them, but I’ll trust.

When I reread that months later, I was impressed at how even keeled I felt about it. It wasn’t always like that.

We pushed the surgery out so far, because I had to heal. And then it was Fall and from just after Labor Day through the end of the year, I either had client sessions or was traveling just about every weekend. But suddenly here it is, January already.

For the most part, my prayers the past few months have mostly been of the “Your will be done” variety. Because I do believe that He has a plan for me, for us, and it’s up to me to align my will to His. But. Then I listened to a sermon by Pastor Matt Chandler, and I realized I was only focusing on a piece of the picture, rather than the fullness of God.

Matt pastors a church in Dallas/Ft. Worth. He is also battling brain cancer. A few weeks ago he preached his first sermon since starting chemotherapy/radiation, titled “Divine Tensions.” And it really turned my thought pattern, and my prayer life, on its head.

Matt said that he has been getting two reactions to his cancer — “God’s will be done” and “We’ll pray it away.” And Matt’s point was that both camps miss it. One sees God as sovereign, but removed and uncaring. The other turns Him into nothing more than a genie in a lamp. Matt says: “Watch your tendency to reduce God to ‘it’s just his will, what’s he’s gonna do, he’s gonna do’ and also ‘we’ll bother and he’ll answer.’ You gotta resist polarizing in each direction, because they truth is, they’re both true.”

There are pictures of both God saying “no” (a big one — where Jesus prays in the garden for the cup to be taken from him) and also immediate, miraculous healing. “Get up and walk.” God is sovereign and his will be done in everything, but Jesus also tells us that we should ask, seek, knock, ask, seek, knock. That God is our father and we can go to him, pleading.

And I have to be honest with you: I haven’t been asking. And I’ve been missing it!

“Even if God chooses not to heal, then we praise him for all circumstances. Knowing that He is sovereign, knowing that He is above all.” — Matt Chandler

So we are pleading, boldly and specifically. Four things we are praying for specifically . . .

  1. Wisdom and confidence for my doctor and the other attending doctors/nurses in surgery.
  2. That the surgery will be successful and go as planned.
  3. That I experience quick healing and no complications.
  4. That we would be able to conceive on our own and that it would be a successful pregnancy.

So as I wrote back in June … No matter what happens — no matter the outcome — my heart still beats for Jesus. Nothing matters without Him, and all the glory, all the fame, all the honor, belongs to Him.

 
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