Four years ago I posted this story on my other blog, but it seems right to share it here today. When my daughter was first born, I wondered how I would write about motherhood as well as continuing to write on my infertility blog. Well, here I am, years later, realizing that these things are very intertwined. Joy and sorrow mix together in so many aspects of life. As my daughter turns four, I rejoice in her life, but I grieve that she doesn’t have a sibling here on earth. However, in this moment I pause to remember that my daughter’s life is truly a gift.

According to our plan in early marriage (because I like a good plan!) – we thought we would welcome our first baby in the spring of 2011. That didn’t happen.

I’ve written extensively about our years of infertility, and you can read my blog posts and my first book for the back story. But I’m going to fast forward to April 2017.

The first week of April that year was busy: I met up with a Facebook friend from the West Coast. She was pregnant with her long-awaited miracle baby after experiencing infertility, and we had connected through an online infertility support group called Moms in the Making. I met her on Tuesday. She prayed for my womb, as many people have done over the years.

On Wednesday I was given the opportunity to share my testimony – my life story – with the women in the Bible study I attended. I spoke for a while, sharing about my love for writing and our hope of having a baby and all that God was doing in our lives. I had originally been scheduled to share in March, but God had other plans, so the day I spoke to the group was bumped back to April 5.

Either that day or the following week, a woman who I barely knew at the time told me she had been praying for someone to have a baby, and she had a word for us. She said she had been reading the Bible story of the Shunnamite woman, who was promised a baby within a year. She said, “God told me that you will have a baby by this time next year.”

I responded with a “thank you,” but in my heart I was thinking other things:

“I’ve seen people get this word before and NOT have a baby.”

“Four years ago we were given a prophetic word that we’d have children very soon.

“We’ve been trying to have a baby for nearly 7 years, I can’t get my hopes up about this.”

I was all too familiar with the Shunnamite woman. I had written this blog post about her years before, where I imagined the emotions she was feeling: I want to have hope! But this hurts! This is my greatest desire, my unfulfilled dream, a tender place in my heart that just HURTS! Don’t tell me that it will happen. Can’t you see that it hasn’t happened after all this time!?

I tucked this woman’s hopeful words away in the back of my mind and didn’t think about them again for a while.

A couple of months later, on the last Sunday of June, the topic of the sermon at our church was breakthrough and people were invited up for prayer after the service.

June had been an emotionally difficult month: Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are really hard when you’re unable to have children. June marked 7 years of trying to conceive without a pregnancy, and we’d just spent the past two months pursuing unsuccessful treatment with a fertility clinic.

I needed prayer that weekend. Then the woman who prayed for us at the altar that morning emailed me the following day, a longer email that included these words: “I see God walking up to you both and peeling off this great big label that is plastered on you that says INFERTILE. Then He puts His arms around the two of you and the love of His presence washes away all traces of that falsehood so that the fullness of His blessings can begin to flow unhindered in your life.”

Something happened at our home church in North Carolina that same Sunday. Mike and I had met at church, got married, and our first couple of years experiencing infertility happened while we were in that church community. On the last Sunday morning in June, our pastor’s wife prayed briefly at the end of the service for women wanting to have children. She encouraged people to stand in the gap for family members or others who wanted to have children. Both a friend and a family member attending that service that day each told me that they were praying for me in that moment.

We didn’t realize that something literally shifted that week.

Our July schedules didn’t allow time for fertility treatment, and God determined that it was His perfect timing. On a month when it didn’t seem likely that we’d be pregnant, I still had a glimmer of hope, so I still took a pregnancy test. I happened to try a test with words that show up on a digital screen instead of the usual cheap one I kept in my cabinet.

For the first time ever, the word on the screen said “YES.” (Here’s our first pregnancy announcement: Jesus Said YES!)

Remember that word from the woman at Bible study, who said that I would have a baby within a year? I’d shared our story with her on April 5, and our due date for our daughter was the following April 3. (I’m originally wrote the first draft of this blog post on April 2, 2018, while very pregnant.) God’s perfect timing of this April due date reassured me throughout my pregnancy I began to worry about whether or not this baby would make it. It reassures me in these last days of waiting for our baby – God knew the year and the week she would be born – He surely knows the day and the hour!

I wrote this post in the final days of a really long wait: 9 months + 7 years. I felt tired of waiting. For years I was disappointed month after month when my body did not become pregnant, yet during that time I grew in my trust in God. Those last few days of pregnancy with my daughter seemed difficult because I felt so ready to have this baby we’ve waited for. So, I wrote this while waiting to remind myself that our daughter will be born right on time. I trust that God ordained her birth so perfectly.

Four years later, here I am, remembering what God did by allowing us a miracle pregnancy and blessing us with a precious daughter. Yesterday a friend reminded me that she, along with so many others, prayed for us to have a baby, and she told me again how she was delighted when I told her I was pregnant. Another friend reminded me today of how happy he was when we announced that we were expecting our daughter. One of the many things we have learned is that inviting others to join us in prayer allowed others to build their faith. When others joined us in prayer, they also joined us in rejoicing!

I shared this story with our church congregation when I was a few weeks away from our daughter’s birth. I reminded the listeners that we overcome the evil one by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus) and through the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). When we tell others what God has done, we proclaim that our God who does mighty things can do it again.

Whether you want to bring forth a miracle baby, or you’re asking God for some other sort of “new life,” I am praying for you as you read this. God, your timing is perfect. You’re the God of breakthrough. Do it again, Lord.