I spent some time today going back in my blog and reading posts from February of last year – the month after everything happened with Tracy and the month before things started happening with Sweet Pea.

It was so interesting to me to read what I wrote in February because most of my posts centered around acknowledging that God is in control of our second adoption journey and the realization that I just needed to sit back and wait in great expectation for God to do another miracle.

I had no idea of knowing what God was going to start doing on March 8th when my friend Jennifer text me about an adoption situation, wondering if we would be interested.

During the months of waiting to see if we would be matched with this birth mother, the lessons God desired to teach me were all about the fact that GOD was in control of everything and nothing I did or didn’t do would change the outcome.

God had it all under control, even though at the time, there was a lot of waiting involved and a lot of uncertainty on my end.

It just amazes me how God prepares our hearts for what is to come. He planted these seeds in my heart in February knowing in March and until I had Sweet Pea in my arms in August, I would need to hang on knowing that God was in control.

If you have some time, go back and read my posts from February of last year. The words I wrote astound me because I had no idea what God was about to do.

When we find ourselves in a situation where we can’t see the big picture and we don’t have access to all the details, we must remember that God sees it all. He has planned it all. And not only that, He has something good in store, even if it looks like you’ve been deserted in left field.

He is there. Right beside you. And when the right time comes, He will start to reveal the big picture and you too will one day be able to look back on these days of only having just a fraction of the puzzle pieces and you will be able to see the big picture and know that God was in control of every single detail even when it seemed like everything was so uncertain.

It is strange to me that six months have already passed since Sweet Pea’s birth. On the day she turned 6 months old, around noon on that day, I remembered what happened at that exact moment. I believe it was actually a minute until noon and Emily called to tell me Sweet Pea had been born at 7:55am that morning.

The journey that had begun on March 8th – and, really, I guess you could say our official second adoption journey began on December 13, 2010, with Emily’s phone call that Tracy was pregnant – came to a close on August 4th when we jumped in the car and drove the 1.5 hours to go meet our second daughter after the TPR had been signed.

I guess reaching this point – 6 months after our second adoption in 2 years – makes me want to sit back and reflect upon the faithfulness of God through both of our adoptions.

It also takes me way back to September of 2008, the month I saw my first of countless negative pregnancy tests.

Those were my days of having only a fraction of the puzzle pieces. I couldn’t see the big picture which means there were many very hard days as I saw my dream slip away and I was powerless to do anything to change the circumstances I found myself in.

It sounds so cliché, I know, but God was in control. He had a beautiful journey laid out before me.

I am just standing in awe of all this today – and every day.

And thanking God, once again, that His plans were not mine.

For the first time in almost five years, I have begun a year where baby making, infertility and the adoption process will NOT be on the forefront of my mind.

It is almost mind-boggling to think about because all three of those have been such a HUGE part of my life for the past five years.

2007…Dave and I had been engaged the previous October, our wedding date was set for May and (my plan) we hoped to be pregnant by Christmas. My mind was consumed with wedding and then, baby making.

2008…Quite possibly the worst year of my life to date. Nothing went the way I had always imagined it. Everything was one disappointment and failure after another. My mind was consumed with infertility.

2009…This year started out with the hugest disappointment of all, but ended with a miracle – our Little Bug! My mind was consumed with the adoption process.

2010…That year was beautiful. We had a beautiful daughter, but I knew our family wasn’t complete and we would go through the adoption process again, which brought on so many various emotions.

2011…Last year was an amazing year. It started kinda rough but then it was like God was asking me, Do you really trust me? and I knew I DID trust Him so I just had to let him do His thing for adoption #2. And He did. He did something more…again. A second miracle in as many years – Sweet Pea.

And now here I am at the very beginning of 2012. I don’t know what this year holds for us but I do know one thing: we are not trying to get pregnant, we are not doing any infertility treatments (ever again!) and we are not entering this year hoping to adopt.

In some strange way I feel like I am standing at a point in my life where infertility truly is completely in my past.

It is a chapter in the story of my life that has come to a close, but at the same time I know that what I learned from going through infertility will follow me all the days of my life for rest of my entire life.

And I am so glad about that because what I learned during the past five years and the way God grew my faith and stretched me in ways that really hurt when the stretching was going on – I DO NOT ever want to forget any of that.

I am who I am today because of infertility. It has left it’s mark on me – forever.

Yes, a mark and not a wound.

There was once a wound. It was a very ugly, painful wound. But, through the years God has healed that wound in only a way that He can.

He has restored me.

He never chose to bless my womb with life, but I can tell you today that God has blessed me in ways that I count it a huge privilege that He chose this path for me and not the path that I once desired for myself.

I never in a million years would have signed up for this standing at the altar with Dave on the day we were married.

I look at myself on that day and I am just astounded at where GOD took me after my Grandpa declared us husband and wife.

I was on top of the world. God had blessed me with the most wonderful man in the world to be my husband, my partner in life until death do us part and I could not wait for life to be growing inside of me.

Sometimes I think I was more excited about FINALLY being able to get pregnant than I was excited about finally getting married! (Don’t be alarmed. I love my husband, but that statement is just the best way I know to convey the message I am trying to say right now about how excited I was about pregnancy! My dreams were FINALLY going to come true!!!)

Then…

Oh, we humans are so humorous. We have everything planned out just so. Just perfect.

On my wedding day, I loved the Lord. I’ve always been a “good girl”. I never gave my parents any grief. I grew up in church. I knew my Bible. I knew truths about God. I knew that He had good plans for my life. I knew that as a Christian, I was to trust God. I trusted God.

My plans were not panning out the way I imagined they would. Something terribly was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. Something wasn’t right within. It shouldn’t be taking this long.

Instead of a growing belly I found myself growing more and more weary every month as my dream just wasn’t happening.

I was walking the road of infertility. My biggest fear in life was always that. Isn’t that crazy? While I grew up dreaming of the day I would learn I was pregnant, I also grew up fearing that I would never be able to give birth and have children.

Instead of my wildest dreams coming true, my worst nightmare became a reality.

Infertility became my life.

It came in like a lion seeking to destroy me. To destroy my faith. To destroy everything I had been taught growing up.

I saw infertility as the great enemy. My God saw my infertility as the tool He was using to chisel my character to be more like Him and to perform miracles for the world to see His Glory.

Infertility tested my faith like nothing in this life ever had.

Was I going to turn from God because He was not giving me the desire of MY heart or was I going to cling to Him as I never had before because everything I had ever known had been stripped away and I was left with circumstances that were completely and utterly out of my control?

I couldn’t make a baby get in my belly! I was helpless. The very core of my being was tested and I knew I had to choose SELF or GOD.

So I looked to see what each had to offer.

SELF? I had nothing to offer. My body was failing me, plagued with endometriosis that had all but rendered my reproductive organs useless.

So I looked to my Savior. The One I had grown up learning about in Sunday School. The One I had a relationship with since I was eight years old. The One I knew was a loving God. The One I said I trusted. The One I knew had a good plan for my life.

I knew all that, but standing there on the road of infertility marked with darkness and disappointments at every turn and every fork in the road, I KNEW it was time to believe it all – with my whole entire being.

It was time to believe that God DID have a plan for my life. It wasn’t pregnancy, which was pretty devastating to me, BUT, God’s word told me He had a plan to bring me HOPE, a plan to PROSPER ME, a plan to give me a FUTURE.

Not only that, but the Word of God told me that He desired to do something immeasurably MORE than I could even dream of.

What??! Really??!

Because I always thought getting married and having my four babies three years apart each, was a pretty big amazing dream!

God has more than that in mind?

It was time.

It was time to trust in my God in a way I had never been called to trust in Him before.

It was time to lay my dream to rest and wait in great expectation for the things that GOD wanted to do.

It was time to surrender my plan, for His.

I think back to those days, especially March 8, 2009 – the day I knew without a shadow of a doubt that pregnancy was not in God’s plan for my life, but adoption was.

It wasn’t so much that I was disappointed that we “had to adopt”. It was more of me still hanging onto my dream, if only by the smallest thread possible. In those first days, it was very hard to see why God wasn’t allowing me to achieve my childhood dream. Why He wasn’t answering our prayers in the way we thought He should answer them.

I had spent a lifetime dreaming about something that was never to be and I knew I wasn’t going to “get over it” in a matter of a couple days or even a couple months.

But what I did have to do was walk blindly towards the place God was leading.

And that was adoption.

If you’ve been reading here for long, you know the rest of the story so I will summarize it by simply quoting Scripture: God is able to do immeasurably more than we can imagine.

I have never been pregnant a day in my life, but I am a mother to two precious girls through the miracle of adoption and THAT was the something more that was God’s Plan for my life when I felt stranded and abandoned on the road of infertility.

This year, I feel like I have truly come to the end of that road.

I am a mother.

When I turn around and even take a small glimpse back onto the path that God has taken me on, I am truly astounded that this has been my life for the past five years. I am incredibly grateful to God that His Plan wasn’t my plan.

As I turn around and face the future, I sort of have those same feelings one would have when they are graduating high school and are about to enter the real world! You know life will never be the same. You know you are leaving one phase of life and entering another.

That is how I feel. I feel like I am leaving one phase of my life (infertility) and entering another.

More than anything in this world, I do not want to ever forget a moment of these past five years.

It is time to move forward. To truly move past infertility and head into the next phase of life – being a wife to my husband and mother to my children.

If I peel back the layers of what I have labeled as “my desire”, I can see that all along I just wanted to be a wife and mother. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be in life. Yes, I went to college and got a teaching degree and then taught for 4 years, but ultimately?

A mother. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.

The journey to this place has been more than I ever could have imagined.

It’s the faithfulness of my God.

It is pretty evident how God has provided in the big ways in my life.

Infertility plus two daughters through the miracle of adoption pretty much sums that one up.

God provides in small ways, too.

Put quite simply: God provides for our EVERY needs, big or small.

When I think about God providing for our needs I always think of the verse in the Bible that talks about how God supplies the birds of the air (who do not stock up on food, etc.) with food, so how much MORE is He going to provide for us, His creations made in the image of God?!

Formula.

It’s not cheap. It could be, I know. But Sweet Pea requires ready-made formula and that is not cheap!

She drinks ready-made Similac Allimentum formula.

It is about $10 per jug. The jug lasts two days. Do the math. It isn’t “cheap”.

However, since Sweet Pea’s birth (and up until about 2 weeks ago), we did not buy ONE jug without using a coupon or $5 check, which has cut our formula costs in HALF.

God’s provision!! Sweet Pea has gone through MANY of those jugs of formula in five months!

But then…

two weeks ago we ran out of jugs and we had no coupons or checks to buy more formula.

I went out and bought $40 worth of formula (4 jugs, which was about a week’s worth).

That ran out and we had to buy more formula, full price.

I got to thinking, Is this God’s way of telling me that it is time to try the powder formula with Sweet Pea since the coupons and checks are gone?

I just didn’t feel in my gut that it was “time”.

So, I told God, Ok, let the checks start pouring in again and if not, I suppose we will move to powder.

Well, the checks started pouring in again!

These checks and coupons have come in from multiple places: local friends and family, the stash at the church nursery where people drop off coupons they don’t need anymore, a friend who found me a Craigslist deal (that supply lasted over 2 months!), and… from YOU – the readers of my blog!

I have gotten several emails from people who read my blog saying they have coupons/checks that they would be happy to send to me!

That is where our current stash is coming in from.

So, THANK YOU for allowing God to use you to provide formula for Sweet Pea.

We have a GI check up appointment on the 17th. I plan to ask about when we should try to transition to the powder formula.

I guess my thinking is to try and make that transition once Sweet Pea is 6 months old, which is next month! (That is hard to believe.)

But…today I want to remind anyone who is reading this that has a need, big or small. God knows, and if you give it to Him, trusting that He WILL provide, He will.

Every single time.

I think this year was by far the fastest of my 30 years.

Here is The Year 2011…

I typically try to sum up each month in a few words, however, this year is worthy of many words.

January

December 13th, 2010, we received a call from our lawyer saying Tracy was pregnant again and if we wanted another baby, she wanted to place with us again. We were not planning to start the adoption process for a second child until Little Bug was at least two, but of course we said we wanted this baby.

On Christmas Day we surprised our family by giving them this picture:

It said, “Mama’s not pregnant, but someone else is! July 2011”. Everyone was elated that we would be welcoming another baby into the family come summer.

On January 22nd, we saw Tracy for the first time since she placed Little Bug with us 20 months ago. We went to the zoo and had a fabulous time together. I got pictures of Little Bug with her birth mother which I had always wanted.

Then, things started getting “fishy” and on January 31st we learned that Tracy had either miscarried or had not been pregnant after all and, just as quickly as we thought we were going to be welcoming another baby, we lay those thoughts to rest and reverted back to our original plan for a second baby: starting the process after Little Bug’s 2nd birthday.

February

February was spent recovering from the whirlwind of December and January!

March

March 8th, I received a text message from my friend, Jennifer. Her lawyer had a potential adoption situation and Jennifer wondered if we would be interested.

After thinking and praying on it for a night, we figured we might as well look into this. We figured God had opened this door and we trusted Him to guide us to whatever His plan was to add another child to our family.

We updated our family profile to give to the lawyer, Susan, and also learned Jennifer had told another one of her friends, Rebecca, about this same situation.

Rebecca found me on Facebook and sent me a message. It was the very beginning of a very odd start to a very true and genuine forever friendship that would develop over the course of the next few months. Rebecca and I started communicating through Facebook messages and chat while we both waited to hear if we would be chosen to parent this baby!

April

The wait continued. My friendship with Rebecca continued to grow. We both knew that one of us might be picked over the other and we were totally okay with that. We knew God had a plan for this baby and we simply waited to see that plan unfold.

April 20th, we learned the birth mother had decided she was not going to work with Susan anymore.

And, that was the end of that … or so we thought!

May

This was the month Little Bug turned two. May 2nd I called my lawyer, Emily, (the lawyer who did Little Bug’s adoption) and I told her we were ready to start the adoption process for another baby. She starts telling me about a birth mother who had just contacted her in the past week or so. The situation sounds strangely familiar to the one that we were waiting to hear about with Susan.

May 3rd, during a phone conference with Emily, and as she is sharing more details about this situation, she tells me something that makes me feel 99.9% sure this is the same woman that Susan had been working with only weeks prior!

Emily takes our family profile to this woman on May 12th and then calls us around noon that day to tell us we have officially been matched with Melody!

Two days later, I met Rebecca for the first time, who was over the moon excited about the orchestration of God’s miracle to match us with Melody.

June

We were not certain when this baby’s due date was. We had been told June 8th (by Susan) and either July 8th or August 8th (by Emily). Towards the middle of June Emily got access to all the medical records and we learned the official due date was August 8th.

I was pretty bummed about this because 1) the longer the wait in an adoption process, the higher chance of having to deal with some drama and 2) the longer the wait, the longer you have to live with the uncertainty of wondering if the adoption plan will happen or if it will fail.

We also got confirmation that this was indeed the woman who had been working with Susan!

July

God taught me SO MUCH about waiting during this adoption process.

How we were match with Melody was nothing short of a complete miraculous orchestration that only GOD could have performed. Obviously, I wasn’t in control – AT ALL. God orchestrated the events that brought us to Melody via two lawyers and a most unusual friendship with Rebecca!

Speaking of Rebecca: Things were pretty exciting for her this month, too! Rebecca and Luke decided they were going to put their names with my lawyer, Emily, too. They had their first phone conference with Emily on July 18th. The very next day, Emily called them back asking if they were interested in adopting a baby boy that had been born 6 weeks early the night before! July 20th – yes, just TWO days after their first phone conference with Emily – they were headed to [the state I live in] to meet their son!!! Rebecca stayed with my parents for four weeks and 1 day while she waited for Levi to be released from the hospital.

August

Sweet Pea was born on August 2nd!!

Two days later the TPR was signed and we drove the 1.5 hours to go meet our newest baby girl.

I will never forget this moment as long as I live:

I had always wondered how my heart could love another baby, but in this moment I knew how: It just happens.

Sweet Pea spent nine days in the NICU and then was discharged on August 11th.

Levi, Rebecca’s baby boy, was discharged from the NICU on August 16th! Before Rebecca headed home we got a picture of us with our miracle babies, born 15 days apart.

Who would have ever thought this was God’s plan??

In the NICU we discovered that Sweet Pea has a very sensitive stomach. The month of August was challenging as we tried to figure out what would best help Sweet Pea. Sweet Pea was also hospitalized for 3 days due to bacteria found in her blood sample which turned out to be just a contaminant.

September

Survival mode continues. I got through this month with the support of Dave and my mom who was constantly lending her helping hand. We took Sweet Pea to a GI specialist where we learned her issues are from the drug exposure in the womb and her digestive system just needs time to grow and mature.

We learned how to best manage her pain and discomfort and, by the end of the month, we were just beginning to come out of survival mode.

October

We definitely turned a corner this month. We had to tweak Sweet Pea’s Zantac dosage and get the tummy troubles under control again, but this month, life seemed to be back to normal. Well, a new normal with two little girls.

November

Sweet Pea’s adoption was finalized on November 9th! That day signified the end of our journey to #2. It was a journey that began sooner than we planned, with twists and turns along the way. But as was our journey to Little Bug, this journey was weaved together with the thread of God’s faithfulness in a display for the world to see another one of His miracles.

November 9th we celebrated all God DID to bring our precious second daughter into our lives. We stood amazed once again at the events that took place over the past year and we gave thanks and praised God for his loving kindness to us.

December

And here we are again at December 31st – the last day of 2011. It literally seems like it was just last week that I was sitting at the table eating lunch with Little Bug, who was just 18 months old, and my cell phone rang catapulting us right then and there on to our journey to #2.

It is amazing to think that Emily called about a baby that maybe never was, however, there was a tiny baby tucked away in the womb of a woman we would never meet but who would birth our second baby just 8 months later.

I think about last Christmas and how very special that Christmas was. I had always wanted to make a Christmas “pregnancy announcement”. Even in Tracy’s deceit, God made good come from it. We announced our 2nd baby would be born in July and she almost was. She missed being born in July by just two days.

The faithfulness of God just astounds me. My heart is so full of love for these two little girls, it is overwhelming to think about at times. I went from infertility treatments to mother to two beautiful daughters in just over two years.

As we enter 2012, I don’t know what this year will bring but I do know this:

God’s faithfulness will continue on.

Happy New Year!!!

The song “How Great Thou Art” has been in my heart tonight. I praise the Lord because He is a great God and He has done great things in my life.

I think about where I was just three years ago and where I am today and I know nothing but the greatness of God could have brought me here.

I am anxiously anticipating Christmas this year with my wonderful husband and our two daughters.

Tonight, the praise on my lips for what God has done in my life was just a beautiful thing.

But you know what is even more beautiful?

When we praise Him when life isn’t beautiful.

I will be the first to say that it is totally okay to be angry at God if you are going through infertility and cannot see anything good right now.

I had my fair share of those moments along the way.

But I also remember knowing in the depth of my heart that I needed to be angry and then I needed to praise God in spite of it all.

There is just something beautiful about being in a place of complete disappointment and pain and yet knowing in the depth of your heart that God is in control and He is at work, even now, doing something beautiful beyond comprehension at the moment.

I know we can easily fall into the “God is punishing me” trap or the “God does not care about me” trap, but those are lies from Satan.

Choose to praise the Lord in spite of it all.

I cannot tell you how peaceful and exhilarating it is when you are in the middle of a trial, with darkness all around, and you praise God for it.

It reminds me of the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning!

They don’t know what is under the Christmas Tree, but they know it is good!

They hold high expectations of what they are going to see on Christmas morning when they tear into their presents.

And once they see, there are no disappointments!

I can remember when it “clicked” for me.

I just wanted a baby. All of this…the shots, the meds, the doctor appointments, the treatments…it was all because I wanted a baby.

And then I began to see that all of this was not just about me and my desire for a baby!

Instead it was all about God and I had the opportunity to let God receive glory through my unfortunate circumstances or I could continue to allow the focus to be all about me.

Since I knew that God promised in His word that He had plans for my life that would prosper me and not cause me harm, that would give me hope and a future, I knew that infertility for me was the time in my life where God was calling me to put my faith to action.

I had grown up in the church. There every Sunday since I was 3 weeks old. I began learning the truths of God as a very young child. It was all in my head.

Infertility was the fork in the road for me: is my faith in Jesus Christ going to continue to be “head knowledge” or am I going to put my faith to action and truly believe that God is going to do something great…something more than I can imagine?

I will never forget the “great expectation” that filled my heart when I realized this.

Realizing that God desired to do something GREAT through my horrible circumstances was a turning point for me.

Sure I still had the “bad days” where I questioned why God was not allowing me to get pregnant, but ultimately I was waiting with great expectation on what God was going to do in His time for His glory!

And then…

things started happening!

April 9, 2009, was the appointed day that God started revealing the “Something More” He had planned for me.

It started with the day we turned in our adoption paperwork and were told that very same day we could adopt a baby girl due to be born in just two months.

That was just the first of God’s miracles in my life.

Tonight I was just overwhelmed with the greatness of our God as that song filled my heart.

If life isn’t beautiful for you right now, have your moments of grief and sorrow but then praise Him for what He is going to do in His time!

Found this in my drafts today…need to post because this baby girl is almost FOUR months old now!

It is mind-boggling that Sweet Pea is already 3 months old.

When it became clear God really was adding another baby to our family this past summer, I honestly wondered how my heart could love another child like I love my Little Bug.

I’d heard it would “just happen”.

And it did.

I cannot imagine our family without our sweet little Sweet Pea!

I love my two girls with a love that cannot be put into words.

I love their stories. I love the way God brought them to our family.

I love Little Bug’s spit fire personality and Sweet Pea’s sweet innocent personality.

I love that Sweet Pea smiles at her big sister while her big sister proclaims, “Look Mommy! Sweet Pea is smiling at me!”

I love being a mother to two girls.

These pictures were taken

one year ago

today,

which was right around the time

Sweet Pea was conceived.

Today, I am so incredibly thankful

God had already written Sweet Pea’s story.

Even though, at that time, we were completely clueless as to the miracle God had already started.

Praise the Lord!

This year has flown by!

It seriously seems like Christmas was just last month.

We are coming up on the 1 year anniversary of the beginning of the wild ride that was started on December 13th when my lawyer called me to tell me that Tracy (Little Bug’s birth mother) was pregnant again.

That immediately threw us into our journey to #2, even though we had not planned to start that journey until Little Bug was at least two years old.

But, as usual, God knew what He was doing and as we begin the month of November, I am so incredibly thankful that God is in control of my life and I am not.

There is no way I could have orchestrated this on my own accord.

One of the things I am most thankful for in my life is my infertility. Without it, I wouldn’t be who I am today and I wouldn’t be Little Bug and Sweet Pea’s mother.

There was a time I didn’t know how I would do life with infertility in it, but now, I can’t imagine life without it.

We are back, safe and sound!

We had a wonderful trip, although several times I know I said that I was never going to travel with TWO little ones again! (I know I will.)

For the most part, everyone did very well. Flying with Sweet Pea was…fun! I love to fly and at this age, Sweet Pea was very easy to fly with. She never made a peep on any of the flights. The only real challenge was making it to our connecting flights. I only had 30 minutes to navigate a HUGE airport with baby and luggage in tow, but we made every flight with minutes to spare. Little Bug enjoyed her trip and all the attention she got from her Grandma and Grandpa and her Uncle. I’ll do a post or two soon about our trip.

It’s been twelve days since I have posted and I think that is the longest “blogging vacation” I have ever taken since starting this blog almost four years ago.

Honestly, I was using that time to decide if I was going to continue this blog or lay it to rest.

I love this blog. I really do. I love writing. I love that God has given me the ability to record my journey through infertility and beyond.

I never dreamed God would turn this blog into a ministry, but He has. I love that. I love hearing from readers through email who need encouragement.

While on vacation I received an email from a reader asking me to please call her because they are adopting a baby who is going through withdrawals and she would just love to talk to someone who has gone through this before.

I love that.

But as with everything in life, there is the good side and the bad.

The bad side of this blog is something you don’t see.

I don’t know how many of my readers believe in the attacks of Satan on the work of the Lord, but it is never-ending for me.

Satan’s attacks, that is.

I cannot tell you how many times I write something straight from my heart about the faithfulness and goodness of God and….BAM. Satan attacks me.

Satan hates this blog.

For twelve days this blog was quiet and for twelve days my life was quiet, too.

I know this all may seem crazy, but it has happened too many times for me to not recognize the correlation.

So, while on this trip I spent some time thinking about this blog and what I should do.

It was stressing me out just thinking about it, so I stopped trying to figure out what I should do.

I know that I want to lay this blog to rest. It would just be easier to stop writing so Satan will stop attacking.

But I know that he will just find other way to attack me. And I love to write. It’s my way of processing things. If I am not writing here, it will be in a notebook.

So, as the airplane was making it’s decent into my hometown yesterday afternoon, I realized I had yet to decide if I was going to continue writing, or not.

As the plane found the runway, I found my answer.

I will keep writing.

God has done so much and I just cannot keep quiet.

For now, this is the place He has given me to minister to people who are walking the road I walked many years ago.

It is crazy that I can say many years ago.

I want people who come across this blog to see that infertility is not forever.

Yes, our bodies will be broken forever, but the pain of infertility is just a season.

If we put our faith in the Lord, He will bring us through the fire … and what lies on the other side is better than your wildest dreams.

You just have to keep persevering in the face of pain, trusting in God who promises His plans for you are good and will not cause you harm and will bring you hope and a future.

If you don’t see anything else from my journey through infertility, I pray you see that.

It’s good to be back.

I can’t promise God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility will be around forever, but for now, it’s here and as long as God gives me this place as my ministry, I will be here, too.

I’ve heard it said a million times that “God won’t give you more than you can handle!”.

I was reading my journal from this year and I came across something I wrote back in the spring as we were waiting to hear from the first lawyer whether we were going to be chosen, or not.

I was already a little worried about the possibility of my children being just over 2 years apart and I wrote, “If God knows I can’t handle two children two years apart, we won’t be chosen.”

Well, here I am.

The mother of two girls born two years apart.

God must have known that I could handle this, right?

Wrong!!

In fact, the complete opposite is true…

God gives us more than we can handle on our own so that we turn to HIM for strength!

What would the point be in trusting God if we could handle everything on our own strength?

In my own strength, I cannot handle raising my two daughters.

It is beyond my capabilities.

I need more.

I need Jesus and the strength, love, joy and patience HE has to offer.

So, I do not agree with that statement at all.

To say that God does not give us more than we can handle means that we are capable of doing life in our own strength!

We wouldn’t need God, then, would we?

But if life’s circumstances land us in a place where we need more that we can find within ourselves to make it through, we turn to God and trust in HIM to get us through and give us what we need during those trying times.

I’m definitely in that place right now and it is a good place to be.

Within myself I cannot find all that my husband and my daughters need me to be.

And so I turn to my Lord asking Him daily to give me what I need.