Ryan and I have both felt for some time that we are meant to be parents. Yet we didn’t know what form that would take. I personally believe that I have been promised by God that we would have a family. If you don’t believe in God or have never felt His presence, it may be difficult to imagine Him promising me something like that. The best way I can explain it is that I was praying about this one day and the vague sense of children just came into my mind. Instead of filling me with grief/anxiety like this thought normally would have, I felt an overwhelming peace. It was as if God was telling me he had it all in His control, and that I could rest in His promise to provide when the time was right.
It wasn’t always easy to believe that. Over the past two years, we have seen our share of the “Not Pregnant” words on the tests. The first year was the hardest in many ways. I could feel that something was wrong–why WOULDN’T we be pregnant?–but had no evidence. People told us to relax and it would happen. We were told that most likely nothing was wrong, but that it would just “take us a while” to conceive. I know our friends and family (and doctors!) were just trying to be loving and supportive during a tough time, but really, it wasn’t easy to hear those things. The encouraging words didn’t seem to help anything.
Finally, one year had passed since our official time of “starting to try,” so we were able to go and see the doctor about fertility tests. I was baffled, since my cycles were usually running like clockwork. After a few tests for each of us, we found out that we each had some problems. Specifically, one of my fallopian tubes was blocked and my husband’s “count” was low. Even though these results were not good, they still made me feel relieved that we knew, at last, what was going on. THIS was the reason we had not been able to conceive. The chances were not good that we would conceive without medical intervention.
Tired of visiting doctors every few weeks and needing time to consider our options, we decided to take a few months and think about what to do next. Meanwhile, every month as I got a period, I alternated between feeling God’s peace about our situation or being completely devastated, thinking we would never have children. My husband was INCREDIBLY SUPPORTIVE through all of this. We prayed together so much and I believe we have grown closer through the struggle of all of this. Just one silver lining!
In early June we decided to pursue foster care and adoption. Partly, we felt that adoption was our only option if we wanted to have kids. This was based on a decision made long ago not to pursue medical intervention (IVF, etc), and also on my personal desire to adopt if at all possible. We wanted to be proactive and begin our family sooner rather than later. All along, we prayed for the Lord’s guidance as we went along. We called our families to inform them of new additions that could be arriving even before the standard nine months. (Ha, ha.) Although some of our dearest friends and family members were concerned for us, ALL of our loved ones responded with support. We could not be more blessed! We were very excited about our decision to become Licensed Foster Parents and felt that it was God’s plan for us. (We still feel this way, but now that is plan is on hold for a year or two.)
We were in the middle of our 9-week foster parent course when we discovered I was pregnant! So even with all of our “problems,” and for no reason either of us could fathom, we would be having a biological child after all. Wow! God’s timing really is perfect. (For more on my initial reaction to the news, see previous post.)