INTRODUCTION

God works in wonderful and exciting ways. One of those ways is the joy of having children. For my wife and I, this was one area that had brought us discouragement until God moved in our situation.

SENT FROM GOD PART I

My wife and I met on a college campus in a computer class that at the time my wife had no idea why her adviser had made her take. Of course, today we can look back and see the hand of God to bring us together. Once she asked me out and we began dating, we knew that we were the one for each other. We began to plan and talk about the future and the way our family would grow. We talked about having kids and how many we would have and even speculated as to what sex each of the children would be. We were as happy as two young children in love could be.

Our happiness began to fade in late 1992 when my wife was diagnosed with PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), which is a hormonal disorder that affects less the seven percent of all women and is the leading cause of infertility (PCOS Wikipedia Entry). People with PCOS usually don’t have children and if they do, they usually only have one because of the many issues related with PCOS and the reproductive systems. We were young and had been married just over a year and had been walking with Christ for about four months when this discovery occurred. And I think that actually helped us rather then hurt us because to be honest we were too young and na?ve to understand the full gravity of this situation. We just continued with our plans for a future as if there was nothing wrong with my wife.

Our doctor decided the best course of action for us was to actually attempt to get pregnant because in his many years he had seen the wonder of the women’s body correct many problems through having a child and hoped this would be the case with us. As with many PCOS sufferers, my wife had a severe lack of ovulation and that means a severe lack of chances to get pregnant. However, we began with optimism that some how God would give us our hearts desire and provide for us a child. That was the end of 1992.

Throughout most of 1993, we continued to work at trying to get pregnant. We had tried several methods including fertility drugs with no success. Our doctor was informing us that we were running out of options due largely in part to my wife’s lack of ovulation response from our previous attempts. By December 1993, our doctor was on his last concept for helping us get pregnant. If this had failed, then his suggestion was adoption which we were beginning to serious consider.

Before I go on, you need to understand that working with infertility is a very frustrating situation. You are constantly under a microscope and despite everyone’s attempts to make you not feel bad because you can’t get pregnant, you still feel like a strange freak of nature. By the end of a year of trying to get pregnant, we had almost lost hope and were tired of all the procedures. As disheartening as it was that we might not be able to have children, we had gotten to the end of our own rope with the subject and were looking forward to having an end even if it was not the one we wanted.

Add to this struggle the fact that one of the elders in our church was a doctor. In fact, the husband was a family doctor and the wife was a pediatrician and they had been trying for years to have children (like twelve years) and had no success. Today they have three children, but at the time, they were more a picture of the direction we were heading then a testimony to the power and love of God.

Desperate to even understand why this was happen to us, we turned to God. We were very young in the Lord, but we got together as a couple and prayed to God that if this was his will we would accept it, but that we wanted to have children. We prayed about the desire that burned in our hearts to have children and how we knew that God himself had placed that desire there. We prayed that God move on our behalf.

December 23, 1993, my wife and I were making one of our many appointments with the doctor. We had our temperature chart in hand, and to be honest, we dragged ourselves in exhausted at everything we were doing and at this point we were just looking for ovulation not pregnancy. The doctor had taken the chart and all the information from the pre-visit tests that the office would run and had entered our room and the following conversation took place.

“Well, it is iffy,” declared the doctor.

“Ok,” I replied as we had hoped that the spike in temperature was indeed an ovulation, but it was hard to tell. “What do we do now?”

“We take a blood test.”

“You mean we can tell from a blood test,” I almost shouted at the doctor. After all, why wake every morning at the same time to take my wife’s temperature if we could discover that she was ovulating by a blood test.

“It is the best way to know for sure,” replied the doctor a little taken back by my response.

“If after all this you could tell from a blood test then why were we taking her temperature?” I protested completely upset that they would put my wife through this ordeal.

“What are you talking about?!?” Loudly questioned the doctor.

“Her ovulating,” I declare with authority and anger concerning my wife.

The doctor smiled while still replying loudly, “I’m checking to see if she is pregnant!!”

Well, you could have heard a pin drop at that moment as I stood there mouth hanging wide and scraping the floor. You see we had gotten so caught up in just watching her temperature and seeing if she ovulated that I had completely disconnected from the thought of her getting pregnant. After all, it was a near impossible task and we needed to take step one first, but God worked a miracle and my wife got pregnant with PCOS. We were happy and excited.

The pregnancy progressed well and before we knew it, we were approaching our due date. At six weeks out, we discovered at one of the almost daily doctor’s visits that my wife started dilating.

My wife’s water had not broken and she had not had a contraction, but she dilated up to two centimeters. Being six weeks out, there were many potential complications to our child being born at this time and therefore the doctor placed my wife on bed rest. She was not to move except to go to the bathroom. Well, you can imagine what it must be like telling a pregnant woman who can’t get comfortable or sit still to begin with that she needs to be on constant bed rest. It was an uphill battle, but my wife, the trooper that she is, did very well.

August 9th, 1994, we returned to the doctor’s office after two weeks of bed rest and about four weeks until our due date. The doctor discovered that my wife was now six centimeters dilated and performed a sonogram finding that the baby was face up. This was not a major problem, but was something that he would need to address when the baby was born. He then told us to go and walk and see what we could get started.

So, we walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and, well you get the picture. Eventually, we went home and, remember we just walked, my wife after having two weeks of bed rest had energy to spare. She set up the entire baby’s room and cleaned the house. She later said that she knew the baby was coming and instinctively had energy to get all these things done.

The doctor told us to continue to walk. Eventually, we were admitted to the hospital. The doctor broke the water and we were in for the long haul. The doctor was augmenting (with pitocin) to make the contractions come faster.

Several hours later, my wife was pushing with all her might. The doctor was becoming concerned because she had been pushing for over ninety minutes and the baby could be having issues. However, the head began to pop out and then from my standpoint everything went into slow motion. The doctor looked at the nurse who immediately shoved me out of the way while leaping up on to the delivery bed. When she straddled my wife, she began to push down on her stomach. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew well enough and had enough trust in the doctor to stand back and watch. Several minutes later, our daughter was born.

What had happened was that in the twenty four hours since the sonogram, our child decided that she needed to turn and got half way. You see a woman’s pelvic bone is designed to stretch and move left to right, but not forward or backward (up or down when laying on a bed). Since our child was face up the day before and she only made it half way around, her shoulder was caught on my wife’s pelvic bone creating a potentially dangerous situation for both. Thank God that the doctor and nurses reacted quick enough with the help of God to birth our daughter without complications to either the mother or the baby.

The doctor and I looked at each other and then my daughter and then back to each other. My wife was asking what was wrong, and there was nothing it was just that both of us were shocked and happy that it was a girl. After a moment, the doctor finally turned to my wife and told her that she had a girl. They wrapped my daughter and presented her to my wife. A moment that will surely never be forgotten.

On August 10th, 1994, God provided us with a child and we praise him every day for this blessing.

SCRIPTURES

We delighted ourselves in the Lord and he gave us a daughter when all the odds were stacked against us. Trust in him and give him your life and he will bless you beyond what you can think or imagine.

CONCLUSION

God is truly awesome to create life in a woman’s womb and truly awesome to bless us with the joys of parenthood. We are truly thankful to God for giving us a child.

Until Next Time,

I want to thank the great guys over at My Life Ministries (http://mylifeministries.org/) for encouraging me and hosting this blog. If you haven’t done so yet, hop over to http://mylifeministries.org/ and take a look around. Join the forums and become part of the family.

Also, if you have a testimony, email it to me at testify {at} fireknights {dot} net. I would love to hear it and I may just post it here on the blog.

INTRODUCTION

In honor of the fact that we are now in the great Christmas season (Awesome!!!), I thought I would post a Christmas testimony.

Sometimes we need to learn lessons from children to grow our own faith. Several Christmases ago, that is exactly what I needed to do in order to grow my faith.

FAITH FOR CHRISTMAS SNOW

The year was 1999, and my family and I were living in central New Jersey in the lovely town of Edison. I had finished college in May and was working for Motorola. My wife and I were the proud parents of two of our four children (although one went to heaven before we saw him/her, but we will meet there) who were of the ages of five and three. On Thanksgiving, Katie, the five year old, had told me that she wanted to have a white Christmas. Well, even though we lived in a climate that could have snow on Christmas, my family had not seen a white Christmas in many years. In fact, since my wife and I had been married to this year, we had not seen a white Christmas together. So, when I say that it was unlikely that we would have a white Christmas, it is with earnest. However, my daughter wanted a white Christmas. I did the only thing that a good Christian father who was wanting to instill Christian values in his child and told her that only God could make it snow and that she would need to pray to God for the snow. She smiled and then said a prayer.

I had thought that would be the end of it, but I was wrong. My daughter proceeded to pray for snow every night from day on constantly informing me that God was hearing her prayer and that we would have snow on Christmas. That was all well and good.

Until we got within several days of Christmas and the weather report was unseasonably warm with no chance of even rain let alone snow in the forecast. I began to rehearse in my mind the speech that I would have to give to my heart broken crying daughter on how sometimes God’s answer to our prayer is no. I tried to drop in little hints here and there that she might not get what she was asking for, but she was steadfast and firm on the fact that God was going to give her a white Christmas.

Christmas Eve found my family at our church for a special Christmas Eve service. Silently, I had been saying a prayer that God would help my daughter understand when I explained that he just didn’t want or need to have it snow for Christmas. It was at this point, that the Pastor of the church stood up interrupting the service and announced that they were going to cut everything short because they wanted to make sure that everyone could get home in the SNOW.

I didn’t believe that I heard him right, but when I turned around and looked out the doors, it was snowing outside. And when I say it was snowing, I don’t mean a flake or two was falling, I mean it was really coming down.

I brought my family home and was in total shock. We turned on the weather and every station was reporting how this freak storm just popped up over New Jersey bringing snow on Christmas. Everyone was amazed except for my little girl who told me, “See, I told you God was going to give me snow for Christmas.” By Christmas morning, we had just over six inches of the white stuff on the ground and my kids had the best time playing it in.

SCRIPTURE

My daughter got the concept that if you believe and ask then God will move on your behalf. Of course, you need to ask with the right heart, like my daughter having the heart of a child that wanted to see God move for you. It was a pivotal moment for her where God became real and my faith grew tremendously.

CONCLUSION

If you ask for things in Jesus name with the right heart, you will receive. God is very amazing when it comes to this. I encourage you to bring your requests to God and then trust him handle your request for your benefit.

I want to thank the great guys over at My Life Ministries (http://mylifeministries.org/) for encouraging me and hosting this blog. If you haven’t done so yet, hop over to http://mylifeministries.org/ and take a look around. Join the forums and become part of the family.

Also, if you have a testimony, email it to me at testify {at} fireknights {dot} net. I would love to hear it and I may just post it here on the blog.