Day Six

Over the past few years, my husband, Alan, and I approached God with many ‘big’ prayer requests about having children, asking God to do things that doctors believed were impossible. Battling infertility, experiencing the physical and emotional pain of failed fertility tests, and being unable to experience a natural childbirth are all things that we pleaded with God to make different. In His infinite wisdom, God chose to give us the strength to journey through these situations, rather than to deliver us from them.

However, there have been other times when instead of having us journey through the pain, God answered our requests in ways that are nothing short of miraculous…

During my first pregnancy, my OBGYN told me that if we could get to 36 weeks, he would be happy.  Because of a congenital anomaly, I am considered ‘high-risk’ and my doctor didn’t think a full term pregnancy was possible. I remember leaving that appointment and immediately asking God for a full term pregnancy. At that point, the medical community considered a pregnancy to be full-term at 37 weeks.

When I got to 37 weeks, I just assumed that I would go into labor because God had answered our prayer request for a full term pregnancy. Around 38 1/2 weeks, the American College and Obstetricians and Gynecologists released new information and redefined a Full-Term Pregnancy as 39 weeks. I laughed to myself as I read that!

I walked into my scheduled C-section a few days later and delivered my full-term baby boy, never having gone into labor.

Due to being ‘high-risk’, I had many ultrasounds with a specialist during my pregnancies. During one of those routine ultrasounds with my son, the specialist told me that my son had clubfoot. Alan and I started asking God for healing for our son, specifically before birth. At the same time, we told God that we would be faithful no matter how He chose to move. We chose the name ‘Josiah’ for our son because one of the meanings of the name is ‘our God is healer’. We believed that God would bring healing, whether it was in the womb or after birth through conventional methods. I continued with the ultrasounds, praying each time that the ultrasound would show healing, but multiple ultrasound techs and doctors all confirmed that our son had ‘significant’ clubfoot.

Josiah was born on October 25th. I remember asking the nurses how his feet looked. They gave me a bit of a confused look and replied that his feet were totally fine. He was born perfectly healthy with no clubfoot.

When Alan and I started trying for a second baby around a year later, I told God that I wanted to get pregnant without any fertility treatments. After trying for a little while, we speculated that God wasn’t going to answer that request with a ‘yes’ and we decided to go back to our fertility specialist.  At our appointment, the doctor did an ultrasound and told us that everything looked good, but that we weren’t going to be able to get pregnant that month. I was born without a right fallopian tube, so I can only get pregnant when I ovulate on the left side. The doctor said that we would start blood work and treatment the following month.

A couple weeks later, I took three pregnancy tests and got three positives. I was in absolute shock. Ultrasounds during this pregnancy all confirmed that I had in fact ovulated on the side where I do not have a tube. God had given me my heart’s desire through a medical miracle. Our healthy baby girl was born September 18th, full-term, just like her brother.

Being in the position of needing God to do what only He can do often feels terrifying. I never know for sure exactly how He’ll move. When I came to God with my desire to have children, I knew that He would be faithful and never leave me, but I didn’t know if He would choose to answer my prayers in the ways that I wanted. I have seen God answer my prayers in many different ways. I have seen Him say ‘no’ and other times I have seen Him say ‘yes’, but I know He is faithful either way.

-Story of Gods miraculous power, goodness and infinite wisdom by Jacqui Ivey