Partnering With Heaven

I’m in the last days of this miracle pregnancy and I’m still overwhelmed when I feel my little girl moving around inside me. My belly that’s held her these last nine months is contracting even as my fingers hit these familiar keys. My heart is holding both the joy of carrying her all these months, yet the excitement of finally meeting on the outside, the one growing inside me. But more than that, it feels as if my head is trying to wrap around this ten year journey of infertility my heart has traveled. 

How do you sum up in a few words the depth of despair, sorrow, and grief this decade of barrenness has brought to me? Is it even possible to remotely communicate the beauty Papa God has forged among the ashes in my heart throughout this journey? I can only try to articulate His goodness to me and give my best attempt to describe the stories the calluses have held found on my knees. 

If I could take you back to the beginning, you’d find a girl who had experienced so much trauma and heartbreak already, the thought of having trouble growing a family wasn’t even on her radar, because “she had already been through hard.” I guess that girl escaped her pain that she’d buried for so long with an idea of a handsome husband, four point five blonde, curly headed girls, and a white picket fence. Until after a year of “trying” that white picket fence started crumbling to the ground. 

I found myself sitting in the infertility clinic a year and a half into us trying to grow our family hearing words like, “severe endometriosis, male factor infertility, and next to impossible.” We blew through our savings, trying every natural doctor you can imagine, went through numerous rounds of medicated cycles, and three rounds of medicated IUIs. I had my first surgery to clean out the endometriosis the third year of us trying to get pregnant. And my heart and body were just so tired. We quit everything. I crashed my picket fence idol at the feet of Jesus and surrendered our family to Him. 

Out of that surrender, I’ve gotten the privilege to mother the three most beautiful children through adoption. Adoption was always a part of “our plan,” in fact, I made sure on our first date that my husband was open to adoption because I knew it would be in my story one day. I just thought it would be later down the road after we had become pregnant. It’s funny, isn’t it, how we plan out our lives? Except looking back on the story God has written, I can’t imagine it any other way. We wouldn’t have our children, we wouldn’t have the honor of being their parents, this story wouldn’t have been this beautiful. 

I started learning about the heart of Papa God and how it’s in His very nature to heal. I devoured the gospels to find that Jesus never refused healing to anyone that came to Him. Because I was already a mother, that longing had been fulfilled, but my body was still very much broken. I was in so much pain everyday. And I knew God wanted to heal me. I kept asking for healing month after month, year after year. Somewhere along the way, I felt Him whisper to my heart that He would do it, He would heal my womb. And the place that had been barren for so long, He would make fruitful. Except month after month, year after year, and even surgery after surgery, I still found myself in the same season of barrenness. 

And I’m thankful. Those ten years forged in my heart priceless amounts of gold I couldn’t get any other way. There is no cheap oil in the Kingdom, oil comes with great cost. Knowing Him became my heart’s truest longing, my soul’s deepest desire. No pregnancy or baby could ever compare to joy I had found in knowing Him. But I continued to come to Him with expectation for Him to fulfill His promise to me. And ultimately heal my very broken body like He had begun healing my heart. 

The spring of 2020, the pain from endometriosis in my body not only each month, but daily had increased to the point where I couldn’t even mother my children. I would find myself, especially during my period, not even able to get off the couch. We had just moved into our new house and I was taking a walk with my husband and out of the blue just asked him if he thought we should consider another surgery. Little did I know, he had been thinking the same for a while. 

The next month our oldest son, Zion, passed away from a tragic accident, and our entire world collapsed around us. The deep roots from the suffering of infertility had tethered my heart to this God I had come to know so intimately. We had built history together, deep deep history, and even though I hadn’t seen His promise fulfilled in my life, I knew at the core of who I was that He was good, even in the death of my son. There was nothing more true of Him than His goodness. And on the days my heart wanted to run away from Him, that truth that He was good, fastened my heart to His. It was His goodness that never let me go. 

Several months after Zion passed, the pain in my body was absolutely unbearable. I made an appointment with my OBGYN to have one more surgery to clean out the endometriosis. My doctor knew I had been believing for a miracle for ten years. At my post surgery appointment, he told me the endometriosis was so incredibly bad, along with the scar tissue from previous surgeries, that the next surgery I would have would be a hysterectomy. He said no other doctor would even remotely try. He told me I had six months to get pregnant or either have a hysterectomy. 

It was the midnight hour. The last chance for God to do a miracle. And once again, I found myself surrendering not my ideas this time, but the promise He had given me. I laid the promise down at His feet, and promised Him my affections even if He would never be true to His word. I had found the One my soul loved. In His heart I had found everything I could ever need. Knowing Him was the joy of my life, and although excruciatingly painful, I knew He would be enough for me if my body was never healed and never carried life. 

Little did I know, my surgeon sent in a referral to my old infertility doctor. A few weeks passed, and I got a call from the infertility clinic asking for me to schedule an appointment. Hesitantly, we agreed. We did two rounds of medicated IUIs. And the whole time my heart was wrestling with the Father. If it’s impossible anyway, why can’t you just heal me? Why should we spend this money on these treatments when I know you can only speak one word and I would be healed? Won’t this take away from Your glory?

The IUIs failed and I was done. I didn’t want to do treatments anyway. But my husband who was strongly against IVF seven years ago, heard from the Father, and felt we should pursue it. In the last few years I had learned the beauty of being under his cover. Even when I didn’t agree, I was choosing to step in alignment with him, which ultimately meant I was in alignment with Abba. Even though I said things to him like, “This is my body that will have to go through this…” I submitted to his leadership, and it was one of the most fruitful decisions of my life. 

The Father started teaching me about true intercession. During this time, I had shut my ministry down, completely fell off the grid, and went into the most hidden season of my life. I had found myself laying on my living room floor for hours praying for my neighbors, my church, my family, and anything else the Holy Spirit would burn my heart for. 

One day, I had a vision of Jesus sitting up high over everything else. He patted the seat next to Him as if He was inviting me to the high place. I sat beside Him and started listening to what He was saying. He was interceding for me just like His Word says. And I realized in that moment that my intercession was simply agreeing with what He was already praying. 

There’s no way a fertility treatment, or medicine, or doctors could ever take away from His glory. Because true intercession is really us partnering with heaven with the will and heart of Jesus. 

In December of 2020, I started to prepare my body for IVF. I started taking supplements and medicine. Every time I would swallow them, I would thank Jesus for His healing, and partnered with heaven for the healing that was available to me through the cross. And I started writing down everything He was showing me.

Every shot, every ultrasound, every blood draw, every single supplement and medicine that entered my body, I took it as communion, receiving the healing that Jesus had already purchased. And in intercession, I continued to listen to what Jesus was praying for, which can always be found in His Word, and continued adding my agreement. There was no striving, no anxiety, no working, or drumming up faith. Just resting in what He had said. 

On February 17, 2021 I saw with my eyes the fulfillment of His promise. Despite even the fertility specialist saying it was impossible, despite the ten year history of barrenness, God did a miracle, and I was pregnant. 

Each of my children have taught me significant landscapes of the Father’s heart. Selah has taught me the grace of the Father. Micah taught me that God’s heart longs to heal. Zion taught me how I’m no longer an orphan, but I have a seat at the King’s table. They each carry within them these pieces of the Father’s heart. And this little girl was conceived from a revelation of intercession, and it’s my prayer she’ll carry it deeply within her, her whole life through. 

As my belly contracts and releases again, and I feel her flutters inside me, I’m overwhelmed at the story she already carries. After a decade of barrenness, the gift of being pregnant with her is one I’ll always cherish. But it doesn’t compare to the affection for the depths of His heart I have found throughout this journey. 

When I started writing everything He was saying to me down, I realized something else was being conceived in me. Before I knew it, the pages of my journal had turned into a book. Partnering With Heaven, a 28 Day Devotional for Women Trying to Conceive, is almost finished. You can expect it’s delivery in the Spring of 2022. I’m so excited to share it with you! If you want to stay updated make sure you subscribe here. 

Until then, know that my story just isn’t for me. This testimony of what God did in my body and more deeply in my heart is for you today, too. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been waiting, what your diagnosis is, how impossible the circumstances, or even your age. Nothing is impossible with Papa God. He longs to heal us, in our bodies but mostly our hearts. 

Sometimes we don’t see healing this side of heaven, and I don’t understand why. But it doesn’t change the truth of what’s found in His Word. It doesn’t change the character and nature of His heart. In Revelation, the Bible says that the testimony of Jesus releases the spirit of prophesy, and that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the power of our testimony! This means there is significant power locked within the years these words hold. This story just isn’t for me, it’s for you too! Because Papa God is no respecter of persons, He doesn’t love one more than the other. What He has done in my heart and my body, He can do for you! 

We are never without hope, friend.

Hope, Himself, lives inside us. And Hope never, ever disappoints.

He brings resurrection to every barren place.