God Has Plans for You!
P.U.S.H.ing (Praying Until Something Happens) is not easy. It’s not for the faint of heart, but God will give us the strength to do it if we ask Him, and we have to be willing to do the work. If you’ve joined us before, I hope you have been P.U.S.H.ing on towards your breakthrough.
If you’re just joining us, this is the third installation of my P.U.S.H story in a timeline format. If you’d like a better understanding of this P.U.S.H. story, please go back and read “Strength in Weariness” and “Do You Trust Him?” and then make sure to come back and join us!
For those who already know the story, get ready to see what plans God had for me.
July-August 2017- I begin taking the fertility teas again, and once again I have an allergic reaction. My lungs feel as if they are closing and this wins me a trip to Urgent Care. Why not, my deductible had been met, as usual, somewhere back in March.
August 2017- I visit a pulmonologist about my lungs feeling closed because of the teas. He puts me on an inhaler. The inhaler seems to make it worse. I pray and ask God to show me what to do even though I had gotten myself into that stupid mess. He showed me that I needed to suck on raw ginger? Why not, I had used it in the past for my stomach problems, and frequently I used it in my tea. (Green tea, not close my lungs again tea. Trust me; I learned that lesson. Once I sucked on the raw ginger, immediately I felt my lungs open again. It took a couple of week of me consistently sucking on the ginger once or twice per day, but after a couple of weeks, I had no additional problems with my lungs feeling closed.
Beginning of October 2017: I begin looking for a doctor who specialized in my particular fertility issue. I visited two doctors and an “almost doctor.” That doctor is an almost because after traveling an hour to have an MRI, I found out the doctor’s office had me scheduled for a fibroid MRI and as you may recall, I no longer have fibroids. I find out that day that the doctor who had ordered that MRI and whom I was going to see after I left the MRI center, could not help me with my particular problem. The scheduler had gotten my reason for my visit wrong. But, all was not lost. I’ll tell you about that in a few. I didn’t know it then, but God was working mysteriously.
Mid-October 2017: I joined an infertility and miscarriage support group, and I meet some awesome women there!
Mid-October 2017: My husband and I pray with our associate pastor. I tell him about the War Room/ Nursery. He explains that we need to be specific in our prayers and intentions and that if the War Room was going to be the War Room, it needed only to be that. So, I moved my prayer table, devotions, prayer cards, etc…to my closet. I had pretty much stopped going into the War Room anyway because it just wasn’t as convenient as I had thought. With the War Room now being in my closet, I definitely have to go in there every day and now I pray at my prayer table every day. That ended up being way better than the “War Room Nursery!”
Mid-October 2017: We talk to our friends who have adopted about the adoption process, and their feelings about it. We start to feel like it’s doable for us and plus we love their adopted son!
Late October 2017: I have multiple doctor’s appointments. All yielding bad results and both stating I have multiple fibroids. I was livid! I think I even through a spoon across the room later that evening. I couldn’t believe I was in this situation yet again. I had been trusting God, and I felt let down. I didn’t understand it, and I knew that would definitely be the end of any chance of having children. After I threw my pity party, I realized I wouldn’t win God’s favor letting my emotions take over every time there is bad news. I had to pull it together, conference with God and find out what he wanted the next step to be. He reminded me of that fibroid focused MRI that I had recently declined. Soon after, I made an appointment at the MRI center nearest me and used the same MRI order that the “almost doc” had sent into the other MRI center farther away. Since they were a chain, they too had my MRI order. I went in for the MRI on a Saturday.
Late October 2017: I start to feel as if I don’t want to adopt because I’ve come this far and it hurts too bad to face the possibility of not being able to see my own flesh and blood looking back at me with little eyes, little hands, and little feet. I become a tortured soul. I pray, and God begins to lift that antsy feeling of “I have to do something, or it’ll be too late.” I begin to pray the prayer of Hannah for pregnancy. Hannah was a woman in the Bible who went through much pain because of her barrenness. She was mocked, but all the while her husband loved her. She went to the temple to pray and the priest, Eli inquired of her story thinking she was drunk, she explained her pain, and he blessed her. She became pregnant soon after! (I Samuel 1-20)
End of October 2017: My new fertility doctor calls with more bad news and is promoting an unreasonably expensive IVF procedure that we’d have to pay for out of our pocket. Some employees have coverage for IVF. I just happened to be one whose employer does not cover it.
October was long and difficult! Geesh!
Early November 2017: One of my new doctors who might do an additional surgery of removing my tubes in order to undergo IVF, calls to tell me some good news. I was at work, but I took the phone call from my doctor’s nurse inside my car. While I was walking to the car, and while I was waiting for the doctor to come to the line, I prayed to God that I wouldn’t receive any bad news on that phone call. The first thing the doctor said to me when he answered the phone was, “I have some good news for you.” I shouted when I hung up the phone! The doctor said he did not see any fibroids or any cystic mass. Both of which had been seen just a couple of weeks earlier through ultrasound. I am officially a walking miracle!
November 2017: In my infertility and miscarriage support group, I tell the women that I felt “Honored that God chose me to carry this load.” I felt like God knew I could handle it, so He gave it to me. The women felt inspired by that comment. I felt pretty good myself.
December 2017- The doctor’s nurse calls me with bad news. I become extremely stressed, depressed, and weary. Satan runs through my mind saying “Do you still feel honored?”
January 2018: Through much prayer, pressing past the pain, and soliciting the prayers of others, God brought me back to a place of contentment and rest in Him.
February 2018: I find out I’m pregnant and the fetus is in the right place! We are overjoyed!
March 2018: I miscarry, grieve, ask questions of God, but I’m still P.U.S.H.ing.
Today: I know my story is not the worst thing imaginable, but it’s a story of how the hard and pressing times can create an inextricable dependence on God that probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been in that dark place. So, I say to you today, if you’re in a dark place, push and pray your way through your own timeline. God always rewards those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6) I don’t have my baby yet, but I have my peace, and that’s a reward in and of itself. I also believe now that God will give me whatever He feels I can handle. We just have to rest in our truth and have peace in whatever plan God has for our lives.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)