There Is Room

It was the summer of 2013. I turned to Eric one night and whispered, "I think it's time to grow our family again." He told me that he had been pondering that same thought too. When we decided to try for our first and second children, I got pregnant after our first attempt - both times. Figuring that this would be the case again, we made plans to start trying to conceive. We would start trying after we returned from a vacation to Colorado in September of that year, knowing that we'd be pregnant by October, have the baby during the summer in 2014 when the kids would be out of school and have time to adjust to a new baby before harvest season. What a great plan. In fact, it was perfect.

At least it sounded perfect to us.

By the time 2014 rolled around, I was a little surprised that I wasn't pregnant yet. April. May. August. I didn't know how I felt. Lord, is it selfish for me to want another child? Do you really not want to give us another baby? Eric and I had been praying that the Lord would bless us with another child in His perfect timing. This prayer really translates to "Lord, we are trying here. Please just give us the baby!!" Both Eric and I prayed that if we weren't supposed to have more than two kids that He would take the desire away to have more. In the meantime, FIVE of my closest friends were beautifully pregnant and having baby showers and talking about baby names and all the baby talk that comes along with being pregnant. And the question that had been growing in my mind all year just kept resonating louder. Why wasn't I getting pregnant? WHY?

Some time this past summer, Eric and I changed our prayer. No - actually, Eric changed the prayer. One day, he prayed, "Lord, show us how You want us to grow our family." I'm not going to lie - I didn't like this prayer. It didn't revolve around conception... it was too open ended. It made me feel uncomfortable. But that is how Eric prayed from then on. Lord, show us how You want us to grow our family. I just went with it.

The end of September, I began a new Bible study with an amazing group of women from my church. We began meeting every Wednesday to dive into the book of Nehemiah. I really had no clue what the book was about, just that Kelly Minter wrote the study that we were using, and I had enjoyed studies written by her in the past. (Had I really thought about it - I would have pointed out to myself that it was her study on the book of Ruth that changed my views towards farming and ultimately drove me across the country to a new way of life. And then I would have told myself to "Watch out.") No such reminder came to me, and I blindly dove into a story that could not have been more metaphorically representative of my current life. The first day of the study - as I do on the first day of every study I begin - I had the women in the group turn to the inside cover of their book study and write down their current struggles and concerns that they hoped God would answer throughout the course of the Bible study. I firmly believe in God's timeliness and how He places resources in our hands at the precise moment we need them. I love seeing how God uses Bible studies to reveal answers and plans that we have been seeking for quite some time. At the top of my own "Personal Struggles" list on the inside cover of my book, I wrote "inability to conceive a child." Let's see how you answer that one, Lord.

At about the same time as this study was beginning, I had finally made an appointment with my doctor. It had been a year, after all, of really trying to get pregnant. I was in need of some answers. She ran a couple of tests and set up an appointment at a fertility clinic that was an hour away, for a consultation to see how we could get things moving. When I told Eric about the appointment, he made a face when I said the words "fertility clinic." You'd think he'd swallowed an entire lemon.

"Is this really what you want?" he asked.

"I mean, um, DUH! We have been trying to get pregnant for a year - YES! I want another baby!!" (I'm not sure my actual response was this nice, but it was something similar.)  But even then, as I tried to convince him that keeping the appointment was our only option, I felt unsettled... like this wasn't supposed to be a part of our story. Not because either one of us had any sort of opposition to fertility clinics... but because it just didn't seem right for us.

Lord, show us how You want us to grow our family.

We prayed this prayer every day. In the car, on the way to church. In the bathroom as Eric would kiss me goodbye as I hopped into some sweatpants to rush my kindergartner to school late. In whispers before we both closed our eyes and fell asleep.

And then I started my first week of homework for my Nehemiah study. The first session had really focused on missions and serving others. I could see the correlation, since Nehemiah had been all about helping others in need. But Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3's homework kept revolving around praying for God to break my heart. Now, I have written in my past several blog posts about the difficult year I had in 2014. So I was a little hardened as I sat there, being challenged to pray for God to break my heart, when I had barely survived the previous 8 months. I was broken already.

Or so I thought.

On the 5th day of the first week of the study, Kelly Minter asked this question, "What has God put in your heart to do?"

I usually was quick with the answers, but I stared at the empty space below the question, my pen hovering in the air like a hawk poised to strike its prey. Nothing came to mind. The truth was, my heart and mind and entire being had been so self absorbed the past several months that I really had no idea what God wanted me to do... about anything. As I sat there, frozen in the moment, a single word came to the front of my mind like a fragrant flower that you just catch the scent of as it blows by... not lingering, just enough to make its presence known. I shook my head. God, that is crazy. It's just crazy talk.

And I didn't write it down.

As I learned about how Nehemiah didn't just help the people of Jerusalem rebuild their city - but helped bring about restoration in the hearts of God's precious people, I could visibly see restoration happening in my own life. The fog had lifted. I was feeling a sense of expectation from a God I hadn't heard from in a while - due to my own withdrawal. I was a couple of weeks into the study, telling Eric about how I felt like I was coming back to life, rebuilding after a destructive year. I shared about the latest homework question - "In matters relating to God's kingdom, what are you most zealous about? What makes your heart burn?" Those answers came easy.  Discipleship and leading other women into God's Word. I was currently doing that one. And the other, so obvious one - overseas missions and children.

Now, I'm just simply babbling excitedly about how I'm feeling fired up again, like my passion had been returned to me, and Eric says to me, "Do you think we should think about adoption?" It took no longer than a second for me to be back there again...

Standing in the middle of a small, dry dirt patch with an old  tree barely giving us any shade. I was sketching. I had a ripped piece of paper, a dull pencil and about five minutes to finish my drawing. She sat there by the base of the tree, her dark round eyes fastened on mine. A grin stretched across her face as she dug her dusty feet into the dirt. I knew in that moment that she could be mine. This perfect little 5 year old African beauty.

Her name was Akos. When Eric and I and the rest of our missions team arrived at the AIDS Orphanage in the upper west region of Ghana, Africa, I had not been prepared for the tug this particular child was going to have on my heart. Neither was Eric. We were naïve 26 year olds, who thought we could take her home and love her. Just like that. When Eric and I finally had time to process our thoughts and feelings about that day, we mutually decided that we would be "open" to adoption. I suppose I thought that meant that if an opportunity ever presented itself, we might consider it. What I didn't know, was that God had planted a seed that day. And unbeknownst to me, He had been watering that seed with Eric's recent prayers.

Lord, show us how you want us to grow our family. Our prayer stayed the same. I didn't say yes to Eric when he asked me about adoption, but I didn't say no. I did confess however, that God had brought that very word to my mind the first week of the study. So my ears were definitely perked up to hear what He had to say about the matter. And for crying out loud, He had a lot to say about it.

In the following weeks, the topic of adoption was everywhere. One morning, adoption was the theme in our devotional (For He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. Ephesians 1:4-6). Our friends were randomly bringing up adoption in everyday conversation - completely unaware of what Eric and I were praying about. Even our favorite TV shows were revolving around themes of adoption and orphans. At some point, I invited my mom to pray with us on the matter. One afternoon she called me and told me that she had been praying at church that morning about Eric and I and the possibility of adoption in our future, when the preacher began his sermon on ministering to the ends of the earth. When the sermon ended, she stood up and turned around, only to find a little African girl sitting behind her.

As I pressed on through the Bible study, I felt my heart breaking. As it was breaking - not for myself, but for others... for orphans - I felt my heart and will yielding to God's. I sensed that adoption was something very real that Eric and I should be exploring, but I was still hung up on something. There was a pending appointment at a fertility clinic in a week. Was I just supposed to walk away from something I had wanted for so long? I could have answers very soon! Results! We could be well on our way to conceiving a child of our own! I clung with might to the final thread of that dream as I entered the room where I met with my Bible study girls on Wednesday, October 29, 2014.

Each week, Kelly Minter opened our study with a video of an interview she had with someone in the mission field. She had spoken with missionaries, family members who had been on overseas mission trips, and local organizations that aided in disaster relief. As the video for this particular week began, and she introduced a woman who had just adopted a baby girl from China, my heart skipped a beat. It was coming. I heard Him gently whisper, "Pay attention, Heather." My throat swelled and tightened and I nervously clicked my pen as I awaited what I knew would be the defining moment for me in this whole process. I could sense it.

Kelly opened with a question very similar to, "What would you say to someone who was just starting to think about adoption? What was the defining moment for you that led you to make the choice to adopt?" I couldn't have asked a better question myself. And the answer came. The woman said (to my best recollection), "I felt like God was asking me if there was room at our table for another child."

Immediately the image of some old wooden beams Eric salvaged from a dilapidated barn popped into my head. He is in the process of sanding them down, revealing their rich, earthy color with swirling knots and imperfections, and piecing them together to make a beautiful, rustic dining room table for our "someday future home."

I couldn't fight the tears. Of course there is room at our table, Lord! YES!! There is room. There IS ROOM!!! I sat there, with a firm and confident answer coursing through my body. We were going to adopt. No doubt about it. The woman shared James 1:27 in her interview - "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress..." This is a commandment, and God wanted my obedience. It was never about Him not wanting to give us another child. He wanted me to submit my will to His. I finally understood WHY.

That day when Eric came home from work, I told him about the video. Without hesitation he said, "So, I guess that means we are adopting a child." He smiled and hugged me. Man, I love him. I called the fertility clinic and cancelled the appointment. Eric and I prayed together, and made a joint decision to walk away from trying to conceive a child.

In the weeks to follow, our hearts continued to break. I linked up with some orphanages on Facebook so I could gather as much information as possible about how they worked. We invited some sweet friends over for dinner and asked them to share their own adoption story. In the throes of all this, Eric was preparing to lead his second missions team to Haiti. We could not overlook the timing of this. Was I meant to go with him? One of the orphanages that we had been drawn to was affiliated with the missionaries he worked with in Haiti. Could I serve there for a week? Was there a child currently waiting for us to get our act together and find him or her? I was regularly waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat... weeping for a child whom I did not know.... praying for him or her to be safe, fed, clothed. We began inviting our family and friends to pray for us as we embarked on this journey. We knew it would be hard, long, and full of unexpected obstacles. And I lined up child care for the boys for the week of the Haiti trip, and prepared to contact the orphanage to see if I could serve there for the week.

And then, on December 3, 2014, I found out I was pregnant.

Eric and I just recently witnessed this peanut-sized miracle swimming around inside of me. We had intentionally walked away from trying to conceive, to throwing our entire selves into the adoption process, to now being pregnant AND longing for an orphan child that God has prepared our hearts for. Talk about a twist in the story! Throughout this whole process, God has taught me A LOT about His timing. (Did anyone tune in to the fact that I ended up getting pregnant just two weeks after we said YES to adoption?) Though very untimely to me, God's plan was carefully laid out and blessed Eric and myself beyond measure. God is always intentional.

So... we are expecting!! A beautiful little baby due in August, AND a precious orphan that God has set aside for us. And we are trusting His timing in all of it. The vision is big, with many unknowns, but Eric and I are so excited to be HERE right now. I really should have known better... when I told God there was room at our table, that He would indeed begin filling it. Did I mention that Eric is building this table to comfortably seat 12?