May 17th, 2012.
That was the day a nurse confirmed I was pregnant. It was also the day I announced to my husband that he was going to be a daddy. I remember giggling over dinner as we discussed due dates, names, and nursery ideas…
It seems like it’s been forever since that day 11 years ago; yet at the same time, it feels like it’s only been a few minutes.
I’ll never forget sitting in the parking lot of a local restaurant with the sun beaming down on my legs as I hurried to answer the phone. I knew who it was going to be on the other end. It would be her. The nurse. I had been patiently waiting to hear her voice all morning, and there she was on the other end holding the fate of my future in her words. Was I pregnant? Was life within me growing? The answer was yes. All of the money for medical treatments, tests and procedures, the pain, the heartache, the early morning appointments, and late-night tears were all worth it to hear her excited voice tell me what I already knew in my heart.
I was officially a Momma.
I remember after ending our conversation, taking my hand, and placing it over my womb as I whispered to God, “Thank you!” And then to my baby bird, “I will do anything to protect you.”
It was then that I forgot about my lunch as I rushed to Hobby Lobby, then Michael’s, then back to Hobby Lobby before ending at Walmart. I wanted to hurry and make that “Daddy Doody Kit” I had once giggled over while searching Pinterest; as well as reconstruct the announcement that had captured my heart through Facebook. It was the one with the honey bun in the oven and a sign that read “There is a bun in my oven.” Have you seen it? It’s cute. It’s even cuter when you can pull it off and capture it on camera, which I did.
I’ll never forget the look on his face; it’s the one you can see below. Even without pictures, it’s a look that gets etched into your memory like a tattoo. It’s permanent. No matter how much you try to erase it, you can’t. It’s there. It’s always there.
You might ask why you would want to erase it, because it was a happy moment, right?
It was. And it still is.
Yet, at the same time, it isn’t.
Because that life I promised to protect?
I couldn’t.
Trust me, I tried.
I begged. I pleaded. I ran to the church altar for prayer and cried into the chest of a woman I didn’t even know. I later called upon my friends, including the ones from kindergarten, to storm the gates of Heaven. But, despite the tears and even our bargaining, my baby, the child we worked so hard to conceive through medical intervention, was not saved.
Within three short weeks after hearing the nurse congratulate me, I had to force myself to say goodbye, instead of nine months later say hello, as I flushed my child, whom I often wonder might have had my husband’s dark hair or my blue eyes, down the toilet.
And that’s a day…an image…I would also like to erase. But again, it’s permanent. Like a tattoo.
On this day, 11 years ago, I was pregnant. But it is also on this day, 11 years later, I still am. I’m just not in the physical sense because while I have yet to be pregnant again in my womb, I am in my heart.
Because it is there in our hearts that our dreams are first conceived. It’s there inside the soft fertile soil that God plants hope for our desires and gives us faith to believe in Him to bring them to fruition. It is there in our hearts where it first begins to live. And it is there where it continues to grow.
I know that it seems irrational, illogical, and downright ridiculous to continue to believe month after month, year after year for the impossible, but I can’t help but be expectant of it. After all, as I said, I am pregnant. I am pregnant with hope and faith, two power twins that together can bring forth a miracle.
But you know something else?
I’m not just pregnant and therefore expectant that one day the desires planted in my heart will one day grow in my arms, but I am also pregnant and expectant for that day to come for you too if children have been placed on your heart. For God does not show favoritism (Romans 2:11). And nothing is impossible for him. Even that one thing you just thought of. So your age…your diagnosis…your past? It doesn’t matter in the hands of our Poppa God. So be pregnant with me… pregnant with hope.
If we hope for what we do not see, we wait patiently and expectantly for it. Romans 8:25