On Getting Real, Getting Hugged & Getting Pregnant

It’s Thanksgiving morning and it’s early, Doug golfing and Emmy still sleeping. Today will be so much fun—creamed corn to make, desserts to bake, siblings in town to squeeze. Thanksgiving is one of my favorites.

But this morning, I pause, because this year, I’m stunned to stillness with gratitude. Not only at God’s faithfulness, provision and grace, but at his whimsical, immaculate timing. It happens to be Thanksgiving and it’s also the day I can announce to the world that I’m expecting a baby. This aligning of odds isn’t lost on me and I don’t believe it was an accident. Instead, I think it’s a personal wink from Jesus and His loving, compassionate eyes to my grateful and humbled heart. I’m exactly 13 weeks pregnant, past the unnerving first trimester wrought with unknowns and scary statistics. The heartbeat is strong. The limbs are moving. I’m having another baby!!!

You also have creamed corn to make, desserts to bake, and siblings in town to squeeze, so I don’t want to keep you for long. But I just want to remind you, sweet friends, that God truly answers prayer. He doesn’t always say yes; He doesn’t always say no. Sometimes He even seems to disappear for a while, leaving you weeping and confused with more questions than answers, more holes than wholeness, more pain than you know what to do with.

But the important truth is, He never actually leaves. God is there to hold you when no one else is. He’s there for the darkest thoughts that you don’t want to share with anyone, maybe not even yourself. He’s there to keep on hoping when you’re just done hoping for now. Sometimes it’s in the hours of quiet that He’s doing His greatest work—on your heart, on your faith, on your life, on your ability to keep your head bowed instead of turned in the other direction. God answers prayer. He hears our cries. He fills our cracks. For that, I am grateful today.

In September, while in Hawaii with my whole family, I found myself on a rare walk alone on the shores of Wailea in the early evening. As the sun began to drop, its bright beams slicing through sky, their white reflection on the water almost blinding, I forced myself to stare into it all as I spoke to God. The sky beamed gorgeous and fierce in a way that so clearly echoed a higher power. And this made me feel… forgotten. There God was, so all-powerful, yet so choosing not to give me just what I wanted, another pregnancy. Why did He hate me?! Why was He mean?! Why did I bother praying?!

I then remembered something a wonderful Christian therapist asked me in the days right after my miscarriage:

“Stephanie, have you let yourself just be mad at God yet?” she asked.

What a weird question. “No,” I said slowly. “I haven’t.”

“I think it’s important that you ‘let God have it,’ so to speak; tell Him exactly how you feel,” she said. “Yell if you need to.”

“He can handle it,” she added with a smile.

She was sassy. She wore cute boots. I liked her.

To be honest, though, I hadn’t thought about her advice since. But all that Hawaiian beauty was making me angry as the backdrop to my inner frustrations, so I decided to give it a try. I let the tears flow and I talked out loud, never mind the innocent joggers passing me nervously. I told God that I didn’t understand why He had taken a baby from me last spring, or why He was taking month after month to give me another one. I told him that it really frustrated me, that I was tired of being patient (which I really wasn’t being at all) and that I was sick of organizing my heartbreak into neat little life lessons in my head and in sharing my heart with others. I was ready to be messy and mad and moody about it. I was ready to let Him HAVE it, and so I did! I even folded my arms and stomped a little.

I wouldn’t know it for a while, but God knew then that I’d be pregnant in just a few days.

That’s how I learned that God can handle my real. I think the therapist was right, and that it’s so important to express our emotions to God fully and openly, as we would in a human relationship—even though He already knows them. It cleanses us, it sharpens us, it softens us. It increases our faith. God can handle our real. After all, David was the one with all the tear-soaked pillows and ragey Psalms and he was the one after God’s own heart.

Several weeks before Hawaii, God showed Himself to me in a different way, one with less ocean but no less light. We were living with my parents at the time, soon before the move to our new house in Costa Mesa. That morning I had taken yet another negative pregnancy test. Okay, if we’re being real, three more negative pregnancy tests. I was having a very bad day with it all. I wasn’t angry; I was just sad. My womb felt broken and so did my heart. I was feeding Emerson dinner around 5 p.m., watching her smile and eat while slow tears slipped down my cheeks. She’d be going to bed in a few more hours and Doug would be working late. My parents were going to dinner. So I would be all alone. Much of the time, I like being alone, but not when I’m really upset.

Just then, my parents arrived home from their respective daytime activities before they’d head out. I’ve never been able to hide my feelings from my mom or my dad, and that moment was no exception. They noticed instantly that I wasn’t okay.

“What’s wrong?” asked my mom gently.

“I,” I choked out, “I’m not pregnant, again. And I don’t know why I’m so sad about it! But I feel so heartbroken. It brings it all back. I don’t think I’ll ever be pregnant again.”

My dad then came up and hugged me, which of course made the tears even worse. “I’m not going to have any more kids, am I?” I cried.

“Stephanie,” my dad said, holding me. “God didn’t give you a five-bedroom house so it would sit empty. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but I really believe that He’s going to fill it up.”

His words washed over me in a sprinkling of peace. As I let my dad hug me, felt his hurt for me, I remembered Matthew 7:9–11: “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him?”

My earthly dad would have done anything to expunge my pain. How much more did my heavenly dad want to make it all go away? In that moment, it wasn’t my own father hugging me; it was Jesus Himself.

My parents quickly cancelled their evening plans so I wouldn’t have to be alone that night. As a side note, that is exactly the kind of parent I want to be. Parents who, when their daughter is pushing 30, with a husband and kid of her own, but is just having an impossible time at their kitchen table, will still drop everything to be by her side. I hope I can see either sadness or joy within seconds in Emerson’s eyes when she’s 28. Good parenting is forever, I think.

What is it you’re praying for today? Hoping desperately for, trying to smile about, on a day that might even seem to be mocking your deep-down sadness? Know this: God answers prayer. Whether we’re angry and stomping or melting into His arms, His love is the same. We don’t have to package our pain before presenting it to Him or censor our cries for Help. God can handle our real. He’s already carried it all. Even more, there’s no end to the good gifts our heavenly Father wants to give those who ask Him. We just have to keep believing, keep praying, keep thanking. Believe He will answer, pray that He does, and thank Him constantly and immensely for the blessings we already have.

I read this in Jesus Calling a few weeks ago and I’m just in love:

“Sometimes My children hesitate to receive my good gifts with open hands. Feelings of false guilt creep in, telling them they don’t deserve to be so richly blessed. This is nonsense-thinking, because no one deserves anything from me. My kingdom is not about earning and deserving; it’s about believing and receiving.”

“Don’t stop believing!!!” yelled Journey.

Yelling is good.

So is the journey.

God doesn’t always give me what I want. But He gives me exactly what I need.

Today, I’m thanking God big time for the small miracle growing inside me, and for the lessons this baby has already taught me about faith, life, prayer, patience and love.

And also for skies, and for parents, and turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!!!