I am here today taking a step of obedience and to tell you the story of God’s amazing love in my life. My husband Jose and I have been on this journey since 2002. I believe God is calling me today to be transparent to share our journey in order to bring hope and healing to myself and others.
Back in 2002 I was diagnosed with ovarian cyst. To make a long story short my doctor in Atlanta delivered the news to Jose and I that I would never have children and that if I did choose to try to have children that the cyst would compete with the size of my unborn child and ultimately kill the child. Needless to say, I was devastated. Throughout the following year I cried myself to sleep almost every day and I began to sink back into depression which was an all too familiar giant in my life. This year was very difficult for me but God pulled me through it.
Shortly thereafter, Jose and I moved to Savannah and we were invited to attend Tres Dias (a community of Christian believers with renewal type of weekends). He and I were both excited to go. When I attended my Tres Dias weekend, I was miraculously healed. God did a mighty work in me mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually and I can truly say that I will never be the same again. I returned home pain free and even the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me!! I wished that I could say that I’ve never felt this pain again in my life but that isn’t true. But I’ve learned that Satan will do anything he can to try and steal what God says is rightfully mine.
There are parts to my journey I’ve only begun to share within the past few weeks. I believe God is calling me to share my story. I have been struggling silently for a year and a half and I believe God is now calling me to break the silence concerning my struggle because I believe he wants to minister hope to you today. Somehow I just assumed that because I was miraculously healed that I wouldn’t have to wait to have children. Well that’s not the journey God has given me. Please understand that I wouldn’t trade my journey for anything in the world and I know it’s going to be worth it. Almost a year and half ago, Jose and I decided to begin trying to start a family. And we don’t yet have children. I have experienced a whole gammed of emotions from anger, to frustration, sadness, disappointment, self-pity, judging others, jealousy, desperation, shame, unworthiness, incompleteness and an absolutely broken heart but I have also experienced the amazing love and hope of Christ through this struggle.
The main reason why I wanted to share today is to share hope with you. See my children have already been promised to me. They were promised to me through a prophetic word when I was miraculously healed during my Tres Dias weekend (yeah I didn’t believe in prophecy either till it happened to me!). Ps 37:4 “Delight yourself in the Lord and he WILL give you the desires of your heart”. God has been faithful to give me numerous confirmation of this promise in my life from scripture, prophetic words, prayers, dreams and visions. In my heart, I had always envisioned sharing this part of my life with others after I had children but obviously God had other plans. He is STRONG in you when you are weak, even when you are waiting. I want you to know that not everyone has their life all together. I don’t have it all together. We all have struggles. The people whom you perceive to be strong Christians do not have it all together. I don’t know what your struggle is and I don’t have to. You just have to know what God’s promise is. Everyone has a test and a trial to overcome. I am no different from you. I have good days and I have bad days, we all do! Sometimes I’ve handled this as a Christian should and sadly sometimes I have not. We as a Body of Christ, brothers and sister are all on this journey together. We are called to be a family, to love and to minister to one another. To walk beside each other, to pray for each other, to encourage each other and help each other up when we fall down because we ALL fall down. None of us have arrived………
Somewhere along the way Satan tried to steal the hope of my promise away. He tried to make me forget and wonder if it would ever come to pass for me. Proverbs 13:12 “A hope deferred makes a heart grow sick”. There have been times when my heart has been very sick, disappointed and broken. There were times when I didn’t think my heart could take anymore. Isaiah 55:11 paraphrased says that His word will not return void in our lives but fulfill the purpose for which it was set out. When Satan tries to take your promise or the hope of your promise away we all have to open up our mouths and tell him, “NO!” We all need to find scriptures that confirm His words in our lives and we need to open up our mouths and fill the enemy’s ears with God’s word instead of him filling our minds with his lies.
God is in the process of healing me and He is restoring my heart. Romans 8:25 says that if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. I have not always waited patiently and God revealed to me that it was because I was losing hope. Yes, I’ve had to surrender my own control. I am a very driven- goal oriented person who believes in setting and achieving goals and making good decisions that will positively affect your life. Well, this has been something I can’t do anything about. I can’t control it, I can’t do it for myself, and I can’t accomplish this on my own. NO ONE can do it for themselves. Truly it is only by the grace of God that anyone becomes a parent. I don’t like to be weak and vulnerable and I don’t always trust people. This is the thing that makes me vulnerable and weak before my God and now he is calling me to be transparent and trusting before his children.
At times this has consumed my mind and my emotions. I can finally see very clearly that this had become an idol and a god in my life. The truth is that God should be the only thing that consumes me. Yes, it is a God ordained desire in my life and that will never go away. However, I am now able to fully trust my God to be faithful to the promise He gave me. Learning to wait patiently has brought such freedom into many areas in my life. This no longer consumes me. We talk about laying things down on the altar. I laid this sucker down a long time ago. But I kept looking back wondering what God was doing with it and wondering when He would release my promise to me. I’m learning to surrender my sense of time. God is not bound by time. Ecclesiastes 3:1 says” There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven”. I’m learning to trust him in the seasons in my life. I’m now able to say that I truly want him to do with this as He wants because I trust him. God often uses the difficult times in our lives to refine us and draw us closer to him. I believe our trials are rarely about the situation at hand; often times he is trying to get our attention in order to do a mighty work within us. He has used this journey refine so many places in me. This has been about so much more than my desire to have children. He has used it to teach me and draw me into an even more intimate relationship with him. He is teaching me to trust him with all my fears, hopes, dreams and visions for my future. It has been a hard lesson for me, but a good one! It has taken some time for me to get where I am today. I didn’t jump over this hurdle in one day. This has been an ongoing struggle for me for some time. Life is a process, a journey. Allow yourself and God to walk through the process. Your never too far from His reach, He is always able to save you, and rescue you.
Satan had me convinced of so many lies. I want to share with you some truths I’ve learned along my way. I believe it’s time for the body of Christ to start filling Satan’s ears with truth.
The truth is that there is a God in heaven and He happens to be my daddy and your daddy. He loves us more than we could truly ever understand. He has a good plan, an excellent plan for our lives! He knows that this wait hurts some days but I’ve learned to trust Him and His timing. I know that my daddy in heaven doesn’t want to cause me any pain. He isn’t punishing me or you. He just has a plan that we can’t see and that it’s far better than anything I can think of. He doesn’t want to hurt us. He can’t stand to see us hurting and He if is allowing us to hurt then you better believe it’s because He has a better plan for us! A promise delayed is not a promise denied. I’ve learned to evict disappointment from my heart and to embrace the hope of my promise. I no longer doubt my promise. I know what God promised me and I won’t let go. I daily remind myself of a few scriptures. Isaiah 54:1 says “Sing barren woman, burst into song, and shout for joy. Psalm 37:4 says “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Ephesians 3:20 says “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us”.
I’ve learned to hold on when everything and everyone else says to quit. My relationship with my Father in heaven is a very real and daily thing. I need him daily to deal with my journey. I’m learning to be complete in the wait. I’m learning that having children doesn’t complete me, my heavenly daddy completes me. My relationship with Jose is so precious to me. We’ve had some precious ministry time together that I’m not sure we would have had any other way. Infertility can kill a marriage. God has used Jose to be a source of strength and a safe place to fall when my heart hurts. We fought together, we stand beside each other, we pray for one another and when the pain gets to me, he helps me to not wallow around in it but to get up and keep going. He is a gift from God and he has loved me all the way through this journey. It didn’t kill us. In fact, it only made us stronger. Most importantly I’ve learned to stand STRONG in the wait. I know what it’s like to feel as if the whole world is crashing down around you but for you to be still and feel the solid ground of Christ love beneath you. It is a very peaceful place, a very quiet place and a very still place. It’s a place that I’m learning to live in and it’s amazing. Our emotions don’t always point to truth. Satan often uses them to distract us from what God really has for us. Learning to wait is learning to trust.
Our life is a journey and he takes us from glory to glory, transforming us. I’m learning to take my giants as they come. Sometimes I have to open up my mouth and remind myself and the devil because every day presents a new challenge. But I refuse to let go or to go backwards. I choose to take one day at a time. When I fall down because I do I’ve learned to stand up again. God has taught me to be thankful for all the children in my life and I realize how selfish I truly am. I don’t want my life to revolve around my desires and wants. I want my life to be about living to the fullest, serving and worshipping my God. I choose to serve “Yahweh” my daddy in heaven and I trust him to release my promise to me RIGHT ON TIME!!!! I am free through the blood and love of Jesus and I want to minster that freedom to other people. This isn’t about us. It’s about helping others. It’s about breaking the silence and giving people permission to talk about their struggles whatever they may be without fear of being rejected or feeling ashamed or judged because we’ve all been there. It’s about us standing beside each other during our wait encouraging and pushing each other towards trust because we are a family.
So whatever it is that you still believe God for, I encourage you to today to hold on to that hope! A hope deferred makes a heart grow sick. Don’t let go of your hope and your promise.
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