Our Date Night

Tonight Dan and I had the chance to go to dinner just us two, to Clementine’s. We realized it had been quite some time the last time we did that, and what an enjoyable time we had. Doing youth ministry together, we can often be found always together. Usually though, we are busy doing something. I felt tonight at the restaurant we could’ve sat for hours and talked, but we had a basketball game to get to for some of our kids. We talked about everything from kids, to vacation, to our days, our frustrations, our joys, everything; not to mention, much laughter too.

A fear WE have: that my doctor is going to say I might be able to survive/get through a pregnancy. When we talked about that tonight, we just sat there thinking – I don’t know what we would say, after all we’ve been through. We truly don’t know. Dan said, it would be like Isaac and Abraham. God tested Abraham to see how much faith he had, to the point of having the sword in his hand to kill his own son, but then told him to stop. Dan said God may call us to that – to say no, no, no, but then give the okay (well, I suppose it was the opposite for Isaac b/c God told him to go, go, go, and then stop). We truly don’t know what we will do – we are just really confused to be quite frank, but at the same time, God knows best. You may be shocked that I say it’s a fear b/c you are probably thinking, why would you have FEAR if they reversed their thoughts on the ability to have kids? Isn’t that what you want? Well, after you have been told all the risks and realize you could die from it or never return back to good physical health, it’s hard to imagine putting myself through that and switching the mind BACK to the maybe’s again. We truly feel we are coping well with it all as we know it to be RIGHT NOW and that’s to not have any of our own. For God to change the thoughts of the doctors, is going to take a miracle in us to believe it. We really don’t know if we can handle that at this point. BUT…WHO KNOWS what the doctors are going to say – ONLY GOD KNOWS and no matter what they say, GOD WILL GUIDE US! Just keep praying for a peace of mind as we wait and wait to hear the results in February!

It’s a great feeling to feel like we are moving on! So the thought of dealing with this ALL OVER AGAIN in February is rather draining to think about. So, right now, we are just going to enjoy the life God has given us, and until He guides us to a different way of thinking, we are going to stick with what He has given us!

I just feel so blessed to walk through all this with Dan! He has been a trooper through all my tears, talks, and many moments of victory too. We feel “normal” again, as “normal” as we can be in all this. We have fun. We laugh. We pick on each other. It’s great :). Just come live with us for a day and you’ll see the “quirk Sterks” (thanks to Hannah for coining that phrase for us :)).

Many still question why we aren’t considering adoption yet. I stand firm in my faith that God is still not calling us to that. Yes it may seem like the “perfect” alternative, but for us it’s not that perfect answer yet. We talked tonight about how our life would be so different and we still feel God calling us to live the life in youth ministry that we are living in right now. I look back at our past Sunday and our youth group kids are our “adopted” kids in our hearts. I sometimes feel like a horrible Christian for saying that we aren’t considering adoption, but that’s where our faith comes in, and that just isn’t where God is guiding our hearts right now. I am an open book about what God is doing in our life, but I know throw people off when I say we aren’t considering adoption quite yet :). I DO love to talk about what God is doing in our life because I know it’s HIS story that He is telling through us and it’s that story that we are called to glorify God through.