Confident In God’s Plan

This week has been yet another reassuring week in the whole carrier process.

Each week I feel we are continuing to learn more, understand more, and just become confident that God has us exactly where He wants us. I tell ya, it is a great feeling to feel assured and do I dare say comfortable with the opportunities and challenges God has presented to us. I say comfortable with hesitancy because I don’t want to be comfortable in my faith – I mean “comfortable” in the sense of being okay with what God has called us to. Sometimes it seems like a monumental task and we wonder if there will be an end in sight. Honestly though, we try not to think too much about the end result because we don’t know what that is; therefore, we aren’t going to fabricate one.

One of the biggest blessings this week was meeting with Brenda to just talk. Talk about all that is going on: our emotions, our fears, our doubts, where we are in our faith, and just everything. It was absolutely amazing. I could’ve sat there for a whole day just talking about this all. We laughed and we cried. We were serious and we joked. And we prayed. Brenda is a friend where if I am experiencing something hard in life, I talk to Brenda. So even if she wasn’t our carrier, I would still go and talk to her – just so happens God gave her to us as our carrier as well. It still makes me laugh and gets me all giddy when I think about this whole thing!

We mainly talked about how “out of control” this feels, in the most positive sense. We have never felt God’s call on our life so strong, yet feel so at peace with where He is leading us. I told her time and time again that if this doesn’t work, we are CERTAIN that that was God’s will. We’ve had people mention to us that why would God lead you to this and then not follow through with a child? My human mind says yeah, I would wonder too, yet in all reality, we do not ever want to think that. To think God would “owe” it to us. God is God and He will do whatever He pleases with us. So to be honest, if you hear Dan and I say “if it works, great, if it doesn’t, it’ll be hard, but it’s okay too.” We don’t want to come across as not caring or sounding like we don’t want kids – but we just can’t assume God will give us a child through this. We made assumptions last year and it bit us in the butt. Brenda and I were saying we just want to be so careful to not live purely future-oriented, but to live each DAY in God’s will and that will lead us into God’s will for us in the future. Of course our hearts desire is to be parents – but if God has other plans, we know that His plans are way more perfect than ours. It was just good to talk about that all with Brenda!

We also talked about our fears. There are just so many good (for lack of better terms) things going on, that the fears definitely aren’t at the forefront. But they are there. It was good to just be open and honest! Brenda had a really good analogy – she doesn’t fear all the shots, yet at the same time, she’s not really looking forward to them. She said it’s like cleaning a toilet – ya really don’t want to do it, but you do it anyways. I had a good chuckle over that one!!!! That’s why I love her. I think she is right though. There will definitely not be some fun things in this process (I especially think of Brenda – she has to go through a lot), but it’ll be worth it.

I still do fear a little about the whole embryo situation. We are filling out a decent size packet of papers with regards to being donors (because we are technically donors to Brenda, even though we know her), and it’s hard. It’s hard to think that someday someone (if we choose to donate embryos) might be reading these papers, and the only way they will know who we are, is through these papers. My whole life is basically described in this packet of papers – it’s hard to be that vulnerable. That is something I have probably struggled with the most thus far. But we will be done with them this weekend and I will be happy to send them off this coming week.

I was reading a passage this week and my study notes talked about how when you face challenges in life, if you are keeping God at the forefront, they won’t seem unconquerable. It asked the question: where is your focus in the trying times in life? It is very easy for me to start thinking about all the things that could go wrong – yet then I think about ALL of the things that have led up to where we are today. Everything so far, in my mind, has been nothing short of a miracle. God has crushed the challenges we have faced and He continues to do so. Not saying there won’t be more – but we know, because God is faithful, that He will continue lead us.

Praise God for another wonderful week. We anticipate this coming week as we have more appointments lined up and are eager to hear the results. We ask that you pray that God will continue to give us clear direction and that He will give us clear answers this week as well. We thank you for the many prayers that have been offered up already. We are blessed by each one of them.