If Our God Is For Us...

 Psalm 37: 1-7;

Don’t worry about the wicked
    or envy those who do wrong.

For like grass, they soon fade away.
    Like spring flowers, they soon wither.

 

Trust in the Lord and do good.
    Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.

 

Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you your heart’s desires.

 

Commit everything you do to the Lord.
    Trust him, and he will help you.

He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn,
    and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun.

 

Be still in the presence of the Lord,
    and wait patiently for him to act.
Don’t worry about evil people who prosper
    or fret about their wicked schemes.

 

 

I went out seeking verse 4. I knew the words by heart. "Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires." I love those words. They give me such hope, and they are some of those "Words to live by" scripture. But as easy as it is to memorize one line of scripture and take it out of context and say "wow these two sentences are amazing", I've been trying really hard to read the whole chapter, or at lest the few surrounding verses to get the context of the scripture I've had memorized for years.

Man, was I glad I looked at the scripture around these words.

Verse 5 is another "feel good" verse. "Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you." I know this verse as well and know it as truth, but something about it just spoke to me today. Am I giving my doctor's visits to God? Am I really giving everything to him? Am I trusting him? The answer, as much as I want to say "Yes I trust God and he is helping me", it's not always the case. I can't say that 100% of the time I trust him. It's hard to fully trust anyone or anything of this earth, especially when you can't see the end results. So that reflects in my relationship with God and that's a struggle. I struggle with trusting God. I haven't always had trust issues with God, but sometimes you feel alone and forgotten about in this journey through infertility.

 

"Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act."

Woah woah woah. Ok God. You know my heart. I'm taking delight in you and you and you're going to give me my hearts desires. Great. But be still? Wait patiently? Are you sure you know who you're talking to? I'm not very good at being still. Even while writing this blog post I've gotten up and gone to the bathroom twice just to get away from the computer for a few minutes. I am always fidgeting and have to keep my hands busy. Maybe patience and being still isn't exactly for me.

Wait patiently for him to act. Isn't that all I've been doing? All I've been doing is waiting patiently for you to act Lord. I've been waiting for over two years for you to act and give us a child. How much longer must I wait??

*At this point I figured maybe I should look up the definition of patience. I've always just looked at is as keeping calm, as I use to be told I have a lot of patience when I worked in child care. However, patience is defined as the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. Ok God. I'm listening. *

As I look back over the past two years of waiting patiently, he HAS acted. He has put things into place. It might not be giving us a child right when we started praying, but he acted by giving me the courage to call the first doctor who gave me my diagnosis. He acted by giving me 6 rounds of medicine to figure out that I can be "normal", even thought it didn't result in a child. He gave me courage to call a specialist and to begin that process. I definitely don't have the most patience in the world when it comes to waiting for my child, but I am working on it. And God is working on me, so it's all pretty full circle.

The Power of Prayer

This past week I had the amazing opportunity to spend an evening with our entire worship team just hanging out, eating delicious food, and just getting to know each other. Our church has 3 different campus' so it's hard to get to know the other campus worship teams unless you're like me and singing at two of them.

 

After a good time of fellowship, our worship leader pulled out his guitar and we sang "In God We Trust" and "No Longer Slaves", which were perfect songs for me for the season and the stress I've been going through. After we finished, he opened up the floor for anyone who needed prayer, and I just lost it. I knew a good amount of people there, but not everyone, and certainly not everyone knew before that moment what I was going through.

 

I let it all out. I verbally admitted that I was having trouble trusting God throughout this hard time and how I felt alone. I needed prayer. And Prayer I did get. One of my close friends lead the prayer as the whole group circled around me. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about the prayer she spoke over me. She's been an active part of my story for the past year, and has been one of those friends who I know I can go to with anything, so thank you L for being such a loving friend.

 

One of the things that stuck with me from that night after praying over a few more people was that we need to stop being superficial with each other. We need to stop asking "Hey how's it going?" on a Sunday morning, but to be more blunt and say "Hey Amanda, how's the infertility treatment going?". We need to dive right in and be a real support for each other, actively praying for our Brother's and Sisters who need our love and support.

"If Our God Is For Us..."

I've had the song "Our God" by Chris Tomlin stuck in my head all morning this beautiful Spring New England day. "And if our God is for us, than who can ever stop us? And if our God is with us, than what can stand against?" This was another truth I needed to hear today. I have felt defeated today. The doctor called to confirm our appointment for Monday to go over test results and said that a few of my husbands test results were never sent in, and that I would need a physical done before they would start a treatment (whether it be just a medicated cycle or IUI or IVF). So now I'm panicking. My mind automatically thinks "Maybe God doesn't want us to have children." "Maybe we aren't suppose to have kids yet. That's why all these things are falling through." But then I remember that God is for me, and to do as it says in Psalm 37 and take delight in the Lord and he'll give us the desires of our heart.

 

Take Delight. Find Peace. Be Patient.

 

I have one last piece of scripture to share with you today. I read the scripture and thought "Wow, this is perfect for the season I'm in right now, but why have I never read it before today??"

 

You know those 6 or so books at the end of the Old Testament that no one remembers or knows any scripture from? Yup. That's where I found this beauty. Right there in the popular book of Habakkuk. How do you even pronounce that?

 

Guys, I fail my God every day. I sin daily and probably don't even know it. I say things like "How do you pronounce that?" about a book in his Holy word! I'm nowhere near perfect.  Clearly this blog is nowhere near perfect. But I recognize that Jesus is the only Perfect one and that I will never be able to compare to him, but I can try to take notes from him and start working on myself to become better and more like him.

Take these words of hope today as we go through life together!

Love you all,
Amanda