The Story I Never Could Have Written

For eight years, I prayed for one thing.

A baby.

When the prayers seemed unanswered, I finally reached the place where I told God,

"If motherhood isn't Your plan for me... please take this desire away."

What happened next wasn't anything I could have imagined.

A nursery painted before there was a baby.
 An adoption journey.
 A heartbreaking failed placement.
 A scheduled hospital visit to meet our son.
 A positive pregnancy test at 2:00 in the morning.
 Two boys born just six months apart.

Looking back, I can see that while I thought God was silent, He was quietly weaving together a story far more beautiful than the one I had been trying to write myself.

If you're waiting...
 If your prayers haven't been answered the way you hoped...
 Or if you're wondering whether God is still working behind the scenes...

This conversation is for you.

Continue the journey and find this week's Companion Guide at:

https://healerhopegiver.com

Extended Show Notes

Episode Summary

Have you ever looked back over your life and realized that God was quietly writing a story far more beautiful than the one you had imagined?

In this deeply personal episode, I share the journey that changed the way I understand unanswered prayer forever.

After eight years of infertility, I finally surrendered my dream of motherhood to God. I stopped asking Him to simply give me a baby and instead prayed that His will would be done—even if it looked completely different than my own.

What followed was a story I never could have written.

From decorating a nursery before there was a baby...
 to walking through the heartbreak of a failed adoption placement...
 to meeting our son for the first time...
 to discovering I was already twelve weeks pregnant the very night we brought him home...

this episode is a reminder that God's plans are often unfolding long before we can recognize them.

If you're waiting...
 wondering...
 or trying to trust God with a chapter that doesn't yet make sense...

I hope this conversation reminds you that He is still writing your story.

In This Episode

• The eight-year infertility journey that changed my faith

• Why I stopped praying for a baby—and started praying for God's will

• How a New Testament reading challenge became the foundation of my trust in God

• Decorating a nursery before we knew if we'd ever bring a baby home

• The adoption journey that taught us to love with open hands

• A heartbreaking failed placement that became part of our story

• The unexpected phone call that changed everything

• Meeting James just twenty minutes after he was born

• Discovering I was already twelve weeks pregnant the night we brought him home

• Why God often writes stories far beyond our imagination

Key Takeaways

• Surrender doesn't happen in one prayer—it becomes a daily practice.

• God's silence is not the same as God's absence.

• Sometimes the greatest work God is doing is preparing our hearts before He changes our circumstances.

• Every chapter matters—even the ones we wish had ended differently.

• Looking backward often reveals God's faithfulness in ways we couldn't see while we were living the story.

Scripture

James 1:17

"Every good and perfect gift comes from above..."

Proverbs 3:5–6

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding..."

Romans 8:28

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him..."

Jeremiah 29:11

"For I know the plans I have for you..."

Continue the Journey

This week's Episode Companion Guide expands on today's conversation with:

• Additional behind-the-scenes stories that didn't make the episode

• Guided reflection questions

• Scripture meditation

• Journaling prompts

• Space to recognize God's fingerprints in your own story

Download this week's Companion Guide and explore additional resources at:

https://healerhopegiver.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Hey friends, there are some stories that only make sense when you look backward. Not because the pain disappears, and not because every question gets answered, but because time gives you enough distance to finally see what God was quietly doing all along. Last week I shared one of the hardest seasons of my life: years of infertility. Prayers that seem to echo back unanswered. The moment I finally stopped asking God to give me a baby and instead prayed, Lord, if motherhood isn't your plan for me, please take this desire away. That was one of the hardest prayers I've ever prayed. Not because I stopped wanting to be a mom, but because I stopped trying to hold my future so tightly. I finally placed it in God's hands. And what I didn't know then was that God wasn't finished writing. In fact, the chapter I thought was ending was really just the beginning. Today I want to tell you the story that I never could have written. Not because it's perfect, and not because every chapter was easy, but because looking back now, I can honestly say that if someone had handed me a blank notebook 25 years ago and asked me to write the story of my family, I never would have imagined this one. And yet, I wouldn't trade it for anything. One of the things I've learned over the years is that surrender rarely happens in a single moment. It happens one ordinary day at a time. Looking back, I can pinpoint to one prayer in October of 2029 when I finally said, Lord, if motherhood isn't your plan for me, please take this desire away. That prayer mattered. It changed something inside of me. But if I'm being honest, I didn't wake up the next morning completely at peace either. I wasn't suddenly finished grieving. I didn't stop wanting to become a mom overnight. Eight years of longing don't simply disappear because you pray one brave prayer. Surrender wasn't an event, it became a practice. Around the same time, our church launched something called the New Testament Challenge. It was a 13-week journey through the new entire New Testament. Our pastor was Kevin, the same Kevin that many of you know today through my talking about Regeneration Church. And he challenged us not simply to read the New Testament, but to immerse ourselves in it, to slow down, to pay attention, and to let God shape us through his word. Looking back now, I don't think it was a coincidence. That challenge began right when I was learning to loosen my grip on my own plans. For so many years, my prayers had naturally been focused on one thing. Lord, please give us a baby. And now I didn't know exactly what to pray anymore. So instead of trying to figure out the future, I decided to spend my mornings simply getting to know the one who already held it. Almost every morning I'd pour a cup of coffee and settle into my seat at the kitchen table. I'd spread everything out in front of me like I was preparing for class. My Bible, a handful of highlighters, a pen, and my bright red, wide ruled spiral notebook. It had to be right wide ruled because I've always written big. In fact, I press so hard when I write that the pages actually curl. If you picked up that notebook today, you'd probably smile because every page still carries marks of those mornings. The oversized handwriting, the curled paper, the prayers that sometimes filled every available inch of the page, that little notebook became sacred ground. I'd read the assigned chapters for the day, taking notes as I went, and then after the reading was finished, I'd turn the page and simply began talking to God. Usually I'd write at least one full page, sometimes more. Some mornings my prayers were full of gratitude, and other mornings they were full of questions. Some mornings they were simply quiet thoughts from a woman who didn't know what tomorrow would hold, but desperately wanted to trust the one who did. Now I wasn't perfect. There were mornings I overslept, life got busy, some days I missed reading altogether, but if I missed a day, I'd simply catch up over the weekend. I'd pour another cup of coffee, read a little farther, write another prayer, and keep going. Looking back, that's one of the greatest gifts that God gave me during that season. Not because I never missed a day, but because every time I did miss, I came back. I think that's true of so much of our Christian life. Faithfulness isn't protection, I mean perfection. Faithfulness is returning, returning to his word, returning to prayer, returning after the disappointment, after the questions, after the grief, returning again after we've tried to carry life in our own strength. Every morning I pulled out that red notebook, I was quietly learning something that would shape the rest of my life. God wasn't asking me to have everything figured out. He was simply inviting me to keep showing up. During those 13 weeks, our church asked a few people to share what the challenge had meant to them. They filmed a short video of me talking about my experience. It's still sitting on my YouTube all these years later. When the challenge came to an end, everyone who completed it was invited to walk across the stage during one of our church services. Out of our entire congregation, only about 25 or 30 of us adults finished, maybe 10%. I remember walking across that stage feeling proud, not because I had accomplished something impressive, but because I knew God had met me in those pages. He sat with me at that kitchen table, morning after morning, coffee after coffee, prayer after prayer. I still have that notebook, and every once in a while I'll pull it off the shelf and slowly flip through those pages. The paper is still curled, the handwriting is still oversized, the prayers are still there. Sometimes I smile and sometimes I get a little teary. Mostly I find myself wanting to reach across those years and squeeze the hand of the younger version of me and whisper, just keep going. You have no idea what God is actually preparing. Because as important as those 13 weeks were, God wasn't simply preparing me to become a mother. He was preparing me to trust him with a story I never could have written. While God was quietly changing my heart, John and I started doing something that probably looked a little strange from the outside. We decided to get the nursery ready. Not after we had a baby, but before. People have asked me over the years if decorating a nursery before you know whether you'll forever bring a baby home was painful, and honestly, that's not the emotion I remember the most. I remember it as peace. We didn't rush through it. We made it a family project. Even John's sister came over to help us paint. We spent a Saturday morning moving furniture and opening paint cans, laughing and getting little splatters where they probably weren't supposed to be, and slowly watching an empty bedroom begin to feel like a place where love already lived. We wanted the room to feel warm, hopeful, and timeless. We chose a simple farm theme because we wanted it to work whether we someday brought home a little boy or a little girl. The upper walls became a soft buttery yellow, and the lower half was painted a muted kind of grass green. A white chair rail wrapped around the room, separating the two colors. John has always been our family's measuring and hanging expert. So if something needs to be level, that's his department. Mine is usually standing back and saying a little to the left or maybe a little bit higher. So naturally, he carefully measured everything the shelves, the pictures, and eventually the words that would become the heartbeat of that room. Across the back wall, above the crib, we placed a simple vinyl verse from James 1, 17. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. At the time, those words were a prayer, and today they're part of our family's testimony. We found a beautiful crib that actually belonged to my uh younger siblings. So they shipped it down from their house in Michigan, both of the cribs, and a matching, changing table, a wardrobe. Someone gave us a beautiful white glider where I imagine rocking a baby someday. Running along the shelf wrapped around the the or wrapped across the back of the room, the wall of the room, above the verse, there were little stuffed farm animals, simple treasures, little reminders that this room was waiting. One of my favorite pieces was something that my father in law Jimmy painted by hand, a sweet little barn with farm animals. And there was there it wasn't something that we bought from the store. He had made that himself. And every time I looked at it, I smiled. Without realizing it, all of those people were building hope alongside of us. Susan with her paintbrush, Jimmy with his artwork, John carefully hanging every shelf and every verse. It wasn't just our nursery. It was a room filled with the love of the people who already loved a child they hadn't even met yet. Sometimes people asked me if walking into that room made waiting harder, and oddly enough it didn't. There was something about sitting in that room that felt different. I would sit in the glider, sometimes without saying much at all. The room was quiet, the house was quiet, there was no baby crying yet, no toys scattered across the floor and no bar bottles warming in the kitchen, just stillness. But it never felt empty. It felt warm and peaceful, almost like God had settled into that room before we ever did. I can't fully explain it. I just know that every time I sat there, my heart became quiet. Not because all my questions had been answered, and not because I suddenly knew that when we would become parents, but because for the first time in a very long time I wasn't trying to force the future anymore. I was simply resting in God's presence, and looking back now, I think that nursery became a picture of faith. Faith isn't pretending that you know what's coming. Faith is preparing your heart anyway. Faith is painting walls when you didn't yet hear little feet running down the hallway, and faith is hanging scripture before you know whose eyes will one day read it. Faith is rocking in an empty chair while trusting that God is already at work in ways you cannot yet see. I remember sitting in that room one afternoon and thinking, Lord, whatever your plan is, I trust you. I didn't know it then, but only a few months later I would celebrate Mother's Day with a baby in my arms. Actually, I would celebrate it with the beginning of a story that would soon include two babies, and neither one of them would arrive in the way that I had imagined. As peaceful as those months were, they weren't passive. We weren't sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. We were taking the next next step we believed God was placing in front of us. One of the beautiful things about our infertility journal journey was that adoption was never a backup plan. It wasn't something that we settled for after treatments didn't work. Honestly, it had been part of our conversation almost from the very beginning. John is adopted himself, so the idea of adoption had always been woven into our story long before we ever filled out any paperwork. For me, it never mattered whose womb our baby came from. It only mattered that there was a child that I was created to love. I think that became especially clear after our tw after the trip to Guatemala Guatemala years earlier. We were there bringing my little brother Josh home from his orphanage, but if I'm honest, part of me wanted to bring every one of those children home. I remember looking at those little faces faces and wishing I could somehow make every one of them part of our family. Of course I couldn't, but I think God had used that trip to show John something about my heart. Motherhood for me was never about biology. It had always been about loving a child. Then something interesting happened. Actually three somethings. Within just a few days, three completely unrelated conversations pointed us toward this very same adoption agency. The first one came through friends of ours who had just adopted a baby locally. We watched them walk through the process and learned the name of the agency that they had used. A day or two later, a relative mentioned one that one of her friends worked at an adoption agency, and when she told me which one, it was the same agency. Then it happened a third time, another completely unrelated conversation, the same name. And by that point I remember smiling and thinking, okay, Lord, I think you're trying to tell us something. Sometimes people ask me how I know when God is leading, and honestly, most of the time it isn't because the clouds part and I hear an audible voice. It's usually much quieter than that. It's simply paying attention to the doors he keeps gently placing in front of me. This felt like one of those moments, so we called. That call began a completely different journey than anything we had ever expected. The agency walked prospective adoptive families through an incredible process. Before we ever met a birth mother, we filled out stacks of paperwork. Before home studies, they wanted us to understand adoption, not just legally, but emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. We read four books together. We learned about open adoption. We walked through scenarios that we had never considered before. We wrestled with questions that honestly never had crossed our minds. What would it look like to maintain a relationship with a birth mother? How do you honor her place in your child's story? How do you love well without insecurity? Looking back, I'm so grateful that they slowed us down. Because adoption isn't simply bringing home a baby. It's honoring an entire story that began long before you entered it. Eventually we moved into the homestead process. But until you've lived it, you don't realize how personal it feels. Someone comes into your home and asks about your marriage, your childhood, your finances, your faith, your relationships, whether you have a fire escape plan and whether your um gas lines are working properly, your hopes, your fears, it's incredibly thorough. And you want to think like, why don't they do this with biological parents? But whatever. And it's not all because they're trying to make you nervous, because they're trying to make sure that children are placed in homes where they'll be deeply loved. One of my favorite parts of the process was creating our family profile. Today people might build a website, but back then we created what was essentially a scrapbook, page after page introducing ourselves with photos and stories of our families and our home, the things that we loved, and the life that we hoped to share with a child. We even created a video introducing ourselves. When a birth mother chose to make an adoption plan, the agency would typically show her three family profiles, and she would pray and then read and watch the videos and then choose the family she felt most drawn toward. I remember thinking how humbling that was. Somewhere a young woman I had never met would one day be making one of the hardest decisions of her life, and somehow our story might become part of hers. I didn't know her name at the time, she didn't know mine, but God already knew both of us. And while we were carefully putting photographs into a scrapbook, he was already writing chapters that neither of us could yet imagine. Eventually our profile was chosen. I still remember getting that phone call. There it was, the moment we'd been hoping for. A birth mother had chosen us. Everything suddenly became very real. We met her before the baby was born, and she brought her two little girls with her. I remember sitting there and getting to know all of them and immediately falling in love with the sweet little family. People sometimes assume adoption begins when you meet the baby, but for me, it actually began when I met her mother. The agency had done such a beautiful job preparing us for open adoption that I wasn't simply imagining bringing home a baby, I was imagining a lifelong relationship. Some of the adoptive families we met through the agency vacationed together with their children's birth families, they celebrated birthdays together and milestones and stayed connected over the years. That was the picture I had in my mind. Not replacing someone, just expanding the family story. This little girl was expected to arrive within a week or two. We made our plans, packed the bags, bought all the things, and one morning we drove to the hospital, believing this was the day we would meet our daughter. The plan had been simple. After the baby was born, her birth mother would give me the second hospital bracelet so I could be with the baby in the nursery. I remember sitting in that waiting room, watching the clock. Every passing minute made us more excited, and then it slowly became something else. We couldn't reach her. The phone calls weren't being answered. The agency couldn't reach her either. The waiting room had felt full of anticipation, that felt full of anticipation became painfully quiet. And eventually we learned what had happened. Sometime during the night before, the baby's birth father had convinced her to parent their daughter instead. And just like that, everything changed. And I don't remember being angry. Heartbroken? Absolutely. Confused, of course, but mostly my heart hurt for everyone involved, for us and for her, for the impossible decision that she had been carrying, and for the little girl whose life suddenly had taken a very different path. We quietly went home, the nursery still waiting, the crib still there, the verse still stretched out on the wall. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. Nothing in the room had changed. Everything in our hearts had. People sometimes asked me if I ever wondered why God allowed that to happen, and at the time I didn't have answers, I only had sadness. But something happened over the next 24 hours that surprises me even today. Instead of staying bitter, I found myself sitting down to write a letter. Not to process my own disappointment, but to encourage the birth mother. I wanted her to know there were no hard feelings. I wanted her to know how I believed that she had made the decision that she felt was right for her daughter. And I wanted her to know that she didn't owe us an apology or anything. That letter went through the adoption agency, and I don't know if she still has it. I don't know if she ever thinks about us, but I think about them every year, every February 19th, still quietly comes and goes on my calendar, and every year I wonder how they're doing. How those two older daughters are doing and how that baby girl is doing. I pray that they're healthy and I pray that they're loved. I pray that she grew up knowing how fiercely her mother loved her. Because choosing to parent her wasn't a failure. It simply meant that chapter wasn't ours to write. And looking back now, I don't see that little girl as the adoption that failed. I see her as part of our family's story, not because she became our daughter, but because loving her even for a short time changed us. It stretched our hearts and it taught us grace. It reminded us that every adoption story begins with love and loss. Even today, I'm grateful that in one of the hardest moments of my life, God gave me the ability to write a letter instead of holding on to resentment. I didn't know it then, but he was already preparing my heart for another phone call. One that would arrive while life was busy carrying us somewhere completely different. Because just as we were beginning to find our footing again, our family was suddenly dealing with something we never saw coming. John became desperately sick, and for a while, adoption quietly moved into the background while we simply focused on getting him well. Life has a funny way of reusing refusing to stay in just one story for very long. As we were slowly healing from that disappointment in February, something completely unrelated suddenly took over our lives. John got sick. And now, before I tell you this story, I should probably confess something about myself. I am not the world's most Observant person? Seriously, you can move furniture, get a haircut, rearrange the entire room, and there's a good chance that I won't notice. It's become kind of a joke over the years. So one morning we woke up and I just kept staring at John. Not in some romantic movie kind of way, more in a something looks off kind of a way. And finally I said, I think you're yellow. And he looked back at me like I had completely lost my mind. What? I I think you're yellow. And the more I looked, the more convinced I became. Now, here's the important part. At least when at least the least observant person in the family notices something, it's probably worth paying attention to. So I called our primary care doctor and said, I think there's something wrong with my husband. He's yellow. I'm pretty sure that's not a sentence you expect to say before breakfast, but they told us to come straight in. And the doctor walked in the exam room, looked at John, and without even sitting down, said, You're yellow. And then he looked at both of us and said, This looks like it's an emergency situation, so go straight to the ER. Well, that escalated quickly. What we thought might be a simple appointment turned into emergency gallbladder surgery. And then just when we thought everything had been taken care of, the doctors discovered that a stone had lodged into one of his bile ducts. So we packed everything up and transferred to another hospital and prepared for surgery number two. It's funny how quickly life changes. One week you're thinking about adoption paperwork, and the next week you're learning about the layout of two different hospitals. Instead of waiting for phone calls from the agency, we were listening for doctor's footsteps in the hallway. Instead of talking about babies, we were talking about recovery. Looking back, I think God quietly gave us a gift in that interruption. Not because I would ever choose for John to go through surgery, I wouldn't. But because our attention was shifted. Instead of replaying February 19th over and over and over, instead of asking all the why questions, we simply loved each other through the next thing that was in front of us. Sometimes that's exactly how God carries us. He doesn't always explain yesterday, and sometimes he simply gives us an today's assignment. And for that week, our assignment was simple. Take care of John, trust God, and keep moving forward. When John finally came home, we both hoped that life might settle down for a little while. But instead, about a week later, the phone rang. By then we'd already made the decision. After everything we'd experienced with the first placement, John would handle the calls from the adoption agency. Not because I had given up, but because he loved me enough to stand between my heart and another emotional roller coaster if he could. I remember watching him answer the phone. I couldn't hear the person on the other end, so I just watched his face. At first he listened, and then his expression softened, and then he smiled. And when he hung up, he looked at me and said, We've been chosen again. I remember I don't remember screaming, and I don't remember jumping up and down. I think I just stood there, trying to take it all in. Hope has a funny way of making you cautious after your heart has been broken. You still hope but you know hold the hope that hope with open hands. This birth mother wasn't due immediately. She actually had a few weeks left in her pregnancy. Enough time to meet her, enough time to begin and getting to know her. She came with her stepmother the first time we met. And from that moment we sat down together, I loved her. The adoption agency had prepared us so well that I wasn't simply imagining bringing home a baby, I was imagining loving her too. Building a relationship, sharing birthdays, sending pictures, watching a child grow up, knowing that every person loved him. Some of the families we met through the agency vacationed together with their birth families, and that didn't seem unusual to me. It seemed beautiful. Love isn't divided, it grows. And looking back, I can see something that I couldn't have seen just a few moments months earlier. The failed placement hadn't made my heart smaller, it had made it softer. More compassion, more understanding. It had taught me that every adoption story begins with courage. Every person involved deserves to be loved with incredible grace. Without realizing it, God wasn't just preparing us to meet a baby, he was preparing us to become parents. And only a few weeks later, we would walk into the hospital nursery, meet a little boy who was less than half an hour old, and discover that God had been writing a story neither of us could have imagined. It was the beginning of April. After months of waiting, months of paperwork, months of praying, and months of learning how to hold every plan with open hands, Friday morning had actually arrived. This wasn't one of those frantic middle of the night phone calls his birth had been planned. We knew exactly where we needed to be and we knew what time to arrive. As we drove to the hospital that morning, I remember thinking how surreal it all felt. For eight years, I had imagined what the day I became a mother would look like. I had imagined rushing to the hospital after going into labor. I had imagined timing contractions and packing a hospital bag, holding John's hand through delivery. None of those things were happening. Instead, we were quietly driving to the hospital to meet a little boy who was about to change our lives forever. If you had told me years earlier that this was how I would become a mom, I never could have imagined it. But as we've talked about throughout these last two episodes, God has never been limited by my imagination. We walked through the hospital doors that morning carrying excitement and just a little bit of nervousness. Even after everything we'd experienced, there was still a small part of my heart that whispered, please let this really happen. Hope has a funny way of doing that. It doesn't demand certainty, and it simply keeps believing that God is present. We settled into the waiting room with the other ladies from the agency while preparations were being made for the scheduled C section. Time seemed to move both incredibly slowly and unbelievably fast at the same time. Every few minutes someone would walk through the doors and my heart would jump. Then, just before eleven o'clock, someone came to tell us he's here, a little boy, healthy, beautiful. The nurses took just a few minutes to clean him up, and then they came to get us. They walked us into the nursery and introduced us to our son. He was only about twenty minutes old. Twenty minutes. It's amazing how quickly your entire life can change. One moment you're sitting in a waiting room wonder what the wondering what the next hour will hold, and twenty minutes later you're looking into the face of someone that you've loved for months. And somehow it feels like you've known him forever. The nurses gave us a few minutes before they brought him into the the nursery, and looking back, those were probably only ordinary hospital moments, checking his breathing and cleaning him up and wrapping him in a blanket, taking the measurements, doing the scoring. But to us, those twenty minutes felt like forever. Then the doors opened. One of the nurses smiled and motioned for us to come with her. I don't remember noticing anyone else in the hallway. Everything outside that nursery seemed to disappear. There he was, this tiny little boy already perfectly himself, only about twenty minutes old, and I don't even remember the first thing I said. Honestly, I don't remember saying anything at all. I think I was simply trying to take in the reality after eight years. This was I was finally looking at my son. It's amazing how quickly love can arrive. People sometimes ask if it was an instant. For me, it wasn't a question. There was wasn't some dramatic moment where I wondered if I'd feel like his mom. The second I saw him, I just did. The nurses were incredibly kind and they celebrated right along with us. One of them handed me a bottle and asked if I'd like to feed him, his very first bottle. I still get emotional thinking about that. For years I'd imagined the firsts, the first time I'd hold a baby, the first feeding, the first little fingers that wrapped around mine, and there I was holding a bottle, looking into the face of a little tiny boy who had already completely captured my heart. I sat down carefully and settled in to feed him. I remember thinking, am I really doing this? I'm a mom. It was everything I had hoped it would be for about a minute. And then something unexpected happened. I started feeling really strange. I looked over at John and said, I'm not feeling really great. And apparently I had turned a very interesting shade of green, and John just looked at me. He looked at the baby, and he looked back at me, and without saying much, he very kindly took over feeding his son. At the time, we both assumed it was just emotion. Maybe I was overwhelmed or I'd forgotten to eat. Maybe eight years of waiting had finally caught up with me. It honestly never crossed our minds that there might be another explanation. We laughed about it. I rested for a few minutes. I ran into the birth mother's stepmother in the hall, and she thought, wow, she doesn't look very excited. But little did she know I had just gotten pretty sick. So then we simply went back to staring at this beautiful little boy. We would eventually discover there was a very good reason formula suddenly made me sick. But we'll get to that story in a little while. For now, we're simply soaking in every moment. The hospital staff around found a little place where we could lay, we could stay with James while all of the paperwork and legal processes continued. We couldn't leave for 48 hours with him. Now, I'm gonna tell you where they put us, and you'll probably laugh. Because it certainly wasn't some beautiful sam family suite. It was the nursery storage closet. Literally, shelves lined every wall, diapers stacked from floor to ceiling, formula, blankets, baby supplies, everything a nursery could possibly need, tucked into one corner with a simple couch, and one of those rolling carts where they bring you your food trays while you're staying in the hospital. It's nothing fancy, nothing glamorous, but to us, it felt like the most beautiful room in the whole hospital. That little storage closet became our first home together. We watched his first bath, we changed tiny diapers, fed tiny bottles, counted little fingers and toes, and over and over again, and every few minutes one of us would look at the other and just smile. Almost as if we were both asking the same question. Can you believe this? Is this real? The nurses checked on us throughout the day. They'd quietly peek in and smile and then slip back out again, giving us space to simply be together, our little family of three. Eventually, they'd send us home with for a few hours of sleep at the at the evening times. I'm not sure if either of us slept very much, how could we? After eight years of praying, our son was waiting for us in the storage closet surrounded by diapers and formula. And honestly, I've thought about that room so many times over the years, not because it was impressive, but because it reminds me of those that holy moments rarely happen in perfect places. I mean, think about it. Jesus was born in a stable. Sometimes they happen around a kitchen table with a Bible and a red notebook. Sometimes they happen in a quiet nursery before there's ever a baby to rock, and sometimes they happen in a hospital storage closet that smells like baby powder and formula. God has never seemed to particularly concerned with impressive settings. He just shows up and somehow ordinary rooms become sacred because he's there. By Sunday evening we were finally home. Our son was home. Even saying those words still make me smile. The nursery had waited so that had waited so patiently finally had someone to stay in it. The crib wasn't going to be empty anymore. The little stuffed farm animals finally had someone to watch over. The white glider that had held so many quiet prayers was now being home to a sleeping baby. And the words stretched across the back wall, every good and perfect gift come from comes from above, weren't simply a promise we were hoping for anymore. They had become part of our family story. A dear friend of mine met us at our at the house with her camera. She took pictures as we pulled into the driveway. As we carried James through the front door for the very first time, those photographs still mean so much to me because they captured a day we'd waited eight years to experience. Not long after we got settled, John's parents came over and his sister came too. Everyone wanted to meet the newest member of our family. The house felt full, and Joy has a way of doing that. Eventually everyone headed home and the house became quiet. For the first time it was just the three of us. Well, almost. James wasn't down the hall yet. For the first six months of both of our boys' lives, they've slept in a little white bassinet right beside our bed. It sat on John's side close enough that either of them, if either of them stirred during the night, we could simply lean over and check on them. That very first night, James was sleeping peacefully beside us in that little bassinet. We turned on the sound machine beside him before we climbed into bed. Ironically, it's this very same sound machine that is still sitting in our bedroom today sixteen years later. The button broke years ago, so now we use a tiny Allen wrench to turn it on and off every single night. Most people probably would have bought another one, but apparently we're sentimental or stubborn, or maybe cheap, or maybe a little bit of all three. But every night when that familiar sound fills the room, I'm reminded that it all started because two little boys once slept beside our bed. It's funny the ordinary things that become part of a family story and legacy. That first night we looked over at James sleeping peacefully beside us, and then we looked at each other and smiled. I think we both had that same exact thought of we made it. Eight years of praying, eight years of wondering, of waiting, and finally our son was home. We climbed into bed completely convinced that the biggest surprise of our lives had already happened. Around two o'clock in the morning, I woke up, I couldn't sleep. Looking back, that's not terribly surprising, everything about life had just changed. There was something else nagging at me. Remember that first bottle? The one where I suddenly turned an interesting shade of green? I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I quietly slipped out of bed, walked into the bathroom, and took a pregnancy test. Now, let me pause here for a second. Taking a pregnancy test on the very first night home with your adopted son probably isn't something most people would do. Honestly, I don't even know that I knew exactly why I was doing it. Something inside me just told me to check. And a few minutes later I looked down, positive. Not faintly positive, but positive. And I just stared at it, and then stared a little longer, and then laughed, and then stared again and went back into the bedroom. John was sound asleep, or at least I thought he was. I quite j I gently nudged him. Honey, nothing. A little harder, honey, are you awake? He barely cracked one eye open. Yeah? I held up the pregnancy test and whispered, I think I'm pregnant. And without missing a beat, still mostly asleep, he glanced toward the bassinet beside me and mumbled, No, the baby's right here. I absolutely lost it. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in the middle of such a surreal moment. Poor John was trying to make sense of what I'd just said through a fog of exhaustion. From his perspective, of course the baby was right there. He was asleep in the bassinet next to the bed. It took a few minutes before he woke up enough to realize what I was actually saying. No, I said, laughing, I'm pregnant. And we just sat there, looking at each other, looking at a pregnancy test, looking back at each other again. Neither of us really knew what to say. After eight years of infertility, after stopping treatments, after the New Testament challenge, decorating a nursery with no baby, a failed plate adoption placement, emergency surgeries, after finally bringing our son home within hours. This was the last thing we expected. Or maybe I should say the last thing we expected was that God still had another surprise waiting for us. A few days later we went to my very first prenatal appointment, and yes, James came with us. I'm still laughing about that waiting room because I'm pretty sure we confused absolutely everyone. We had a newborn and we were there for our first prenatal visit. I'm sure people were trying to do the math in their heads, and the ultrasound technician smiled as she began the scan. And then she looked over to us and said something neither of us expected. You're already about twelve weeks along. Twelve weeks. We started tracing the timeline backward. I had already been pregnant during that failed adoption placement. Pregnant while John was in the hospital, pregnant while we were meeting with our adoption agency and birth mother. Pregnant when we met James for the very first time, pregnant while trying to give him his first bottle, which by the way, finally explained why the smell of formula made me turn green in the nursery. It wasn't nerves, it wasn't emotion, it was morning sickness. Apparently, God had been writing two stories at this same exact time. And we had absolutely no idea. Every once in a while, someone hears our story for the first time, and they look at us with a mixture of confusion and disbelief and ask, wait, you adopted James and then you were found out you were already pregnant with Tyler? And I usually laugh because yes, that's exactly what happened. And then comes the next question. How far apart are they? Six months. Exactly six months. I've laughed about it for years because after praying for a baby for eight years, God looked at us and basically said, How about two? Be careful what you pray for, friends. God has a sick sense of humor or a wicked sense of humor, not sick. My dad and Lynn used to laugh with us about it because my little brother Josh and my sister Gabby are only about a year apart in age. And I grow, I remember thinking that has to be complete chaos. Little did I know God was preparing us for our own version, perhaps a little more chaotic version. Ours would only be six months apart instead of 12. And looking back now, I smile because I realize I was asking God for one thing, and he was preparing something I never knew to even ask for. I asked for a baby. God gave us the experience of adoption, he gave us the experience of pregnancy, and he gave us the experience of watching two little boys grow up together. He gave James a little brother, and he gave Tyler a big brother. He gave our family story, our family a story that still makes nurses, receptionists, and insurance companies stop and ask, wait, did you get the birth year wrong? Can you explain that again? There were so many years when I thought God wasn't moving, when I thought that heaven was silent, when I wondered if he was sauce at all. And now I can look backward and see something completely different. God wasn't absent. He wasn't he was weaving. While I thought I was living one story, he was quietly writing several all at once. He was preparing my heart around a kitchen table with a red spiral notebook. He was teaching me to trust him while I rocked in an empty nursery. He was softening my heart through a failed adoption placement that taught me compassion instead of bitterness. He was preparing us to meet James, and at the very same time he was knitting together Tyler's tiny little life inside of me, all without me having the slightest idea. That's one of the things I've come to love most about God's character. He can see every page of the story while we're still living in one paragraph. He isn't surprised by the twists. He doesn't have to rewrite the ending because something unexpected happened. He's never once looked at my life and said, Well, I didn't see that coming. I have many times, but he never has. And maybe that's why Proverbs tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding, because our understanding is limited to the page we're standing in. God is looking at the whole book. There was a time when I thought infertility was the whole story. And then I thought adoption was the whole story. And then I thought pregnancy was the whole story. And then motherhood became the story. And now, 16 years later, I realized that none of these things were the whole story. They were chapters, beautiful chapters, painful chapters, and surprising chapters, but still just chapters. The story has always been bigger than I realized. I also think about something else that I couldn't have understood back then. People sometimes ask me if I love James and Tyler differently because one is adopted and one is biological. And the answer has always been incredibly simple. No, not even a little bit. God gave me exactly the children I was meant to raise. James has always been what I've called my greatest gift because another woman entrusted us with the incredible privilege of becoming his parents. And that is one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given me. And Tyler has always been my miracle, my miracle pregnancy, my miracle little boy, the two completely different beginnings, one identical love. Because families aren't built by genetics alone, they're built by love. By commitment, by showing up every single day, by ordinary Tuesday mornings and bedtime stories, and scraped knees and laughter around the dinner table. Looking back, I realized I spent years praying for motherhood and God gave me a family. And somehow his imagination was infinitely bigger than mine. When I look back over those years now, I don't primarily see infertility anymore. I don't see primarily adoption. I don't even primarily see pregnancy. I see the faithfulness of God. Not because every prayer was answered the way I originally planned, but because every step of the journey revealed a little more of who He is. One of the biggest things this story changed for me is the way that I pray. When I was younger, my prayers focused on outcomes. Lord, please do this. Please fix this. Please open this door. There isn't anything wrong with praying those prayers. In fact, I think that God delights when his children bring him the very desires of their heart. I certainly I certainly did. Sometimes loudly, sometimes through tears, sometimes with pages and pages filling a red spiral notebook, God never once pushed me away. He was never intimidated by my questions and never offended by my emotions, never impatient with my waiting. He just simply kept inviting me closer. Today, my prayers sound a little different. I still tell him what I hope for, and I still bring him every dream, every fear, every impossible situation. But somewhere along the journey, I stopped trying to tell God how to write the story. Instead, I ask him I ask him to help me trust the author. I pray for his will, for wisdom, for courage, for the ability to recognize the next faithful step instead of demanding to see the entire map. Because if the story has taught me anything, it's that I don't actually want to write my own ending anymore. Mine is always so much smaller. I wanted one baby. God gave us two extraordinary boys. I wanted to become a mother. God gave me the experience of adoption, the experience of pregnancy, the experience of raising two completely different little boys who have grown into incredible young men. I wanted my prayers answered, but God gave me a testimony. Those aren't the same thing, and I don't say that lightly, because I also know there are people listening today whose stories don't look like mine. Maybe your prayer for a child still hasn't been answered. Maybe your marriage didn't survive. Maybe your loved one wasn't healed. Maybe you're still sitting in the chapter where nothing makes sense. And I want you to hear me carefully. This episode isn't about promising that if you surrender, God will eventually give you the outcome you're hoping for. That's not what my story teaches. My story teaches something much deeper. It teaches that God is trustworthy. Bef even before I knew how my story would unfold, he was trustworthy. When I sat in my kitchen every morning with coffee and a bright red notebook, he was trustworthy. When I rocked in an empty nursery, he was trustworthy. When I cried after the failed placement, he was trustworthy then. When John turned yellow and life suddenly shifted in a completely different direction, he was trustworthy. And when I held James for the first time, he was trustworthy. At two o'clock in the morning with a positive pregnancy test in my hand, he was trustworthy. None of those moments changed who God was. They simply revealed more of who he had been all along. And that's why I can stand here or sit here today and tell you this story with so much joy. Not because everything was easy. It certainly wasn't. And not because every chapter made sense while I was living it. But when I look backward, I can see the fingerprints of a faithful God on every single page. And maybe that's the invitation I want to leave you with today. If you're in a chapter where you would never have chosen, don't assume that God has stopped writing. If you're still right waiting, don't assume that God has stopped working. If your story looks nothing like you imagined, don't assume that you've reached the end. You may simply be standing in the middle of a chapter that won't make much sense until later. I know that's hard. Believe me, I know. But if there's one thing these last 16 years have taught me, it's this God never once abandoned the story. And He's going to s to not abandon yours either, friend. So if I could sit across the table from the younger version of myself, the one sitting at the kitchen table with her coffee, the one writing page after page in that notebook, the one rocking quietly in an empty nursery, I'd take her hand and smile. I wouldn't tell her every twist that was coming because I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. I wouldn't tell her about the storage closet in the hospital nursery, or the positive pregnancy test at two o'clock in the morning, or the two little boys six months apart. I think I'd simply tell her this keep trusting him. The author knows exactly what he's doing. Because sometimes the most beautiful stories are the ones we never could have written ourselves. As I was preparing this episode, I realized there are so many parts of this story that simply wouldn't fit into one conversation. There are little moments, unexpected lessons, and quiet ways that I can now see God weaving our family story together that only became visible years later. That's why this week's companion guide exists. Inside, we'll continue exploring what it means to trust the author when you can't see the ending yet. We'll look more closely at the New Testament challenge that became such a turning point in my life, the ordinary moments that quietly strengthened my faith, and a few behind-the-scenes stories, including some that still make me smile 16 years later. More importantly, you'll have space to reflect your own story. Where have you already seen God's fingerprints? What chapters are you living in today? And where might He be quietly writing something you just can't see yet? I'd love for you to continue the journey with me. You can find this week's companion guide along with every episode and resource at healerhopegiver.com. Thank you so much for spending time with me today, friends. If today's conversation encouraged you, I hope you'll share it with someone who may need the reminder that God is still writing their story too. If you haven't already, I would love for you to follow Healer and Hopegiver wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're watching on YouTube or even TikTok, be sure to subscribe there as well under the Healer and Hopekiver page. Along with this week's conversations, you'll also find our coffee table conversations and weekly shorts and other encouragements that don't always make it into the podcast. No matter what chapter you're living in today, whether you're celebrating, grieving, waiting, or wondering, or maybe a combination of several of those, remember this. The page that you're standing in is not the whole story. God is still writing, and because he's the author, you can trust him with the pages you haven't read yet. Until Thursday, keep walking towards healing, keep holding on to hope, and keep becoming who God is healing you to be. I'll see you on Thursday.