M|M

july 15, 2011

That is the day the rest of my life started.

In front of a crowd of a few hundred family and friends, my best friend and I celebrated the joy of our communion with Jesus in a covenant of communion with each other.  It was a blurry, fun, joyful, long-anticipated worship experience that I will forever be grateful for.  We started our adventure off with a wedding feast in anticipation of the Feast that lies ahead.

our Darkest Valley

It is the grace of God that he has allowed us to sit at the feet of (and pipe in through earbuds) incredible, life-anchoring teaching on the goodness and sovereignty of God.  Especially through the valleys.

Our deepest and darkest valley came in the summer of 2014 when our third and final opinion came in - we were diagnosed with severe infertility.  And by severe we were told no surgery, no medicine, no procedure, nothing could change the fact that we would never have our own biological children.

I've never been in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler.  But maybe I have.

While the grief, despair and heartache of crushed dreams and helplessness hit like a spear through the heart (and from time to time the aches can still be felt), God was with us through it all.  He was leading us when we felt we were adrift, holding us when we felt abandoned working for us when we felt powerless.  And the light at the end of the valley was Jesus calling us to adoption.

There were still a few more cold shadows to be felt before the warmth of the sun hit us.  Hiccups and delays from our adoption agency, suffering the miscarriage of two little ones and some residual fears and doubts still lay ahead for us - but Jesus was and is faithful through it all.

And the sun still shines above the valley.  And if you keep walking - one day your squinting eyes will see it and your cheeks will warm from its rays.

our shining son (and daughter)

Because our infertility was male-factor and Erin's body was deemed healthy for pregnancy (and not to mention her heart's desire to carry children), the discovery of embryo adoption quickly became our plan.  By God's leading we would adopt our frozen embryo children that families who had created them were placing for adoption, implant those little ones, pray for the Author of Life to bring them to us, and love our little, unconventional family.

After adopting six embryos from one family and suffering the loss of all of them (two did not survive the initial thaw, two were implanted but did not take, and then two officially took but then we miscarried a short time later) we faced the decision with whether or not to try again or head down the road of traditional option.

But we prayed and decided we were not done.  Rather, God was not done.  We cautiously, but with hope, selected another family with four embryos and transferred the first two.

And by God's grace...