A Baby Changes Everything

The girls are sleeping peacefully, and I am sitting here at the computer trying to condense my five page testimony into a 2-3 minute talk for a church Christmas video. I wasn't sure I could do it, but this, at 10:10 p.m., is what I came up with while drinking apple cider and listening to the rain beat against the windows. My testimony is to appear at the end of the Christmas song, "A Baby Changes Everything." I wanted to share it on my blog in the hopes that it will encourage. This blog remains a place in cyberspace that's meant to bless and encourage others and point to the One who brought me out of the depths of my despair and redeemed my suffering and Who continues to do so as I long as I have breath here on Earth. Here's my 2-3 minute video talk from my heart.

After tomorrow, things should slow down a bit so I can post pictures!

When I was a little girl, I remember sitting in a tiny wooden chair wrapped in blue cloth, playing the role of Mary in a Christmas church play. My part was to hold baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes. I held him gently, and I remember there being innocence and the simple joy of that moment in my heart.

This same baby that I held onto as a little girl would grow up to become my Savior and King who I would desperately cling to as I journeyed through an eight year valley of suffering and pain with sorrow and the brokenness of the world in my heart.

To be followers of Christ is to be partakers in His suffering, and we each have different crosses to bear in our broken, earthly lives. The cross that Jesus carried ultimately reflected His glory, and our crosses we carry are meant to do that as well. My cross that the Lord allowed me to bear was infertility and a barren womb.

After eight long years of painful treatments, miscarriages and surgeries, I finally came to the end of myself and my plans. I was completely broken and surrendered my plans for a family to the Lord. In the difficult place of indefinite waiting, I was learning that God’s refining work was producing in me submission, humility and complete and utter dependence on His unseen hand.

I would later learn that the gift of faith was being established deep within me while I carried my heavy cross.

I allowed the Lord to replace my heart’s desires with His, and today, I am the joyful mother of two adopted daughters. Ava Faith was born in the state of Georgia in 2008, and we just returned from China with Maia Grace who was born earlier this year.
The baby who changed everything for me and in me is surely Jesus, my Prince of Peace, and the Redeemer of my suffering. A baby does change everything for those who choose to believe.

God's word says, “Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

AND

“Surely, I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

Praise be to God, who came to Earth as a tiny baby, to change the world, one human being and one story at a time.