With Open Arms: March 2011

"God is my strength and my song."

He is the Famous One. Great is His name in all the Earth.

I am continually suprised and humbled by how the Lord has used my story of grief, despair, longing and waiting to spread hope and healing to others and bring glory to Himself. I came to "the end of myself" during my struggle with infertility and loss, after much struggle and wrestling with the Lord, and now, my story, which is really His story, is shared with you in the hopes that it will bring hope and comfort. If you're visiting from Blount Today, welcome. This is my unpolished, unplugged, honest and authentic story of how my faith in Christ made all the difference in my struggle with infertility and loss.

It's important for me to tell you that although I am in the "spotlight" for this story, it's not about me or my glory. It's about God and how He redeemed my struggle, pain and broken heart and worked everything together for good because I was called according to His purpose for my life. These were the plans he had for me. As I waited for Him to reveal them, impatiently I must say many times throughout the struggle, I ultimately surrendered my life, my plans and my heart's desire to Him. Then, He moved in His perfect timing to bring Ava and Maia into my life to be my daughters.

My eyes no longer see just the tangible worldy things around me. They now see through eyes of faith, trusting and believing in things unseen and being orchestrated by a God who knows this daughter and her heart more completely and intimately than anyone. There is a clarity of vision now that no contacts or glasses or perfect 20/20 vision can compare to, and I am forever grateful for new eyes. Thank you, Father. I can see so much better now because of the wounds in my heart and your healing balm.

I am and remain...

imperfect, broken, lacking and completely dependent on the Lord to transform me as I walk with Him.

The good news for this broken daughter is that...

In Christ, I am being perfected and molded into His image along the way.

Because of Christ, I am made whole.

With Christ, I lack nothing.

His grace covers me completely for always.

I needed grace more times than I can count as I wrestled and yelled and withdrew, as I said and did hurtful things to others because of my pain. That's the real, non-sugar-coated story. I wasn't always the epitome of faith and hope and trust. I went through a dark valley that at times felt like hell honestly. I wrestled with demons of fear, bitterness, resentment, anger, rage, and the list embarrassingly goes on, but that's what gives my testimony authenticity. I wan't always a nice person in the struggle. I didn't always smile. I didn't always have a kind word. I didn't always celebrate and rejoice with others. That's the truth, and the Lord's grace was totally sufficient through it all. As I'm asked to share this story over and over again, I'm always finding new nuggets in it, new pieces that the Lord is bringing to the surface. Pain is funny that way. It has a way of bringing out the hidden things in our lives and exposing them to the Light.

This story has been told and retold, my testimony shared, but He is the Famous One, who redeemed the struggle for this daughter. I am simply a character in the great love story that God is writing in my life as I journey homeward, Heavenward.

"I lift my eyes unto the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth."

With God, nothing is impossible... in His timing. All praise and honor and glory be to Him.

I'm including my full testimony (momentarily) in the hopes that it will encourage even one, wherever you find yourself along this journey. May the Lord encourage your heart through it. It's long, but so was the journey! :)

I am simply a vessel, broken, deeply flawed and chipped that the Lord has put back together. I still see and feel the sharp edges, the flaws and the cracks, but it is the Lord who fills this vessel and pours His love out of it. The sharp edges, flaws, and cracks are refined for use by the Lord. He holds this vessel together with His mighty hand.

I rest in that. Every single day.

This is my Testimony written in its entirety to present to my Sojourner’s Sunday School class on Sunday December 6, 2009. We were still waiting for Maia Grace to come home from China. This is how I began...

Before I introduce myself and share my testimony, I simply want to tell you that I am an adopted daughter of a mighty King who I call Abba, Father.

I am a child who has seen troubles, many and bitter, but the Lord restored my life again.

I am a child whose steps have been ordered by the Lord. Many were the plans in my heart, but it was the Lord who directed my steps and upheld me with His hand.

I am standing here today to tell you about His enduring faithfulness. All praise and glory and honor is due Him. Let the words of my mouth be pleasing in thy sight oh, Lord.

Have you ever been in the card section of a store and liked a card so much that you thought, “Man, I wish somebody would buy me this card.” But you knew the chances of that happening were slim. Somehow, the words were just what YOU needed at that moment? I found such a card sometime after my life dramatically changed August 10, 2000. I liked it so much that I bought it for myself to hang on my refrigerator. It’s been with me ever since. I brought it with me today to show you.

On the front is a quote from Stormie O’Martian.
It reads, “Going through a waiting period doesn’t mean that there is nothing happening, because when you are waiting on the Lord, He is always moving in your life.”
The inside reads, “Lord, it is so comforting to know You never turn away from me. In every moment of time, Your hand is at work designing what is best for my life. Help me to rest in You, keep a quiet heart, and look forward with hopeful expectation to the things You are working out for my good and Your glory.”
“Praying for you through the waiting time… trusting with you to see His goodness revealed.”

Bebe approached me last Sunday after church and asked me if I’d be willing to share my testimony with you today. Knowing I’d asked the Lord to use my testimony whenever and however He pleased, I hesitated, gulped and said, “um, sure.” I’ve told bits and pieces of it at the grocery store and the post office, and many other places. Many people know more than a little about our struggle, but I’ve never really shared the whole story at one time.

In the book of 1st Samuel scripture tells us that a lion came to threaten and destroy young David’s flock of sheep. David was doing his job, faithfully shepherding his sheep, on just another ordinary day. And there came a lion. It came to threaten and destroy, but it also came as a wonderful opportunity for David. Through his faith in the Lord, the lion was defeated and also a bear and later, the mighty Philistine, Goliath.
p. 86- Streams in the Desert excerpt from C. H. P.

“And there came a lion.” Normally, we think of a lion not as a special blessing from the Lord but only as a reason for alarm. Yet the lion was God’s opportunity in disguise. Every difficulty and every temptation that comes our way, if we receive it correctly, is God’s opportunity.

When a “lion” comes to your life, recognize it as an opportunity from the Lord, no matter how fierce it may outwardly seem. Even the tabernacle of God was covered with badger skins and goat hair. No one would think there would be any glory there, yet the Shechinah glory of God was very evident underneath the covering. May the Lord open our eyes to see Him even in temptations, trials, dangers, and misfortunes.”

On August 10th, in the late summer of 2000, there came a lion. I was out in the fields, much like David, doing my job,, preparing to shepherd the first group of 6th graders at Maryville Intermediate School.

The lion struck suddenly and it threatened:

• My physical well-being
• My emotional well-being and stability
• My relationship with my husband
• My relationships with family members and friends

It attacked my identity, my worth, my joy and my peace. Its attack left deep emotional wounds and scars and severely tested my faith.

The lion that came into my life was infertility and a barren womb.

On August 10, 2000, I went to UT hospital to have a routine laparascopic outpatient surgery performed to remove a dermoid ovarian cyst. During surgery, my doctor accidentally cut an artery in my abdomen and had to make a larger incision to stop the bleeding. I remember being groggy and the doctor explaining all of this and telling me that she had discovered that I had Stage 1 endometriosis. She then looked at me and said that if Ben and I want ed to start a family, we needed to go ahead and try. We were told that the longer we waited, the harder it would become, because endometriosis can impair fertility. I was 26, and Ben was 27. We had been married for a little over two years. Suddenly, the joy of trying to start a family turned into panic, stress, anxiety and fear.

After a stressful year of failed attempts, we were advised to see a fertility specialist. Our first appointment was on September 11, 2001. That day forever changed our nation and much of the world, and it also marked the beginning of many painful treatments to come for me – medicines, procedures, injections, and surgeries. After our third procedure, known as an IUI- intrauterine insemination, we became joyfully pregnant. We had had the successful procedure performed on February 14th, 2002 and soon discovered that two of my best friends here in town and one college roommate were also pregnant and we were all due in the month of November 2002. It seemed perfect and meant to be. My due date was November 7, 2002.

My best friends and roommate went on to celebrate their November births, and November 7th passed as a very painful day for us. I had lost the baby earlier that year in May at around 10 weeks. A DNC was performed to remove the baby, and I was subsequently discharged back into the business and daily routines of life with an empty womb and an aching heart. I finished out teaching that school year with the grace that the Lord supplied for me.
More grace was scheduled to come in the years ahead, unbeknownst to me, and over time, and reflecting back, it would prove to be sufficient.

I went home after the DNC and wrote the date 5-3-02 beside these words in my Bible.
Psalm 27:14 – “Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage. And He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord.”

At that point, I had no idea just how long the wait would be, so I tried my best to be of good courage with a broken and contrite spirit. The Lord promises that He is near to such as those who have a broken and contrite spirit, and that He will not despise it.
I went back to teaching 6th graders for the 2002/2003 school year. At the time, we were plugged into a young couples Sunday School class where couples were announcing they were pregnant literally almost weekly, and on top of that and my best friends being pregnant, my inclusion teacher assistant was pregnant and our team’s student teacher.

Like Paul in 1 Corinthians, I felt “burdened beyond measure, above strength, hard -pressed on every side.”

I continued my fertility treatments of injections that school year, often having my 1st period class covered so I could go to UT early for blood work and ultrasounds. Every month was a disappointment and these disappointments began to add up.

Psalm 38: 6-10, 15.
I identified with the Psalmist when he wrote these words.
“ I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long... I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You, and my sighing is not hidden from You. My heart pants, my strength fails me; As for the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me.”

At the end of that 2003 school year, I decided to take a year’s leave of absence to pursue further treatments. It was in the fall of 2003 that I became extremely depressed and began taking Well-butrin and receiving Christian counseling in Knoxville. I also started attending Sheltering Tree meetings at Cedar Springs with a group of women who were also struggling with infertility and loss.

These were not easy steps for me, and God looked on from His dwelling place as I took them. All the while, He was longing to be gracious to me, and I was longing for His strong arm of rescue.

January of 2004 was our last round of fertility treatments with injections and in May of 2004, I made a gut-wrenching decision to leave the job I loved so dearly – teaching children. I couldn’t handle both worlds anymore, and I was physically and emotionally exhausted.

At this point in the journey, we switched to a different fertility specialist. By the time we reached him, we had had 20 IUIs, one devastating miscarriage, and three surgeries. In the fall of 2004, we began preparing for In-vitro fertilization. We finished the cycle in February of 2005 and it proved to be unsuccessful. We cried, the nurses cried and family and friends were in disbelief. We had prayed and waited for so long and had tried our best not to lose heart. Was this God’s answer and why?

In the kitchen that afternoon, I distinctly remember feeling the peace that Jesus gave to me that passeth all understanding. It washed over me like blessed assurance as I sat on the kitchen counter, mourning and grieving and saying, “Why God?” I knew He was with me, even though He had not granted our petition.

Finally, I had come to the very end of myself. At this point, I was completely broken and surrendered my plans for a family to the Lord. God’s refining was doing its work producing in me submission, humility and complete and utter dependence on His unseen hand.
The gift of faith was being established deep within me.

Charles Spurgeon once said:
“The answer to our prayer may be coming, although we may not discern its approach. Delayed answers to prayer are not only trials of faith. They also give us opportunities to honor God through our steadfast confidence in Him even when facing the apparent denial of our request.

The Lord slowly began to put His desires in my heart and make them my own. Four days after the failure of IVF, I remembered an old magazine that I had brought home with me from the doctor’s office years earlier. It had a picture of Mary Beth Chapman, wife of Steven Curtis Chapman, on the front, and she was holding Stevey Joy, one of their daughters adopted from China. As I flipped to the Table of Contents, I stopped one page short, and I believe the Lord guided me to a little blurb on the side of a page about an adoption agency in Portland, OR named All God’s Children. As I read the little article and cried, I found these words.

“Beloved, search your heart and pray. Somewhere in the world there may be a little one waiting for you.”

With tears in my eyes and a very shaky voice, I called All God’s Children right then and requested an information packet on China. After we received it in the mail, God began to confirm His calling on our lives by giving us glimpses. We began to run into other couples who had adopted children from China. All God’s Children was having an information meeting for the 1st time ever in Tennessee. It was in Knoxville and was scheduled for April 19th. He also gave me a vision in a dream where I was holding a Caucasian baby boy, and as I turned to leave the room, I turned back toward a bed and lying in the middle of the bed was a Chinese baby girl. I sat the baby I was holding down and reached for the baby girl on the bed. I’ve always thought that He gave me this special dream to confirm what He had in mind for me. For me, it was surrendering my plan and reaching for His.

We began the process to adopt from China June 9, 2005., I had an opportunity to teach 6th grade again in the fall of the 2005/2006 school year at MIS on the same team, so I returned to teach one more year. Our mountain of paperwork was submitted to China April 28, 2006, and I submitted my resignation once again in May, after being told that our China referral would be coming 11 -12 months later.

In October 2007, 18 months had passed, and we were still waiting. China’s processing and issuing of referrals had come to a crawl. Ben and I were caught in a huge backlog from 2005, and all we could do was wait and know that our expectation was to come from the Lord.
Habbakuk 2:2-3 says:

“ Write the vision and make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come. It will not tarry.”
I clung to this verse as our wait continued to increase and friends were having their second child.

It was in October of 2007 that a very unexpected turn of events happened. I became pregnant. When we visited my OBGYN, they confirmed that there was not just one but two heartbeats. I was pregnant with twins! We were stunned!

Was this our reward, a double portion, my strong arm of rescue, finally the beginning of our family, the appointed time?

At 10 ½ weeks, we lost the babies and went on to discover that they were girls and had a chromosomal abnormality known as Turner Syndrome. Had they survived, they could have had major health issues. I had a DNC in December of 2007 and life went on.
This time in our lives remains simply too profound for me to possibly understand.
February of 2008 rolled around with us still in the waiting. It was now over seven years into the wait for our family to begin and almost two years into the wait for our baby girl from China.

As the waiting continued, my faith in God grew deeper and stronger than I had ever known. A quiet resolve was there, trusting and believing that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purpose.
As it says in Isaiah, “I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

I began to sense that the Lord wanted me to do something with the public. I inquired about helping out at my vet’s office, and they didn’t need anyone. I interviewed for a third grade interim position at Foothills and wasn’t chosen.

A new bakery, Sweet Celebrations, had just opened in the fall of '07, and Kate Kiser, a good friend of mine from Fairview, was one of the wedding cake bakers/decorators there. She happened to be sitting in front of me at the movies one night while we were watching 27 Dresses , and she approached me about working part-time. I decided to come in for an interview with the owners. Kenny and Leyanne Harper. I already knew them after having their daughter in sixth grade back in '99/'00. I came in sometime in mid-February for an interview and was hired to work part-time throughout the week, selling baked goods and dipping ice cream.

I began to talk to God about where I was in life many times and why I was dipping ice cream. There's absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. I just felt funny after having been a math teacher. I think it was a pride thing when people came in and seemed surprised to see me working there. I felt like I needed to explain my position in some way. Daily, I had to remind myself that it was not between me and everyone else to guess why I was suddenly saying regular cone or sugar cone; it was between me and the Lord. Me and Jesus. Dipping ice cream. Ok.

I Chronicles speaks of a group of people known as the “potters who dwelt among plants and hedges; there they dwelt with the king for his work.”
From Streams in the Desert:

We may dwell ‘with the king for his work’ anywhere and everywhere. We may be called to serve Him in the most unlikely places and under the most adverse conditions. It may be out in the countryside, far away from the King’s many activities in the city or vice versa. It makes no difference! The King who placed us there will come and dwell with us. It is what He has seen fit to place in our hands and is for now, “his work.”

While I was happy to be interacting with the public again and seeing MANY familiar faces, there was something inside of me that continued to ask, "Why am I here in this place, Lord? More importantly, why I am still in the waiting?" I really enjoyed the people I worked with at the bakery and I loved the public, but these thoughts were with me every day.
It was on one ordinary springtime sunny day in late April that I met Patty, and I am utterly convinced that it was a divine appointment for us. God used her to speak to me and
fulfill His plan for our family. Patty is one of Leyanne’s sisters and just happened to be at the bakery that day with her little girl, Jennifer. We struck up a casual conversation, and she asked if I had children. I told her we were still waiting for our referral for our little girl in China after a long battle with infertility and miscarriages. One thing led to another, and our conversation became very intimate about our similar struggle to have a family. As I put my apron on and went to work, the wheels started turning in Patty's head, and she approached me about a daughter of a friend of hers from Atlanta who was possibly looking for an adoptive family. I wasn't immediately excited about this plan as I had grown to be VERY protective of our adoption from China. I told her I would go home and talk to Ben about it and let her know something the next week.

This was on a Friday. I then went home and boarded the "fear and what if" train. Maybe you're familiar with that train! It makes daily runs to pick up passengers. Well, I was a passenger on that train all weekend and came back to work on Tuesday and told her, "no." Later that week, I relayed the story to the women in my weekly bible study. Bebe was in that study at the time. They spoke some hard truth to me that day and said that I was maybe making the China adoption an idol and protecting it so much that I wasn't being open to what God maybe had prepared for me. Ouch.

Later in that same week, I got a message from Patty on my home answering machine saying that she felt like the Lord wanted her to call me back. She felt this strongly and decided to act on it, even though I had said,"no." I have to tell you that BeBe had given a mini-devotion in church the Sunday before about the Lord speaking to Elijah a second time. Ben and I had a serious discussion that night, and the next day, we decided to take a GIANT leap of faith and go for it, knowing that it may or may not work out. The birthmother was six and a half months pregnant.

Over the years, I had built a protective wall around my heart that was inpenetrable. Saying yes to move forward with this domestic adoption made a crack in that wall that would later tumble down completely!

So, after we said yes, my words to friends and family were these. "We're walking through doors as they open until the Lord closes them." I described going through these doors and being in a dark room. I couldn't see anything - completely cave-dark. There were no easy answers, a billboard or positive affirmation that this was going to happen - just walking through doors as they opened and groping around in the dark. The birthparents changed their mind in the beginning of July and then changed it back. Next, we were told that the birthmother fell over a bicycle and had to go to the ER. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck and the baby was out of position. I fought fear with everything in me.
Finally,we received the call August 20th that the birthmother was in labor and we packed our provisions to go to Georgia for the delivery! We arrived at around 9:00 that night, and Ava Faith was born at 1:56 August 21st, 2008. This day was my grandmother’s birthday. She passed away 5 months later after a battle with Alzheimers and Lymphoma. I firmly believe that these dates lining up wasn’t coincidental.

In most states there is a 10 day recission period for the birthparents to change their minds, and because day 10 fell on Labor Day for us, we had to wait 11days. We stayed with Patty and her family in GA for 8 of those 11 days waiting for the interstate adoption councils to clear us to come back to Tennessee. Right before we were to come home and wait out day 11, I got a phone call from the birthmother saying that the birthfather was having second thoughts. I hung up the phone after talking with her and listening to her heart and went and sat down. My family and the family we were staying with were around me. Ben was back in Tennessee because he had to go to work. As I relayed the news to them, panic spread in the room like a virus. What I should do and say were thrown around and the situation became emotional and intense for everyone in the room-everyone but me. By this point, I trusted the Lord so utterly and completely, that not even the demons of hell could shake my faith in Him. He was going to do what He was going to do. I didn’t have to control or manipulate the situation. My God was in charge.

I went to bed that night with Ava sleeping near me and picked up my daily devotional that I hadn’t read in a few days, and I read the scripture verse for August 21st 2008.
It read, “ He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because He delighted in me.” Psalm 18:19

I had been praying specifically that the Lord would bring me out into a spacious place for a very long time. That verse had become dear to me throughout the course of the waiting and suffering.

The Lord and my trust in Him has become my spacious place.
Hudson Taylor, a great missionary to China, once said, in response to, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

“Not was, not may be, nor will be. He is on Sunday, on Monday, and through every day of the week. He is in January, in December, and every month of the year. He is when I’m at home and in China. He is during peace or war and in times of abundance or poverty. “
I would add that He is… when there comes a lion.

Blessed be the name of the Lord!!!!

I’m also learning to let that fear train keep on rolling down the tracks as I journey on. I'm learning to look for new form of transportation these days.

My Heavenly Father carrying me.

On July 15, 2010, two days before my thirty-sixth birthday, we got the call from our adoption agency that we had a three-month old little girl in Jiangxi China waiting for us. We traveled to China in the fall of 2010 to bring her home, and the Lord fulfilled the vision he had given me long ago of a daughter with raven-black hair. He was faithful to bring that to pass in the right time. I would have waited for Maia Grace as long as it would have taken, because I believed in the Lord's promise to my heart and knew He would fulfill it because He is faithful 100%.