10 Years Later – An Answered Prayer
July 23, 2014 at 10:53AM, God answered a prayer that my wife and I have been praying about for over 10 years. On July 23, 2014 at 10:53, my biological daughter was born. Two minutes later, my biological son was born. This may not seem like much to some people but to our family, it was a prayer answered that had been on our hearts for the longest time. Those of you that know me will know that my wife and I already have three adopted children whom we fostered for various periods of time before they were adopted. They are also answered prayers but a different kind of answer.
I remember it well, in 2007 my wife and I had been attempting to have children for about 2 years and nothing had happened. We wanted children and we loved the idea of having a family to share life with and grow. In early 2007, my wife was told by a fertility specialist that she would not be capable of having children due to her health and her family medical history. We were both crushed because it felt like we were being denied something we so desperately sought and God had not allowed it to happen. It was even worse for my wife because, as a woman, she felt like producing children was one of her primary duties as a mother and a wife and now she was being told that it would never be possible. The pain we felt was something that we could not quite describe and yet we had friends all around us who were very fertile and people had more children than they knew what to do with and yet we were not in that demographic.
After a great deal of convincing, my wife finally agreed for us to become a foster home in 2008. Soon after we received our first foster (and later our first adopted) daughter, we realized that God had a whole world of children out there who needed us more than children who had not even been born yet. We changed our perspective about children but there was still that underlying longing for biological children. When we got our foster son B, in 2011 at only 8 days old, Tiff was deeply in love with the thought of having a baby, only a month later we got another baby boy and she got double the motherly love. Despite this great blessing, the pain of always having to ‘share’ the role of mother with strangers even after the two boys were adopted (in 2012 and early 2014 respectively). Even though our house was full, we never lost sight of the thought that we might have our own kids some day. We just didn’t know how or when it would take place.
In 2011, I left my comfortable position at a company where I had worked for 6 years (that’s a long time in IT) and took a position with a Fortune 500 oil company that boasted ridiculous benefits and enough salary that my wife could finally stay home. I took the position and we began to think about the potential of having in-vitro fertilization (IVF) performed to have a baby. Why? Because the company’s insurance permitted us to get this and it would pay over 75% of the cost of this very expensive procedure. We prayed about it and talked it over for hours on end.Finally, we decided in September 2013 that we were going to go for it. The best explanation I can give was that we decided we would rather try the IVF while we were still young enough and had insurance that would cover it than to not do the procedure and spend our whole lives wondering ‘What If?’
Steeled by our hopes and prayed up, my wife began the painful process of preparing. This required her to go take medications to increase fertility. It required her to take steroid shots until the eggs were big enough to be used for the procedure and she had to be very careful about how she ate and slept and so on. Unfortunately, on October 8, 2013, barely a month after we had started the process, my company downsized and terminated over 640 people in the OKC metro… I was one of those people. When I told my wife about this information, she was hysterically sad and was worried that we would not be able to keep going when we were SO CLOSE. However, there is a silver lining in this… the company allowed me to keep my insurance until Dec. 2013 which would mean that we would be done with the most expensive part (the harvesting and fertilization part) before the insurance ran out! Furthermore, the company that hired me only a week after I was released from my old job paid me even more than my Fortune 500 job! I praised God for His provision and the path continued onward.
Once my wife and I did the harvesting, we got four eggs that were capable of fertilization so we went ahead and did all four. This was a scary thought because once the egg was fully fertilized, we either had to deposit it, freeze it, or give it up for adoption. We actually were scared about this because we couldn’t afford if all 4 fertilized nor could we afford to freeze the others. After five days, the eggs would either die or become viable. Tiff and I prayed and turned over the concept of what we wanted to do. We got a call on Day 3 that the smallest of our eggs had deteriorated and was no longer usable. The first two looked good and the third one was ‘okay’. The fourth day, they called and said that the third egg looked like it was starting to deteriorate but the other two looked great. Finally, on the morning of day 5, the third egg was no longer viable but the first two were 100% ready to go! It sounds negative but we were actually glad that this was the way things worked out.
In November, my wife went through the painful process of having the embryos implanted. We found out after a few weeks that BOTH babies were now stable and growing. My wife still had to go through painful shots, countless steroids and even was put on modified bedrest. The problem with my wife being on modified bed rest is that she is not exactly a ‘sit down’ kind of person. She wants to be moving constantly, she has a daily list of stuff she needs/wants to do to ensure the operation of our already 3 children household. Thank God, we have friends that have been placed in our life for various reasons that are willing to help us out when she had to sit down.
Well, after 10 years of prayer, several months of shots, bloodwork and sitting down.. we gave birth to our twins! There are no words to express how amazing this feels! When I see how God literally made two beautiful things out of the particles of dust that make up humans and gave them to two people who prayed for years and cried for years – it reminds me of how amazing God is. We may not understand His timing, we may not understand why things happen and we may not even think God hears us. But I am here to tell you. MY GOD LISTENS AND ANSWERS PRAYERS! Keep your faith strong and pray without ceasing – God will reward you in ways that you cannot imagine.