Thankgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving at my parents house. Reese had so much fun with all the kids.
I always love getting together with everyone. And then on Sunday we surprisingly spoke in front of our whole church. Every Sunday after Thanksgiving the church has members share what they are thankful for and this year they asked us to share. This has always been my favorite Sunday of the whole year, people share their stories and it always makes me cry. And so crazy that we shared this time, I never thought that would happen or that I would agree to such a thing. I don't even like giving announcements to 50 Junior High kids on Sunday morning, I always make sure Cody or one of the other leaders do it. But when we were asked to do this, I couldn't help but get excited. Only because God has given us such a cool story. One of the first things I thought after I found out I was pregnant, (after the shock settled in) was that I want to tell the whole world what God just did. Anyway, I thought I would include our talk on here. We were so so so nervous, but God got us through it.

Shana
After Cody and I had been married for one year, we were ready to start a family. But that didn’t quite happen like we thought. For the past 5 ½ years we have been trying to get pregnant. We’ve had doctor visits too many to count, we have had gone through months and months of being on fertility medication and we have had five fertility procedures. I had two pregnancies in 2006 while on medication but sadly they both ended in early miscarriages. All of this of course came with many prayers and many tears. But God gave us hope and a new direction because He led us to the world of adoption. And last summer we adopted our beautiful daughter Reese. Holding her for the first time as our daughter was a moment I’ll never forget. Adopting Reese is a whole other story in itself. No doubt God has been there with us throughout this journey so far and being blessed with Reese has been the most incredible experience.
Cody
But it has still been our hearts desire to have a child of our own. So after praying for direction and having a peace from God, in January we did an Invitro fertilization (ivf). Not only did that fail but we were also told that our best chances to ever achieve a healthy pregnancy would be to use an egg donor. We were devastated and what was already a five year long challenge now seemed impossible based on what doctors were telling us. We would love to adopt again but we also had a huge longing to experience pregnancy and have a biological child. But we wondered if that would ever happen.
This past summer we decided to go to another doctor and do another IVF. We were also told by our adoption agency that we could begin the adoption process again for a second child. This was exciting and since paper work does take a while with adoption we went ahead and filled out an application knowing we had time to also do an ivf procedure. We started praying about it and I wanted both of us to get the same direction from God. What I wanted was to move forward with IVF. After praying for about two months, we believe God was saying “this is what you want, but it is not mine will”. And even though it was hard and we didn’t know or understand why, we had to obey God. So Shana stopped all medications that she was on and called the doctor to say we were not going to go through with the IVF. Shana started training for a sprint triathlon but days before the event she found out….she was pregnant. My first words were “how accurate are those pregnancy tests”. She said for her, very accurate. So she did not participate in the triathlon. WOW, no doctors, no medication, no procedure. We were amazed and in awe of what was happening. This isn’t supposed to happen according to doctors. We needed an egg donor remember. But God didn’t need our help.
I stand here before you thanking God and our Lord Jesus that Shana is pregnant, but much more than this, God still speaks to us today as we read in the bible.
Luke 1:37 says “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Shana
We didn’t get pregnant because we adopted and we didn’t get pregnant because we were relaxed, we are pregnant because God opened my womb and performed a miracle despite what doctors believed to be impossible. Even in those days when I would cry myself to sleep and I didn’t understand why God was putting us through this, He had a perfect plan and a perfect timing. It definitely wasn’t fun going through the tough times. In fact there were times when I was miserable. Times when I was extremely sad and extremely depressed and heartbroken. But because of these times God has strengthened our marriage and He has strengthened our relationship with Him and our faith in Him. He obviously knew that we needed it. And we can say now that we wouldn’t trade these past 5 ½ years for anything, they have made us who we are today.
As we think about what we are thankful for this holiday season, we are thankful for these two children and how God brought them into our lives in a very special way. We are also thankful for God’s faithfulness in His Word, we are thankful for His comfort during the hard times, we are thankful for His direction when we didn’t know what to do, we are thankful that God is God.
Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us.”