Conclusion

When God Gives You Everything You Want and More

I really hope we can be featured on a TV show!” I exclaimed to Ryan the day we found out we were having triplets. “People need to hear that God answers prayer.” What could be dismissed as a millennial pipe dream turned out to be a God-ordained dream. I didn’t want to be on a TV show to help pay for the formula and thousands of diapers we go through each day (trust me, reality TV is not something you do for money!). I wanted to do it to have the opportunity to share God’s story of faithfulness to the biggest audience possible. After learning we were pregnant with the triplets, we were clearly on a kick for praying big things and, at this point, nothing seemed too big for God. We began praying that God would allow our miracle story to be broadcasted on television, and four months later TLC called asking us to share our story on their show Rattled.

God will give you everything you want when everything you want is Him. He is able to use the prayers, the plans, and the dreams that we often think originated with us and not only fulfill them but also turn them into great stories of His faithfulness, love, and power. God can be trusted to give us our hearts’ desires, but we must want Him more than for what He can give us.

When God gives us the big things we have prayed for, our next step is to get to work honoring God with these gifts, remembering God’s goodness, and proclaiming His faithfulness.

I remember the TV show showrunner asking me in the middle of one of our filming days if I had ever doubted my faith during our struggle with miscarriages, the high-risk pregnancy, and the hospital stays. The answer was simple. No. I told the showrunner that there was no security in doubting God or in trying to live this journey without Him, so I had decided to take God at His Word. I’m not talking about a mere humming of the childhood song “Jesus loves me, this I know” (though sometimes that is all our pained hearts can muster). I’m talking about the days I spent quoting and claiming Scripture as I never had before.

I remember, morning after morning on hospital bedrest, asking the nurses not to come into my room so I could spend time with God on my hospital bed crying out to Him, “To You, O LORD, I called, and to the Lord I made supplication: ‘What profit is there in my blood, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your faithfulness?’” (Ps. 30:8–9). I remember telling God time and again, “I know You are good no matter what happens, and I will follow You no matter what happens, but I beg You to save my children, because I have been faithful to You and so many believers are praying to You. We need this win.”

This was in no way intended to boss God around—far from it! I was merely following the example of the psalmist who made this same case in his prayers to God. If we all died, there would be no praise coming from me or my children because we wouldn’t be around to declare God’s faithfulness.

The lifestyle of praying big things includes telling anyone and everyone of the big things God has done in our life. Acts 4:20 says, “We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard,” and it has become a life verse for our family after our miracle journey. It’s our privilege and our responsibility to tell others about God’s work in our lives so they can be encouraged to trust Him to work in their lives.

Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The order of this well-known Bible verse is so important. We first must delight, love, seek, and run after Jesus. After our story aired on Rattled, I received thousands of messages on social media from people around the world, thanking me for being a “positive light on television for Christ,” for “giving them hope to keep asking God for children,” and for “showing it’s possible to trust God even in loss and fear.” These comments and others like them remind me of the importance of telling others about the work God does in our lives.

We gain an incredible energy and excitement from hearing how God has powerfully moved in other people’s lives. Testimonies of God’s faithfulness remind us of the goodness and power of the God we serve and give us courage to face our battles with even more faith and ferocity. “Is anything too difficult for the LORD?” (Gen. 18:14) needs to be the promise with which we face every challenge, every dream, every prayer. Nothing is too difficult for the Lord, and He loves proving so.

This period of miscarriages, infertility, triplet pregnancy, bedrest, and babies in the NICU allowed us an opportunity for the rubber to meet the road. It enabled me to see firsthand the fulfillment of promises of Scripture that I had memorized as a child. Back then, these verses were a homework assignment. But as an adult, they were my lifeline and the only hope available as I lay in a hospital bed wondering if I would live and if my children would live. You never know God is all you need until God is all you have.

Don’t Let Anyone Rob Your Joy

It’s been unbelievable how much Satan has tried to rob the joy, the specialness, and the miracle of our story. The most common way he has used people to discourage us is when we share our story of praying for multiples, for three biological children, and for “God to do more than anything we could hope or imagine,” and someone remarks, “Yeah, but you used fertility drugs, right?” Like air slowly being let out of a balloon that had been soaring toward the open sky, our story suddenly loses air and falls to the ground. Then I remember that our story is God’s story, and Satan has been trying to take away from God’s story and glory from the beginning of time.

Want God More Than Anything Else on Earth

Wanting God more than anything this world has to offer does not happen by default. It is a mindset and a lifestyle that must be fought for.

I was disappointed when I found out that TLC chose not to have us on the premiere of the show. After months of filming, that was the production company’s decision. We were in every episode except one after that, but it still was a tough blow. I asked God to help me see the situation as He did. In His strength I was able to thank Him for the fact that even though we hadn’t made the premiere, another Christian couple was going to be featured, and in the end that is what mattered—not that our story was featured but that God’s message was shared.

This was a humbling lesson and an important opportunity to remember there are only two teams, two sides, two armies in this world: God’s and the enemy’s. We have to want Jesus more than anything else in this world—more than health, more than opportunities, more than fame, more than a family, more than anything.

What Big Prayer Do You Have?

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it,” Helen Keller once said.1 People need to hear our stories. They need to hear that God is real, He is active, and He is good. It is our job not merely to tell our story but to tell of His story in our lives.

Colossians 4:5 commands us to be wise with the opportunities God gives us: “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity.” I urge you to make the most out of every opportunity you have to share the gospel and your story with others. God has given you a story, and God has given you people with whom to share your story.

As for us, Ryan and I truly believe the triplets are a miraculous answer to our specific and persistent prayers. The triplets are not our story—they belong to a God who is able and who did more than we could imagine!

While triplets are rare, the true rarity is not in God’s answering big prayers but in our asking big prayers. What big prayer do you want to start asking God today? God is waiting, listening, and daring you to pray big things!