I sat in the back row at church, my eyes glued on the clean-cut young man and attractive woman standing up in front. A guest preacher and his wife, they had invited all the young couples in the congregation to come forward after the service for personal prayers.
“Honey,” my husband, Doug, whispered, tapping my knee. “Should we go up there too?”
I looked at the line of husbands and wives, hand in hand, forming a long procession from the front of the church all the way to where we sat. No doubt their needs were more pressing than our own. My life with Doug overflowed with blessings: eleven years of marriage and a beautiful, lively nine-year-old daughter, Ari. We belonged to a thriving church community. Doug and his brother had just started their own construction business, and I taught kindergarten at Ari’s school, along with Sunday school and vacation Bible school. As a wife and mother, what more could I ask for?
Yet I was hoping for a miracle. Two years earlier, when I was twenty-seven, a cancer scare had turned my world upside down. Doctors discovered cysts and tumors in my uterus. I had a hysterectomy. I was grateful the tumors turned out to be benign, but Doug and I would never have another baby. We’d always wanted a big family. That was no longer possible. We had Ari. We had each other. That was God’s plan, and it would have to be enough.
But everywhere I looked, in every facet of my life, I was surrounded by children—from the ones I taught to my friends’ children to my own daughter and her little play pals. Every time I received an invitation to a baby shower or had nursery duty at church, I balked. Deep inside, I yearned to have another baby. I felt cheated, unfulfilled—and then guilty for having those feelings. Who was I to question God’s plans?
One afternoon a friend asked if Doug and I would be open to adoption—her teenage niece was having a baby she knew she couldn’t take care of. We said yes immediately. We hired an attorney and began working out the complicated legal details for the adoption. It was to be a baby boy. We picked out a name, Matthew, meaning “gift of God.” But two hours before we left to meet our new baby for the first time, our attorney called. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The mother just changed her mind. The adoption is off.”
I cried all afternoon. We had known this outcome was a possibility. Over time, I accepted that the adoption wasn’t meant to be, but I wasn’t ready to give up. I looked into other options. Our state adoption agency had a seven-year waiting list. I didn’t even bother. I prayed about our situation daily, but maybe my prayers weren’t loud enough. Maybe God’s answer was no. Could I accept that?
Now in church, while Ari played with her friends, Doug and I stood at the back of the line and waited our turn to join the couple for prayer. We’d waited for more than an hour by the time we reached the front. Finally, the young man and his wife greeted us. “Do you have any needs you would like us to pray for?” the man asked.
“We’d love to adopt a baby,” I said.
The young preacher’s face brightened. “We were just at a fund-raiser last weekend for a new adoption agency in Oklahoma!” he said.
“I’ll get you the number and address,” his wife said.
What were the chances? I contacted the agency. I filled out piles of forms. Ken, the program’s administrator, warned me the process could be lengthy. “It might be years,” he said. “We won’t know anything until after the baby is born and the birth mother has time to decide. Our council then prays for the right family before we finalize where the baby belongs.”
I tried not to get my hopes up. Especially after what had happened before. But I couldn’t help myself.
I continued praying. As the school year approached, I felt I shouldn’t teach that fall. What if I’m needed at home to care for a baby?
To keep busy, I volunteered to direct a children’s musical at my church. I spent months surrounded by kids and knee-deep in their fanciful animal costumes. Ari was in the show too.
One afternoon while I was driving to a friend’s house to discuss details for the show, I was convinced I heard a voice say, You will have a nine-pound, ten-ounce baby boy, twenty-one inches long. It wasn’t the radio, more like someone in the car with me. But I was all alone.
Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. Shocked, I told my friend what I’d heard. “The message was so clear, so emphatic. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but let’s hope for the birth mother’s sake that’s not the baby’s weight. That’s huge!”
I told Doug about the voice. This had to be it—Ken from the adoption agency would call any day now, I was sure. Convinced. Only the phone didn’t ring. I focused my energy on the musical, which opened at the end of September. We got rave reviews. But when it was all over, I had to wonder, Now what?
I spent the week after the show catching up on laundry and paying bills. No call. That Friday I sat at the kitchen table, fresh out of ideas.
At that moment, I felt a lightning strike of pain in my belly, unlike any stomachache I’d ever had. I stooped over in the chair and winced. I staggered upstairs to my room and collapsed in bed. I called Doug at work. “I’m sick. Can you pick up Ari from school?” I stayed in bed all night and still felt weak on Saturday. On Sunday, I forced myself to go to church. And we’d promised to take Ari to our town’s annual craft fair afterward. When we got there, Ari delighted in every hair bow and glitzy T-shirt she saw. “Mommy, look!” She pointed at a pair of sparkly earrings.
Again I felt pain in my abdomen. I tried to make my grimace look like a smile. “Pretty,” I said, but Ari gave me a strange look. I grabbed Doug’s arm.
“It’s back,” I gasped. “It feels like my insides are being ripped out.” We left for home immediately.
“It’s only two o’clock!” Ari protested.
“Mommy has a stomachache,” Doug said.
A little before three o’clock, the pain subsided.
I lay in bed that night and wondered what was wrong with me. I hadn’t felt pain like that since . . . well, since I had given birth to Ari. How could I be having labor pains? I felt crazy just thinking that. It had to be something else. Maybe I was exhausted from the show. I’d go to the doctor if the pain returned. A week passed and it didn’t.
That Monday we got a call from Ken. “We’d like to speak to you,” he said. “We’ve prayed, and we believe you are the right family for a newborn baby boy. Congratulations!”
I was overwhelmed with joy. Our baby! At last! “Is he healthy?” I asked. “Is he really ours?”
“I’m looking at his file right now,” Ken said. “He was born nine pounds, three ounces, twenty-one inches. He had a checkup today, and he’s doing great. As of this morning, his weight was up to nine pounds, ten ounces. That’s a big baby!”
I almost dropped the phone. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief as tears flowed down my cheeks. Ken asked if I was still there. I managed to squeak out a plea for him to go on.
“He’s just over a week old,” Ken continued. “His mother experienced her first labor pains and checked into the hospital Friday afternoon a week ago. She was in labor over the weekend and had a C-section last Sunday . . . at two forty-five in the afternoon.”
No wonder those pains had been so familiar. They were all too real.