TERRI'S UPDATE

Bailey Grace -- my miracle baby -- is now 6 months old, but the greatest miracle in my life actually began about two years earlier and continues to impact my life and that of my daughter every single day.

Words cannot express the love and gratitude I feel for the gift God gave me in my child, but surprisingly as I sit down to write this story, what overwhelms me even more is the gift that I received through my struggle with infertility: the gift of knowing my Savior in a way that I could not have imagined. Sometimes His presence is so overwhelming that it's as if I can feel His heartbeat next to mine -- and I know with absolute certainty that I would not have come to know Him this way had it not been for my pain.

I remember the pain -- of waiting for the phone call after a treatment, of crying with my husband every passing month, of meeting iwth the doctors and hearing the odds against us --- I remember the pain --- but I feel the joy that came the day I turned my struggle over to Him -- a joy that began almost a year before I conceived Bailey and remains in my heart today.

In the part of my story you've already read (see prior testimony), I told you how God led me to the point of surrender -- and that I had finally set my plans aside to wait for His plan. My husband and I had planned to proceed with IVF -- which the doctors told us was probably the only way we would have a baby. We had tried to conceive naturally for many years and had attempted surgical remedies and 4 IUIs. They said you need to move to IVF and you need to do so quickly -- but God said, "Wait on Me."So, we did.

We stopped all fertility treatment and we began waiting on direction from Him. And, I'll yell ya -- a lot of people thought we were crazy! I heard everything from "So you're just going to wait on a sign from God?" to "How can you give up now?"I didn't give up -- I gave it over to the Lord.

And through Miracle Mothers and my church, I thankfully had a whole lot of people standing with me and believing that God would fulfill His promises and give me the greatest desire of my heart. I quit focusing on my problems and started focusing on God -- not abstractly, as I had perhaps done before -- but as you would a friend -- asking for His advice, His direction, and His love to direct my path. I took the time to fall in love with Jesus -- to come to know Him, rather than just know about Him. And that has changed my life forever.

It was another year, I think, before Bailey was conceived, but believe it or not, that time was the most amazing of my life. There isn't room on this website to tell you all the miracles He did in my life -- my marriage, my job, my friendships, and my way of thinking.

And then, He gave me a daughter -- and He did it without any more doctors, any more treatment, or any more pain! I won't pretend to understand the motivations of my God and my friend, but I work and live amongst many cynical thinkers -- and I think He did it without the doctors in my case to give the world a clearer picture of His glory.

Bailey's life has already touched the lives of so many that I know -- and I hope in some way her story will help you to persist in the path that God leads you down. I can tell you that the time that you wait on Him will be redeemed. In my case, I will be a better mother because of it all.

SOURCE: miraclemothers.org