From another chapter

Part of my From Another Chapter series

Originally posted on March 19, 20010

The Answer

I started this post before I was ready to post it. Actually, I started in my head even before that. I realized that it was hard to put my thoughts and feelings into words and that I wanted to try and do it right.

Monday morning I woke up with the thought of taking the pregnancy test on my mind immediately. But something inside me was dragging its feet. I thought about putting it off until the next day… oh but I’m volunteering so it would have to be Wednesday at the earliest. Maybe that’s a good idea.

But I knew I was delaying the inevitable, that the answer already existed one way or the other and it was just a matter of that answer becoming known to me. So I fished for the envelope of tests I bought on Amazon.com, grabbed a glass from the kitchen (ya with the cheap tests there’s no holder so dipping like at the doctors office is your only option) tip-toed to the guest bathroom so as not to wake my sleeping husband and prepared myself.

I counted three seconds… one, two three… then placed the test strip on the edge of the glass and looked at it. I could barely keep my eyes on it, I kept involuntarily closing them so I wouldn’t have to look. I didn’t will it to change this time.

I didn’t have the time. It was positive almost immediately.

I sat down, I couldn’t look at it. Then I would look again and see it just getting darker and darker as if to say yes, you are seeing this, Sarah, I’m not going away. I started shaking pretty badly and fumbled for another test. I don’t know why, I just thought, I must be dreaming. It was of course positive just as quickly.

I was in total shock. I expected after waiting so long, praying for this to happen, that I would understand the gravity of it immediately. But I know now that it is sinking in as the days go by and I am able to verbalize my thankfulness, my joy, how overwhelmingly humbled I am to have been given this gift that I have done nothing to deserve.

I don’t want to talk about how I told my husband, I’ll save that for next time, and I don’t even want to talk about how I feel physically. That’s all anyone wants to talk about who doesn’t know the journey I’ve been on. For me right now I just want to soak up the fact that this is a milestone in two years of learning to put my hopes, my future, my heart in God’s hands.

I feel like before this pregnancy began there is this experience that I have shared with Jesus, that you have all been a part of, and he knows what this means to me. Words can’t express what this means to me. It brings me to my knees in tears. Countless times I lost hope and believed it would never happen. I barely know what life is like without praying towards this. Now that it’s here I feel like it is the end of a special time in my life that changed me.

Oh I know there will be more, I know this is the start of another journey. But these two years have been something. Have meant something. The joy of celebration is not as powerful to my heart as the sweet joy of meeting Jesus in my sorrow. I can never thank him enough for this blessing, but it was in my darkest times that I saw his true character and found reasons to worship. I know that doesn’t make any sense and maybe no one understands that but for me it has been true.

Thank you thank you thank you for praying, for loving me, for wanting this with me. For those of you with children, I don’t know how to take it on each day. I am already thinking of how my choices affect this little being inside me and it terrifies me! For those of you who do not have children and are praying for them, know that I understand your pain and don’t expect you to ever hide it from me. You have permission to call me on it if I ever lose sight of the gift I have been given and I hope that you can rejoice with me as you mourned with me, no matter your circumstances. But if and when you can’t, that’s okay too.

I’ve waited to say this for longer than I ever knew I would, but it is possibly sweeter than it would have ever been to me in my own timing:

We’re having a baby.