We first had the desire to have a baby before we had even been married a year. When we were engaged and first married we were pretty set in the "not until Chris is done school" decision, but it didn't take long for that to change. Anyone that knows us isn't surprised in the least by this! We prayed about it in March of 2012 and both felt like Jesus was saying "not now" I brought it up again in December of 2012 when we were on vacation in Mexico. We agreed to talk about it further. To be honest, I think we were both a bit nervous that Jesus would say no again. It was really hard the last time- to both really want it, but not feel like it was quite right.... but want to ignore that feeling so we could do it anyways. It was a hard journey and when the answer came up no it was really difficult to listen!
So now we're in January 2013. After a couple weeks of talking about it we finally decide to stop talking and start praying. There is only one person who knows what is best for our lives, and that is Jesus. We have no intention of making any decisions that will affect our lives in such a large way without being positive that it is His decision and not our own.
We have been on a journey of what our church calls "listening prayer" for quite a while now. In a nut shell, we believe that Jesus intrinsically cares about our day to day activities and questions. He wants to answer those questions, and we have the ability to hear from Him. However, sometimes our own desires can make us biased to what we are hearing (or want to hear) and so praying about something as big as this seemed tricky at first. One of the pastors at our church once told a story about how he was asking Jesus a question but having trouble discerning the answer, and so he asked a friend to pray about it for him. To ensure the friend would stay completely unbiased he asked him to simply ask Jesus if he should go with Option A or Option B. The friend was able to listen on his behalf without having any emotions about the outcome getting in the way. In the end the friend heard clearly from Jesus, and our pastor was absolutely blessed by the decision.
Chris and I decided to take this a step further and try out a "prayer experiment" if you will. We fully intended to ask a few trusted friends to pray for us (a blind experiment) but also wanted to be blind to the question ourselves (double blind) How's that for mixing science and religion? Ha!
So Chris wrote on two small pieces of paper, and then folded them up. We then tossed them around a little and I wrote "A" on one, and "B" on the other. We texted a couple friends and without giving them any context asked them to pray about it for us, asking Jesus the question "A or B" We then went a step further and also prayed about it together - still not knowing what A and B really were. We sat before the Lord in prayer and both got a very clear sense that Jesus was saying "B". Nervously, we opened up the paper to find the letter "N". My heart dropped. I thought that meant N for No. Chris's eyes widened and he explained that N meant NOW, and the other paper had an L for LATER. We were overjoyed!! We felt a huge amount of peace about it right away, that was soon affirmed by our 3 friends that all came back with "B" as well.
Watch for my next post where I discuss what happened next. Spoiler alert: We didn't get pregnant right away. Whhaa?? I thought you said NOW Jesus??
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Thanks for stopping by :)
~M
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