Written July 7, 2021

I wish I could say I was staying strong in hope and faith today. But honestly, I’ve been struggling. So much more of the story has been unfolding filled with some big twists that have left my husband and I stunned and confused. But I have felt impressed to write down all the story details for however the Lord chooses to work through it all. And I actually needed today to go back and read part 1 so it has been greatly helpful to me as well. Even sharing part 1 was a fight with Holy Spirit though. I didn’t want to share it, and then be wrong later. That felt like I would simply be another “false prophet”, but He confirmed (for three days while I fought Him) that I was supposed to share!

So in March and April, I felt a strong impression on my spirit (Holy Spirit has been communicating in a very different way and much less audible in the past several months) to get my childhood Felicity doll set out and begin decorating the nursery for a girl. There was a beautiful art piece of a little girl I had been drawn to at an antique store before we conceived, and I had loved it for so long but I didn’t want to get it until we knew we were having a daughter. In April, I felt strongly (now that we were pregnant) to go get that painting but I fought the Lord (again) to wait until we had confirmation. But He wouldn’t let me, and I thought by now that piece was probably sold anyway. Sure enough, I went all the way to Toccoa to get it and it was still sitting there waiting on me and the clerk said it had been there for 6 months and many people saw it and almost purchased it but it kept getting put back. She couldn’t believe it hadn’t been sold yet. I knew it was for us. I finished decorating the nursery (minus the wall that needs to be built to make it an actual room).

In May, our pastor asked my mom and I to preach on Mother’s Day and since we were having bloodwork done, I thought “maybe part of my sermon is to incorporate the testimony of our little girl and God’s promises”. But…the Wednesday before Mother’s Day I got a call from our doctor’s office we were given the bloodwork report that our baby was perfect…and a boy. It had taken 5 minutes of her rustling through papers before she gave me the gender and so when she said “boy” I paused in shock and the lady on the other end was rather vicious in tone and said “You heard me right? You’re having a boy. You know what that means, a male. A MALE baby. You are having a B-O-Y.” I responded hurt by her tone even more and said, “Yes, I did hear thank you.” And we hung up. I was in tears in distraught over God’s promise not being fulfilled.

So I called Adam to tell him what had happened. We had already been discussing changing midwives because of how clinical, impersonal and uncaring that office had been, and both the call and tone caused us to make the change to a different one closer to home. After Adam and I hung up I began crying out to the Lord, “God!!!! I would be totally happy with being a boy mom, I would love it…but this is about YOUR PROMISE!!! YOU have been guiding every detail, none of this makes sense if this is a boy!” At that point I heard Him so loud and audibly break through the silence, “Who’s report will you believe?” and the song from Ron Kenoly began playing in my head loudly “I will believe the report of the Lord!” Adam text me about that time the Lord had told him, “Can I not change the results of a report? And can I not change a nation all in a second?”

I battled for a day and called our pastor to talk it out because everything seemed turned so upside down and confusing. Then Friday, my dad happened to be in our area and asked to stop. Adam and I had not felt released to share the news and felt very strongly to keep it tucked away. But when my dad came, Holy Spirit nudged me to share and my dad gave me such strength in the Lord and reminding me again of their own story with the conception and birth story of Kolea. Essentially, how mom’s pregnancy with him was a representation of the church they were in at the time and how miraculous that story is.

I began working again on the sermon for Sunday, still confused and at a loss of if I was even supposed to preach. I had already known Mary and Elizabeth were on my heart, but I had no idea in what direction to go. Then a verse jumped off the page in bold and highlights of what Elizabeth said to Mary, “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill His promises to her!” (Luke 1:45) Lord, I do believe help my unbelief!

Over the next week, the Lord strengthened my spirit with little confirmations that I had, in fact, been hearing His voice; that was my greatest source of doubt and second guessing. I had sent some gifts I felt impressed to send, but was doubting my choices. However, the person I sent them to (who I barely have met in person), confirmed in an incredible way that Holy Spirit had indeed led me to choose those particular items. And though it seemed miniscule, it was the Lord’s way of confirming to me that I was not missing Him when I was asking Him to show me.

We kept the story close and felt like we were to protect that part of the story for a while, so we did. We were not supposed to tell gender and since we were switching midwives anyway, we could really only say that “we don’t know” because the natural showed one thing but God was saying something else; we truly didn’t know. But our hope and faith was still growing through different ways. My closest friend, Alyssa, and I had been unable to talk for a couple weeks and it was truly strange. The Lord kept shutting the door for us until after a tea with our other lady friends. And it was then He let us sit down afterward and let me share what had been going on and what I thought the Lord was doing. As I shared, she was finally released to describe our daughter as she had seen in the spirit and it was an exact confirmation of what I had been seeing and Adam had been feeling as well. So by this point only three people (aside from Adam and I) knew of the blood report.

Fast forward to last week. When we returned from Maui after my uncle’s funeral, baby was not moving quite as much probably adjusting to time change as well and I was slightly nervous. So I called my midwife to see if I could move up my appointment to an earlier date than scheduled for the anatomy scan. Now, the month prior when I set the appointment, she had set it out for 21 weeks and I tried so many times to ask for 20 weeks but it was as if Holy Spirit had His hand on my mouth and said “no, you cannot speed up the process.”

When I got into the car, I decided, “well, I’ll just call the week before and explain that it’s a busy holiday week and Adam has Navy stuff going on so it would be helpful to move it up”. (I’m sure the Lord was face-palming!) So when I asked to move it up, she said they could definitely see me but they wouldn’t have time for a full anatomy scan. Okay, sure. Who knows, maybe it’ll work out. I get there and she asked if I wanted to do a real quick ultrasound to check things out so of course I said yes.

During the ultrasound, the tech tried her hardest at least to let me know gender. But baby would not cooperate. She jiggled my belly, pressed all directions and tried to get baby to move. But no. “We’ll try at the anatomy scan on Tuesday.” I headed home and as loudly as if Adam had yelled from the porch at me, I heard the Lord say “YOU ARE IMPATIENT!!!! Do you think I would reward your impatience today? The whole reason you set up the appointment today was an excuse to try and find out the confirmation of the baby’s gender early; you were not worried about baby!” Well, clearly He had my number. We prayed and asked that at the ultrasound it would be abundantly clear to have no doubt when it came to the bloodwork discussion. But if this was a boy to bring complete understanding to everything.

Yesterday, Adam and I went to the appointment with the boys and the tech wanted to be able to tell us gender right away this time if possible so she quickly announced…”Oh! A boy! Tall and proud! You boys are going to have another brother!” My heart sunk. I know Adam’s did. When we returned home, the whole day was honestly nothing but a dark, gray cloud of confusion and dismay even greater than from the bloodwork results. Adam and I have sat and talked several times throughout the day to find understanding in it all and truthfully we can’t.

We can’t reconcile it, we can’t understand it, we question everything we have heard from the Lord and have even wondered what is the purpose of us being in ministry–if all we have done is misheard from Him when we so carefully never wanted to put words in God’s mouth and have repeatedly asked for His confirmations on EVERYTHING. I absolutely do not want to go through pregnancy, delivery or first year of infancy again (I greatly struggle with all of it), Adam does not want to foster or adopt, as it’s not something that the Lord’s laid on his heart; he also doesn’t want to put me through another pregnancy/first year of infancy again either. We don’t have the space or financial resources for a fourth child, and none of it makes sense if we are still to have this daughter but at a later time. The timings and confirmations just don’t make sense (dreams, visions, “coincidences”, other things not detailed here).

So we are just lost. We feel like Abraham and Sarah must have felt when the promise of God seemed to be just a disappointment time after time, but we know we cannot get our hands in it because we would create an Ishmael. Adam had to leave for work shortly after and he said he hadn’t heard God that clearly in years, but while he was sitting at work eating, kinda stunned in silence, he heard the Lord so clearly say “A girl WILL come from your (as a couple) loins.”

We know we are to announce now this story and that everything shows a boy, we don’t know if everything will prove to be wrong at birth and the Lord wants to show He is supreme over all natural law and reports or that we will have our own Three Musketeers and somehow the Lord will bring forth a daughter (and it isn’t a daughter-in-law, a daughter of our blood) still in His time. All we know is that God’s promises are true and that He will fulfill them. Though things don’t make sense one bit right now, we know God will continue to unfold this story and that we will have clearer understanding in His time. We don’t even feel released to change the nursery yet (even though I had to go to my creative place in designing a neutral theme and finalizing a boy name to bring joy and excitement to having a boy). There are moments in our days when we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. I wish I had better hope and faith to offer but God knows why this story is unfolding the way it is, all I can encourage you to do is to hold fast to whatever He promises no matter how much things oppose and proclaim the opposite. He does not forsake His promise.