What about prayer?

I need to revisit this again, because it's so good. When I think about my daughter and her coming and her long wait - we had a difficult time with prayer.

Prayer. It's loaded. It's complex. Talking to God does not mean guarantees and gaiety. I know 2 things that are concrete promises about prayer.

1. God hears me. For a quick instance: "Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. 24 So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them." (Exo. 2:23-25, NKJV)

2. I can say whatever I need to Him. Whatever emotion, fear, anger, thankfulness. The Psalms are our friends in this. Bold, audacious hearty pleas.

So we prayed and waited. We knew God heard us - but what was He going to do? What was His plan? What did He have for us? What did He see that we did not?

One of the things that I also knew to be true was that there was a whole variety of women in the Bible (at least 5 prominent ones) who had wanted a child or more and felt unheard and forgotten.

But then God opened their wombs. The common thread? Prayer. They asked Him. They believed Him. They knew He was able.

And that's what we can read about - but again - loaded. No guarantees. "That's how it worked for them." I would think. Might not be for me. Doesn't really look like it, since we've been praying for quite some time now. And I have LOTS of friends who have prayed and are not having babies. No guarantees. No gaiety.

I remember reading that the common thread was prayer for these women and decided that's what we needed to do. Really do. Like, for real. In a new and different way where we invite others specifically to join in. And ask some of the biggest praying/believing people we know to pray for us during our next fertile cycle. Why not? Clearly nothing to lose. All to gain.

Friends - did I ever tell you who prayed, and when, and how?

Sunday, January 9th, 2011. Our next most fertile day (ovulations kits and all). I decided to text the biggest praying people we know and ask them to pray for Rob and I because we were going to try to make a baby that night. Talk about OUT THERE. After church that morning I marched up to Rob and asked him if we could have our pastor and the elders lay hands on us and pray for us to make a baby that day. Again, this required leaving any sense of shame, nervousness or privacy behind and boldly ask others to intercede for our sex life and baby making.

George and Kevin put their arms around us and prayed for us and asked God to open up my body to make a way. They asked for it to be THAT day. Others were praying too...sending texts to wish us luck in bed!

And we conceived Baby Roo that night.

What about prayer?

I also need to add how I think God worked - I had been seeing a chiropractor for about 2 weeks before that. A lot of alignment issues in our body can affect our fertility and sex organs. I was recovering from back issues with this Doctor and had told him that another stressor in our life was infertility. He said he had seen adjustments help this.

I think God can move in as many ways as He wants. He chose to move through our faith in prayer and through body realignment. He knows my body inside and out and what it needed. But I give all recognition to Him - through doctors and prayers.

I write this to encourage you. May you not feel like you lack the "amount of faith" that I had if it has been years of praying- or I have something special. I do not. But may you know that God hears you and that our story is one that testifies to His grace in our lives.