I’ve always loved children.  Being the youngest of 4 in my family I never had the experience of a baby sister or brother to play with, or torment, and being that my personality was one of a more nurturing side, I loved holding and playing with babies anytime I could be around them.  I couldn’t wait to be a father.  I’m a very relational person and my greatest dream in life was to have a family of my own.   When my wife Lori and I got married in 1994 we thought like most young couples that we would take a couple of years of wedded bliss and then start the process of having babies and our family.  I remember us making our plans for a boy or girl and cute names and perfect images of nurseries and strollers and all things children, as if we had some control over those things. Having a family wasn’t my only dream. I also dreamed of being a Contemporary Christian music artist.  I dreamed like most kids of huge crowds and loud music and making records.  I worked with passion to become that artist and to follow my dream, and in a lot of ways saw it come true.  I traveled on the road full-time shortly after getting married performing nearly 1000 concerts in 3 years and Lori followed her own dream of being a radio DJ and working with artists.  Before we knew it we had been married over 8 years and still had no children.  Our busy schedules and career chasing kept us from worrying too much about it, and we were young. We thought we would have plenty of time.

As time rolled on, we knew there was a problem and went to a few specialists, Lori had a surgical procedure to help with her Endometriosis and I remember the doctor saying “You’ll be fertile Myrtle now!”  A few years later we still had not conceived and we hadn’t moved any further in finding out what the problem truly was.  Lori was given a clean bill of health and so was I, still no children. We continued to follow our careers and dreams but found that we were becoming bitter and unbelievably sensitive about children.  Most of our friends already had one or two and made comments about how they ‘couldn’t even sit too close to each other without getting pregnant’.  Those kinds of comments or even story lines in movies or TV shows that dealt with abortion or babies in any way were unbelievably difficult for us.  We began to notice that our dreams and careers felt shallow and that we so longed for children.  As we wrestled with what steps to take in fertility, we realized that Lori was struggling even with the idea of being a mommy.  Her parents had divorced after 17 years of marriage and for some reason Lori felt that children had something to do with that.  We had a pretty big argument about where we were, how old we were getting and whether or not we were going to try anymore.  Lori had begun to worry about what kind of mom she would be and if having children would some how affect our marriage in a negative way.  After all she hadn’t seen it work well.

We were stuck.  I wanted to move on discovering what was keeping us from getting pregnant and she was paralyzed with fear of what might happen if we did. We went to see a dear friend and counselor that helped us and encouraged Lori.  After a few sessions we were seeing truth and growing hopeful of what having a baby would be like.  We made an appointment with a fertility clinic and began the very difficult process of assisted fertility.  I’ll never forget in the middle of that process after we had 2 different failed attempts at artificial insemination, feeling so embarrassed and like a lab rat, that I said to Lori, “This should be done at home where we can love on each other in the privacy of our own home and marriage not in some cold clinical test tube, does God not think we’ll make good parents”, to which my precious wife responded, “It takes more love to walk through this process, more sacrifice, more commitment”.  I just began to cry and remember why we were walking this road.  We finally moved forward with IVF and though Lori is deathly afraid of needles, we made it through.  We conceived!!  On January 25, 2007, we gave birth to our beautiful little girl Daisy Joy.  Daisy has been such an incredible gift from the Lord and there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t thank Him for her.  During the IVF process we had 3 embryos that continued to grow and be viable for implant. Two were implanted when we conceived with Daisy, losing one, and one was frozen.

We decided to go and get our little “snowflake” about a year ago and started the process of praying and talking with the fertility clinic about what steps should be taken.  We had a busy summer in 2009 and though we had hoped to try the implant in June, we didn’t actually make time in our schedule until September. We found ourselves waiting for Lori’s cycle to begin so we could communicate with the clinic and start the process.  We realized that she was 9 days late and she mentioned to me that she was a little confused as to why.  We got a test that night and the next day discovered we were pregnant on our own. (I was convinced this was a nearly immaculate conception…God was involved no doubt!)  On May 25, 2010 we gave birth to our second little girl Jovie May!  We will try to retrieve our little “snowflake” next year sometime.  God is so good, and has been present with us through it all. There were so many times that it felt like we were in a desert, and that surely He wasn’t listening, but “He’s never left us or forsaken us”.  His timing is perfect and He is always good.  He allows us to walk through some difficult seasons in life but we are never alone.  The question is, do we trust Him?  This is His story He’s writing, not ours.