When Victory Demands All You've Got

If you've been reading my blogs, you know I've been working through a Beth Moore study called Believing God.  I finished it a few days ago and loved every minute of it.  The 16th chapter of the book is called Believing God When Victory Demands Your All.  It was a chapter that resonated so clearly and so genuinely with me that I wrote probably an entire page of notes on that chapter alone.

She spoke of Joshua and of the Israelites in battle.  Almost immediately a quote jumped off the page for me:

"The Israelites had to step out in faith and commit to the battle before they received any word from God concerning the outcome..."

And aren't we doing the same?  Haven't we been trying to keep our ears fixed on His voice and follow the path we feel Him leading us down?  Even though we have no idea what the outcome is going to look like, that's exactly what we've tried to do.  There are two possible scenarios here when it comes to the outcome of our battle.  And I don't put that word in quotes because what we've been through is most certainly a battle.  We've been beat up, beat down, stripped down to nothing.  We've walked through this battle of infertility and loss for years now.  There have been times, both in the past and recently, when we've thought maybe defeat in this realm was all we were destined to experience.  Scenario A - the walls of our infertility are gonna come crashing down and once the dust settles, we will be holding our "magnum opus" in our arms, or Scenario B - we will be defeated once again and maybe more devastatingly so this time.  But either way I'm certain we will be awestruck by the unwavering power of God in us.  Because He promised to never leave us or forsake us.  He said His power was made perfect in our weakness...

But there has been new life breathed into me and Jonathan recently.  A second wind if you will.  And I can only believe that it comes directly from His power manifesting itself in us.  It is only Him who can give us such a renewed since of hope and the grace to not grow debilitatingly bitter as we've walked this long and winding road of disappointment and loss.

"The perfect setup for catastrophic defeat is also the perfect setup for miraculous victory!"

Oh how my heart LONGS for that miraculous victory in this.  And this most certainly is the perfect setup for either catastrophic defeat or incredibly marvelous victory isn't it?  A success here would be the answer to not only the prayers of mine and Jonathan, but also so many others.  What a volley of praise there will be when we DO get to announce this victory!  I get chills just thinking about it actually...

"Sometimes God requires so much of us just so we can experience the unmatched exhilaration of partnering in divine triumph..."

One thing I've had to learn in all of this is that I may or may not be able to pin point a *reason* why things happen.  The quote "everything happens for a reason" is true, but there are times when we may never know what that reason is.  For His ways are higher than ours...His thoughts higher than our own.  But I *can* say that the build up...the anticipation associated with finding out whether this is a go or a no go really does connect me with Him on a deeper level.  I literally can't wait to see what He's going to do in this.  Because it will either be breathtaking victory where His glory will be blindingly bright, or devastating defeat where His power in me is manifested in the most perfect way that it can be...during the point in my life that I will surely experience my greatest point of weakness.  

There was a part in the book that literally brought me to tears (well...there were lots of those actually...).  Toward the end she speculates a little about God's timeline and His reasoning for doing things the way He does.  I can't explain it any better than she does:

"I'm not much for numerology, but the repetition of some numbers and their similar contexts can hardly be denied.  In Scripture seven is believed by many scholars to be the number of completion.  The creation account seems to be the paradigm.  The seven days and seven repetitions God required of the Israelites before He'd give them Jericho was a literal time frame for them, but it presents a figurative application for us.  Sometimes God requires us to follow a fair amount of repetition for a considerable amount of time until He deems a season complete.  Then all of the sudden He seems to do something profound or miraculous, and we can't figure out what changed..."

I'm not much for numerology myself, and I'm not superstitious.  But what I heard in my head is SEVEN.  Did you know that on June 2nd of this year Jonathan and I will have been married SEVEN years?  Did you know that this is will be the SEVENTH time we've made such a bold attempt to push through this infertility wall?  We've done the repetition thing.  We've been through our regime for so long now.  Going through the motions of similarity...following the plan...trying our hardest to say yes when He calls.  I can't help but feel like we are coming to the end of a "season" in our lives right now.  There is a feeling of completion and finality that is looming over us.  In 47 days this part of our journey will be over.  In something like 60 days, the last bit of this part of medical school really will be finished.  And then it's on to the next season...

My hope is solid and vivid and powerful.  There is no fear when I fix my eyes and mind and heart on Him.  When I falter (which I do often) those are the times that I lose my focus and begin speculating as to what might happen if He fails me.  And then I get snapped back into reality.  He's never failed me yet (right Mrs. Muz??)!  And I can't sit here and say that I believe there will come a day when He will.  We have prayed that if children were not in His will for us that He would take that desire away. But instead He has intensified it 100 fold over the past 5 1/2 years and I can only believe that the intensity with which He will be answering our prayers soon will be unbelievably miraculous...

"To Him who is ABLE to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power which is at work within us..."-Ephesians 3:20 

His power is most assuredly at work within me right now.  It's that buzz my insides have been feeling lately I think.  And if He's planning to do immeasurably more than I have asked or can imagine...wow.  Talk about miraculous...

I Am Hannah

For me it's been comforting through these years of infertility and loss to read about women who have struggled through the same thing.  It's been empowering and calming to know that I'm not the only one who has walked or is walking this road.  It's a daily struggle.  One of the things I like to do when I'm feeling particularly "left out" of the mommy club (and it IS a club...one I desperately want to be a part of...) is to read about women in the Bible who suffered in this way.  I search out the same stories and read them over and over.

The story of Samson's mother who's womb was closed and then she received a prophesy that she would indeed conceive a child...a son who would be blessed by God and she was not to let a razor touch his head...

The story of Elizabeth who was older and had been barren her whole life.  She and her husband prayed and begged God to open her womb, and then God sent an angel to Elizabeth's husband Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth would bear a son and they were to name him John.  John was to pave the way for the coming of Jesus...

The story of Sarai who was REALLY old and tried every which way to give Abraham children.  And was of course floored when God revealed his plan even in her old age and Isaac was conceived.  He accomplished the seemingly impossible.  She was so shocked she laughed out loud...

The story of Pharoah's daughter who eventually went on to be the adoptive mother of Moses.  She wanted a child and God answered that prayer in an unimaginable way when a baby literally floated right up to her in a basket.  A heavenly gift...

And...

The story of Hannah.  Which is my favorite.  And interestingly enough it was the topic du jour for inLightin (a children's ministry I'm involved with here in Dominica).  While I sat with two or three precious babies in my lap during the last two Friday's sessions, I couldn't help but smile at God's timing and His reassurance through scripture...

Hannah BEGGED God to give her a child.  Begged Him to open her womb.  She knelt, she wept, she wailed.  She promised that if God would grant her this request she would raise her child up in the Lord.  She would "give him back" so to speak.  Her prayers were so fervent that God granted her request and gave her a son, Samuel.  Who was a pivotal character in the Bible and indeed did live his life as an offering to the Lord.

Here's my take:

1) Don't get it twisted.  God didn't *finally* give Hannah a son because she prayed for him "correctly".  He did not grant her request because He "felt sorry for her".  No, Hannah had arrived at the place in her life where she knew the only thing she could rely on in her life's most trying hour was her God.  And I think that this was to be her time all along.  She felt that something was about to give..something was about to change in her life.  And she desperately wanted that change to be a child in her womb.  This was a time when God's desires and Hannah's desires were one in the same.  The worldly and the divine converged and then Samuel was conceived...

2) It was probably not an easy thing to say that she would give her son back to God.  In those days that meant he would live in the temple and live the life of a priest.  It was not a statement to be taken lightly.  But Hannah arrived at the truth that her conceiving a child was fully a "God thing" and she was humbled by this realization.   No matter what, her baby belonged to God.  She was simply the vessel he arrived in.  She was the person God had chosen to raise one of His creations.  And she could do nothing but be obedient to Him...

I AM HANNAH...

I can't tell you the number of times I have knelt (literally) before God and begged him for a baby.  Too many times I have cried to the point of migraines and swollen eyelids asking Him...pleading with Him to "open my womb".  I've shaken my fists at Him.  Wondered "why He gave her a baby and left me hanging".  I've yelled full voice at Him.  I've questioned His judgement.  I've even questioned His existence.  That's a hard thing to come out and say.  But I have.  God, if you're there, if you exist and you love me, then why do my insides feel like they're being ripped out and scorched because of something YOU can change??  I've asked those questions...

Why then do I *still* cling to my God even after years of disappointment, a tragic loss, and frequent bouts of hopelessness?  Why have I not written Him off and decided that He doesn't exist and/or I shouldn't bother continuing to put my faith in His plan?

Because I know that I know that I know that He is faithful.  He is EVERYTHING He's promised.  I have seen full evidence of His existence in my life.  I've seen Him miraculously heal.  I've seen Him miraculously protect.  I've felt His presence.  I've heard His voice.  I've seen His heart.  I KNOW He exists.  And I simply *have* to keep clinging to His promise that He won't leave me or forsake me.  I have to keep believing that I will find Him when I seek Him with all of my heart.  I have to continue to hear Him when he says He will grant me the desires of my heart, of *our* hearts, when we take delight in Him.  I have to understand and accept that He is the ultimate parent.  He's making the hard decisions.  His heart is breaking to see me cry...to hear me weep.  But He knows the plan...he sees the finish line...and He knows there's a beautiful story unfolding.  He won't compromise what He knows is our great adventure to come, just to keep me from crying.  He'll comfort me along the way and *still* finish what He started in me.

He knows the plan.  He's giving me little glimpses of it as we walk this road.  He is moving.  Right now.  He is moving in our lives and Jonathan and I are feeling His presence and His power right now in a real way.  We know something is about to give...

I am Hannah.  I am praying that the desires of my heart and God's plan for my life are about to come crashing together.  I am praying that in my life right now, the Divine and the Earthly are about to converge.  I'm praying for a spectacular meeting of my prayers and His plan.  For ten fingers and ten toes that remind me that the God that I serve is miraculous...