The Story of James

Days have passed again.

I've gotten to the point where I am finger-typing blog ideas into my yellow lined-paper iPod Touch notebook app, desperate to keep a hint of my experiences with God in the midst of what has been a chaotic month.

I hate it. I hate it when I allow life to overshadow the One who gave me this life. And so it is that even as the three loads of freshly-washed-and-needing-a-home laundry sit piled behind me, I am choosing to break my blogging silence. I wish it was the fact that I finally slowed down that made me realize that it had been too long since I had written, but the truth is that I was going at 90 miles an hour through my house when the deciding thought struck me.

I didn't write about James.

I wrote about Kahlan, Joseph, and Aimee. I wrote about my three girls who as of April 16th I can legally claim as mine. (That's one of the notes scrawled on my fake paper, "blog entry on adoption....")

But I didn't write about James.

My baby who completed us. My little boy whose very existence is a testament to why we must listen for God's voice.

And so I had to stop everything. I put my two daughters that I am homeschooling (another future entry) and little Aimee down with a cartoon. The little boy whose face flitted across my craziness was sleeping soundly, wrapped in blankets and clutching his favorite stuffed pig.

His story is simple. It isn't about abortion, or autism, or infertility, like the other three I carried within me. His story is purely a lesson about listening to God.

James' story starts long before he was conceived, more than a year before, in fact. It began in a booth at Dana's Restaurant, where Steve and I had stopped for lunch. Aimee, just a tiny baby at the time, slept soundly in her carseat as we talked.

Though the day and the restaurant were random, the purpose was not. We knew we needed to talk, and we knew what we needed to talk about. The time had come to decide if we were ready to take what might be one of the biggest steps in child-bearing: the vasectomy.

Those of you who have read Aimee's story know that after years of infertility, we'd come to the place where we were more than content with our family size. Then Aimee was born, a gift from God, and between our three children and the three foster children we had in our home at the time, our life was full.

So the decision should have been easy. My husband was ready for the vasectomy...he'd been willing to do it after our first child. We'd always dreamed of a large family, but in our dreams the family grew mainly by adoption. Increasing our family size delayed the adoption dreams (we thought at the time), and we were so happy with our two daughters and our son.

But, me, I felt uneasy. I couldn't put my finger on it at first. We discussed it that day, rational and irrational, pros and cons, facts and feelings. Everything pointed to the vasectomy being the wisest and best choice. But, when I prayed, I truly felt God telling me to wait. Not that He would give me another child, but that I needed to wait.

I truly wasn't too concerned. Steve and I didn't use birth control anyway because of my fertility issues. Aimee was a chance in a million if you wanted to look at worldly statistics. So the months passed quickly, and even though my mind didn't change, I still felt that strong feeling when I prayed. I was supposed to wait.

I can't go into the whole story here, but during the summer of 2007 Steve and I hit a bit of a rough patch. For the first time in our marriage, we were having a hard time communicating. We both at times felt angry and separate. We'd been together for ten years at that point, and we weren't used to being at odds. It was a difficult season.

In August, we had a breakthrough. Actually, I had a breakthrough. It was my stubborn pride that kept us from the fullness of marriage that we had always had. I had to get on my knees before God and ask forgiveness for letting my desire to "win" arguments soar well above who I knew His Word called me to be. In humbling myself before Him, and apologizing to my amazing husband, I felt joy that had been absent from my heart that entire summer. Joy and peace.

Six days later, even before I took the test, I knew. The pregnancy test just confirmed it; I was pregnant.

God knew I was supposed to have that baby. He knew that my son was growing within me when I tearfully gave my life back to Him, and He knew what James would forever represent to me.

I don't think vasectomies are wrong. In fact, Steve did get one after James was born. The answer to our prayers was very different that time, and we felt complete peace with our decision. But it would have been wrong for us to go ahead when God was so clearly leading me to wait. And looking at my son eight months later, I knew exactly why.

My now two year old little boy is a testament to saying Yes to God. He is a testament to the power of reconciliation, and his life right now represents the power of God's hand on marriage. I may have been pregnant already when I put my priorities back in order that day so long ago, but who knows what James' life would look like if I hadn't. Would he have been born into a marriage filled with angst and stress? Would he have his three new sisters that came into our life just four months later, or would we have turned that opportunity down in order to focus on our fractured relationship?

My son reminds me that God's power and strength is real. He is tangible evidence of the fact that God loves us intimately, and that His plan for us is the best. We just have to be willing to say Yes when He calls.

We'll never know what blessings He has for us unless we do...

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)