The Dream

After Jim and I became Christians, we were still living together before marriage...a little situation that did not go unnoticed by our newly converted, Christian, Bible-study friends. On my way home from work one day, it hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. When I got home, I let myself into the apartment we shared and proceeded to move all of my stuff into the spare bedroom.  It made no sense for me to move out.  We were getting married in less than a year and anywhere I would move to would require me to sign a year's lease.

In preparation for our wedding, we completed a premarital Bible study where the topic of children once again came up (FINALLY) and in a seeming bout of amnesia about the fact that my OB/GYN had told me children were pretty much unlikely, we decided we would use the Natural Family Planning Method when we got married and resumed those kinds of relations...as if we had any real control over our ability to procreate. For those who are unfamiliar with this method, it entails charting the woman's basal body temperature and cervical mucous to be able to pinpoint ovulation. If you want babies, you have sex when the ovulation is happening and if you don't want babies, you don't. As a hyper-organized newlywed, charting all of this made me happy and crazy all at the same time. I had to use a mercury thermometer (which took FOREVER - literally five minutes in my closed mouth in my groggy just awoken state - thus, the crazy) to take my temperature every morning before getting out of bed and then, I recorded it on a chart (colors, dots and lines = HAPPY). It did not go unnoticed by me that a couple days before my temperature went up signaling ovulation, my abdomen started hurting.  This was, perhaps, the most in tune with my monthly cycle that I had EVER BEEN IN MY LIFE and I was now realizing that I was pretty much experiencing pain from the time I ovulated until my period ended about 14 days later. GOOD TIMES... We tracked for several months, but with my pain being cyclical, I knew that there wasn't much need. I knew EXACTLY when I was ovulating and because of the pain that I was in the majority of the month, there wasn't much action happening, if you know what I mean. So, we stopped tracking...probably right before the holidays in 2002.

Well, at the end of my last post, I shared that we had been eager as new Christians to find a place we could serve and that eagerness led us to a little ministry in Hixson, Tennessee called Bethel Bible Village. We had been married for less than a year when we traveled down in February of 2003 to check it out, meet the staff and see if this was where the Lord was leading us. We were considering a houseparent position to children displaced from their homes for a variety of reasons. During the week we were there visiting, we had dinner at the cottage we were being interviewed and screened for and there, we met a little African-American girl named Christina Graham. She was 6 years old and the very first words she ever said to me were, "Are you going to be my new mommy?" We sat and did puzzles together on the living room floor as 7 other girls, ages 12 and over, who also resided in that cottage came back and forth around us. The house was hustling and bustling, but the connection between Christina and I made the rest of the world melt away and I floated back to the guest room where we were staying thinking about that adorable little girl.

Later in the week, we had dessert at a staffer's house where we talked about houseparenting...what it was really like. "I'm not going to lie," she shared, "It can be extremely challenging...especially during THAT time of the month!" When we got back to our guest room that night, I fell asleep thinking about that time of the month. When had I had it last?  We hadn't tracked in a while and I hadn't had pain in a while. That was weird.

That night, I had a dream... I was holding a baby and Jim was standing behind me. The girls from the cottage we had visited were standing around us and Christina, the little girl I had connected with, was reaching up to hold the baby. It woke me out of a dead sleep. I woke Jim up at 3am and said, "When we wake up, can you go buy a pregnancy test? I'm sure it's nothing, but I can't remember when I had my period last." I couldn't get back to sleep without thinking about that dream, so I had Jim to go the drug store at 5am for a pregnancy test. When he returned to the room, I told him that I would probably get my period as I peed on the stick, but that the dream had been so real, I just had to know for sure. In the back of my mind, I knew it wasn't likely...that it was probably just the stress of travelling, my hectic New York job, newlywed life, a million other things...it couldn't be that I was pregnant!  I couldn't even have kids and had pretty much come to terms with that (if "coming to terms with that" looked like ignoring it and going on with life as usual).

I peed on the stick, waited the required time and when we looked, there were two lines...we were having a baby!?!?!?!? We were also offered the houseparent position that day, so in one day, we found out that we were moving several states away and going to become parents 9 times over - to 8 girls in a group home and to one growing in my uterus - our miracle baby! God was on the move in our lives and we were enjoying the journey...