The Story of Samuel: Answered Prayers

"So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. 

She named him Samuel, saying, ' Because I asked the Lord for him.'"

1 Samuel: 1:20

In order to tell you the story of my son, I need to take you back to the beginning.

I think I started dreaming about having a baby before Kyle did. Every baby I saw made my heart just ache to start a family. Kyle was much more focused on getting things in our life together first, oh you know, like him graduating and finding a job and knowing where we'll be in a year.

Important things like that.

But the more we talked about babies, the more we realized that if we waited for the perfect time it may never come.

found here, original source unknown

So last September we just decided to trust that the Lord knew what was best for our family. I can't say we were really trying to get pregnant, but we stopped trying not to.

I thought getting pregnant would be easy. And fast. But you know, it really wasn't.

Let's just say that I shed lots of tears in the tampon aisle. 

Christmas Eve of last year was the earliest I could take a pregnancy test that month and I really wanted to see those lines. What could be a sweeter gift? I prayed and prayed, but they didn't show up.

Christmas wasn't the holiday for getting a baby. You know what holiday was? President's Day.

February 20 I woke up feeling kind of funny. I was a few days late but trying to be super realistic and not get my hopes up. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was different. I was getting together that night with friends and stopped at the store to buy a pregnancy test beforehand. I was talking with them about how I was feeling and a friend told me to take a test as soon as I got home. I told her I had them in my purse and she pointed me to the bathroom. 

Those few minutes were the longest minutes of my life. 

I am so glad I got to share that moment with some of my closet friends. They had to drive me home because I was too excited/in shock to drive myself. 

And of course Kyle was overjoyed when I told him. Our prayers were answered.

***

This first part of this story should really be titled, "the story of God's incredible provision and plan," for I've never felt God's hand upon my life in a more powerful way than I did during this time in my life.

If it were up to us, we would have gotten pregnant right away and then had a baby before Kyle had a job or we had a house. We would have been moving with an infant. It would have been much more of a whirlwind than the moderately smooth transition we were blessed with.

I could only see just a few feet in front of me. The longing I had for a baby on my timeline. Luckily our Lord see everything, the big picture, and gives us what we need when we need it. And not a second sooner.