It’s sunday evening, and I’m lying in bed at home alone on my heating pad.  I’ve been here pretty much all day, and I just looked up long enough to see a text from my mom that let me know this time 2 years ago we were on the way to meet Camp + Asher for the first time in Ethiopia.  Two years ago.

The day I became a mom.   As I re-read that post I wrote on the day that we received our double portion, I couldn’t help but be reminded of God’s faithfulness.  I needed that today.  A part of my endometriosis (and infertility) is that every month there is at least 1 day that I am forced to stay home, mostly in bed.  The bleeding is so heavy that I’ve felt lightheaded and dizzy when I get up out of bed, and somedays I just am so over it.  I want to have “that moment” again.  I want to be in a place ready to receive the good gifts God wants to bestow on me.  Most of the time I feel unworthy.  Today, I rebuke that I want to start praying and claiming Gods promises for me.

Over the past 5 years of our infertility/endometriosis journey, I have been prayed over many many times.  I can recall every single instance someone prayed for healing over me, and those powerful moments in prayer with my brothers and sisters around the world will forever be etched in my memory.  Last Sunday as I was visiting my good friends, the Gibsons, church with them, I felt led to go to the front during prayer time to ask for praying for healing.  again.  I told the two precious women who were praying for me, that I’ve been asking God to heal me for a few years, and even though he hasn’t physically healed me yet, I still have faith that He is able to!  One of the women, after I finished, said “so you want us to pray for you to have a baby?”  and I said, no, I mean that would be a great bonus to the healing work God could do in my body but that wasn’t what I was requesting prayer for.  After the prayer time ended, she looked at me and said “I know what I heard”.

As I walked back up to our seats, I thought about what she said and as we continued in worship, I felt the Lord giving me new faith.  fresh faith.  and fresh eyes to see that I CAN indeed ask for a baby in prayer.  I am not saying I deserve a baby, or that I feel like God has promised me a baby, but I felt like that day in that church He gently spoke new faith to me.  He spoke his fatherly love to me.  He reminded me that I don’t have to feel this guilt I feel when I think of asking for such a thing in prayer.  I’ve been so focused on my physical healing the past few years, that maybe I’ve lost sight of the true desire of my heart.

Tonight, as I sit in a quiet house eating my pesto pasta in bed alone, I am reminded that no matter what happens – if God heals me by way of a baby, or just by his miraculous works, I am a mom.  I do desire to keep being a mom, and whether thats a mom biologically, or if we adopt again, I will keep mothering.  As I said in that first mom post, it IS the best job.  It’s not always butterflies and roses as I suspected (did I tell you we’ve been potty training this weekend?) but it’s the best job.  I am beyond honored to be Camp + Ashers mommy.  Today, I want to celebrate that gift.

photos by the lovely + talented Alison Holcomb  [and they are the biggest gift ever]