IT’S A GIRL!

All my pink dreams have officially come true!  We found out last week, we have a baby GIRL on the way arriving in May!  And I couldn’t be more excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A few weeks ago, I opened up about how Stephen and I are in the adoption process with an open adoption, so if you missed that blog entry, check it out here.

But now that we know it’s a BABY GIRL who our amazing birthmom is carrying for us, I want you to know even more of the back story of why finding out the gender is so significant to me beyond a typical gender reveal.  Yes, you all know I’m obsessed with all things pink, but it’s goes so much deeper than that.

The day we found out last week that our birthmom was expecting a girl, I sobbed in the moment.  And sobbed on the car ride home.  And later that day sobbed some more as I stood in the empty room in our home I had been saving for “her” nursery one day. Though the room has been empty, her closet has been full of adorable pink tutus and frilly onesies I’ve been buying in faith all these years.

These past almost 5 years, I’ve done a lot of crying as we struggled to expand our family, and the day we found out it’s a girl, my crying was now out of simply praising God for a promise fulfilled that I struggled so much to believe He would… and could. I wish I could say my faith had been unwavering, and while my faith was the foundation that carried me through the storms of infertility, on the surface, it cracked and bended and broke into a million pieces and had to be rebuilt each step of this journey to motherhood. Just like Jacob in the bible wrestled with God, this journey has too been a huge wrestle with Him myself as I strived to keep believing that no matter, He was good, and had good plans for us and the future of our family we longed to have.

You see, when we first found out early on that we were going to possibly never be able to create our own biological child, I had a slight major meltdown.  I rushed to the place where I always connect with God the most, the ocean, and sat on a quiet Florida beach crying my eyes out freaking out about hearing all my dreams were shattered that I might never get to become a mom.  I screamed cried out to God in the midst of my panic attack for some kind of hope in that tear-filled prayerful moment and… He spoke. Loudly. Y’all, Jesus still speaks today! There have only been a few times in my lifetime that I can claim I actually heard Him speak, and this was one, and it’s always when I’m in an absolute place of surrender. In that moment, Jesus gave me a promise that He would create a baby girl for us, and gave me a specific name to name her (those details to come once she arrives!).  It was a name so different than what I would have chosen myself for a daughter, but this vision was so clear and I wrote it down immediately in my prayer journal so I wouldn’t forget it.  The only thing He didn’t make clear at the time was if that baby girl would come naturally, or through adoption.  Or a timeframe.  You know, cliffhanger style.

Though I didn’t know all the details of what was yet to come, at least He gave me hope. I finally took a deep breath telling God, “Ok, I am trusting You.  This is all nuts, but I’m trusting You and will move forward with this piece of hope.”

And let me tell you, for the past almost 5 years, I have felt like a crazy woman clinging to this promise.  I only told a few select people over the years who would “get” that kind of faith it requires to truly walk… by… faith… each step of our journey.  It’s not exactly the easiest thing to tell people, “So yeah, I know all odds are against us, but God says it’s gonna happen, so that’s what I’m believing.”  Yes, I had days of big faith, but I also fought days of big doubt. Because, some most days, I had all those natural human doubts, and I struggled in my faith for all the reasons that, well, the very definition of faith is believing in what you can not see as He showed me that day in Hebrews 11:1.  And yet, even though I had this promise, it also became my greatest source of frustration with each new path we tried to have children.  As each path failed each year of our marriage, and each month after month of disappointment, I continued to question God, “Why would you give me this promise and continually not fulfill it?”  I always thought of Abraham and Sarah in the bible, and I don’t know how they held on for like 90 years to their promise for a child, because the 4 years I held on were about to make me lose my mind patience.

I had so many moments of anger with God, doubting Him, trying to control our circumstance, losing my faith altogether, fasting, praying, crying out with desperate pleas for some kind of update.  And in the years that followed, He was silent.  For the most part.  Some days it just all felt so cruel and unfair as I watched everyone around me get pregnant so easily.  I was so tired of being in that season where anything baby related (on TV, on my FB newsfeed, passing by that cutesy baby area in Target) felt like a twisting of the knife in my heart of my greatest desire.

But even in the midst of His silence, every now and then though, He gave me a whisper of hope.  I remember, in the midst of our infertility treatments, one day in the doctor’s office as I waited for a nurse to come do an ultrasound to measure my eggs, I laid on the patient table waiting and God gave me a vision of an ultrasound with the technician saying “It’s a girl!” That was great and all, but when I didn’t pregnant during that expensive wish there was a refund policy fertility treatment cycle, I was just more confused at the point of that whisper.

Then earlier this year, Stephen was sick and sleeping in the guestroom, and he woke up one morning and ran in our room telling me he had a dream where God handed us a baby girl we were adopting and told us to name her the name He had already told me.  Granted, Stephen already knew her name at this point, and I wasn’t quite ready to try adoption again at that point, but for him to see that in a dream, we don’t take prophetic dreams lightly in our home.

Then two days before we found out we were matched with our birth parents in October, we were enjoying our last days in San Diego visiting family, and we walked out of a restaurant and I saw, not once, but TWICE, our baby girl’s name repeated in a sign for another near by restaurant.  And granted, her name is rare, and I’ve never seen it anywhere in a casual setting like that. So I considered that a whisper. I remember telling Stephen “I think that’s God’s way of telling us she’s on the way… like real soon!” Because all along the way, as crazy as we might have sounded, we still always talked about “her,” calling her by name, as we have always believed it was only a matter of time before God brought her to us in the way He knew best.

Then two days later after seeing her name twice, we get “the” phone call from our agency.  Our birth parents chose us, of all the 10 profile books they looked at, they chose us.  Only catch, the gender was unknown.  “Do you want to roll the dice and take a chance?” we were asked.  Oh gosh, this was such a defining moment in my faith because I wanted to control it, I wanted to put my foot down and say, “No, we only want a birth mom who is pregnant with a girl because, you know, God said so afterall!” Ha!  But I also knew, just like signing up with the adoption agency was a huge step in this walking by faith journey God had me on, that I needed to keep trusting Him, and say as I did when I signed up with the agency, “I’m willing.”

Of course though, as the weeks passed and we had to wait to find out the gender with our birth mom, I got really anxious. Even though He had already given me all those whispers along the way, it was still hard for me to believe, and again, not feel like a crazy person.  I asked God for another whisper and to reveal to me in a dream if our birth mom was carrying a boy or a girl. Again, we are big believers in prophetic dreams and it’s crazy how many times I’ve had dreams about friends being pregnant to tell them before they even knew to then a few weeks later confirm it.  So I was like, “Ok, God, for all those times you made me dream about other women being pregnant, I want you to reveal to me in a dream if this is a boy or a girl You have chosen for us.”  That night, I kid you not, I dreamt that my friends were working on a baby shower invite and on it, was HER NAME.  I woke up and even drew out the design of what I saw on the baby shower invite in the journal I’ve been keeping for our child.

But of course, I still kind of doubted that dream in my human nature kind of way.  Ok, that was nice to see the baby shower invite, but I knew I had to also prepare myself that maybe it was just a dream, and maybe it just might also be a boy.  I knew I would love absolutely whatever this child was who God chose for us, but for me, it was always more about, “Is this child going to be the promise fulfilled, or possibly that child might come at a later time?”

So last week when the ultrasound technician told us all “100% it’s a girl!” I screamed from all the broken places my heart had been shattered along this journey.  I cried from all the well of tears I had collected in such pain of unfulfilled dreams to now seeing this dream come true.  I jumped up and down for all the times I fell to the floor begging, praying, pleading for God to allow me the honor of becoming a mother.

At the end of the night, I stood in the empty room of her nursery where I used to once sit on the floor crying tears of pain telling God I was trying with every fiber of my being to keep believing in His promise, and that night cried tears of joy praising Him for keeping His word.  For not forgetting me.  For trusting me, though we wrestled, to hang on until He blessed us, and creating in me this deepened faith through this answered prayer that I just want to shout from the rooftops “He did it!  He actually did it! He kept His promise!”

I’m saving the reveal of her name until she’s here, and I can’t wait to share her with all of you when she arrives.  My constant prayer since the beginning of this miracle in the making has been, however she came to us, that I want her life to leave a legacy of God’s love because she was absolutely created by faith.

And the other thing I cried tears of joy about that day we found out it was “her,” was how, she’s not even here yet and she already has such a beautiful circle of love surrounding her.  Since opening up to you a few weeks ago, we have received hundreds of beautiful comments, emails, texts all sharing such excitement and prayers for our adoption journey. And I continue to be amazed at each financial blessing that has poured in so willingly to help us fund this adoption! Our baby girl has already been so blessed by you and I can’t wait for the day when I can tell her about all the random acts of kindness that brought her into this world, and into our family.

We are still fundraising, and through your giving, we have have already received 37% of our need!  If you would like to partner alongside us with a Christmas gift for our baby girl, please email me at hello@scarlettlillian.com or FB message me for the adoption fund link.  I would post the link publicly to make it easier on everyone, but due to agency rules, I must keep it private!

Thank you for celebrating with us in this beautiful time in our lives!  God is so good.

Here’s a photo of us with my mom and our beautiful birthmom Kassie!  And below, a special video of the moment of joy and tears when we found out it was “her” we had been waiting for for so long.