https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9_rtzO3JfY

Mandy Harvey

We have all experienced them. A shattered business endeavor; a disappointed dream; a wayward child. Like a stillborn child, the dream is unable to be resuscitated. We are left wounded, devastated, hope deferred and our path deterred. When the rug is pulled out from under our feet; when we find ourselves on a detour we didn’t map out; while yet clutching onto our stillborn dream, He is still holding us. 

We all have been there; though the storyline differs, the plot is unvaried. A miscarried dream, unfulfilled, a dream that simply isn’t. My story also included a lifelong vision. I was holding hands with my dream, singing lullabies and Scripture songs in English over him before sleep each night.

Toward the end of his second extended stay with us, he was singing them along with me. But then it all stopped. I was sad, I was mad. I was angry at the time invested and confused as to why we had walked as far along the path of adoption as we had. And then Putin started a war with his country. And guilt set in. A stillborn adoption.

Perhaps it isn’t right to think of it like this, but I have often linked our “not adoption” story to infertility. It is a topic that just isn’t generally talked about. Untold. And where I haven’t endured the burden and pain of miscarriage, I have experienced the burden and pain of not carrying. 

I have sat in the office of the infertility doctor, and I remember. It was an appointment we scheduled incognito. Untold. What was there to talk about? It was a dream unfulfilled. Ungerminated. Inviable. Did that make my pain and grief inviable?

Our infertility story wasn’t a long one. And it holds no candle to those whose stories have dragged endlessly on. It is hard to want to try. And so we sit immobilized in our grief and loose ends, trying to find a place to organize dreams that lie dormant or unresolved. Our pastor, Mike Majeski, once said that “Passivity is never stepping out when He speaks; never dreaming; never desiring.” 

But Jesus would say to you, “I’ve given you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:18-19).

It is love that compels us. It draws us out of the shadows of darkness, it moves us and woos us, rallies us to exert ourselves. It is our equipment as we do what God is calling us to do:  equip others, equip the saints, equip your generation.

The enemy will cause you to feel defeat; he will cause you to feel inadequacy; he will cause you to feel unworthy. “Your enemy seeks whom he may devour,” 1 Peter 5:9. BUT, His Glory is our rear guard (Isaiah 58:8).

Where we soak in the presence of God, we know His glory is our rear guard; and where the presence of God is, it takes off the head and hands off the enemy.

Whatever has died within the sphere of your life, Jesus has come to raise the dead! He hears the prayer of your heart. 

“Just as the heat from a fire causes a cone to open and release its seeds, God allows the pressure and discomfort of our trials to serve as the catalyst for new growth.” 

Ruth Chou Simons, Gracelaced, p.146

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deborah Ann lives in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, where she is living her dream with her husband and five children as she keeps up with laundry, chauffeuring, teaching piano lessons, and Music Together classes, along with homeschooling. The things that make her heart skip a beat are cultivating conversations with a friend over nettle tea, leading worship with her family, and engaging in musical venues with children and teenagers in her community. Something that makes her grin all giddy is ambling about on the trails near their stone cottage via walks or cross-country skiing. Something that turns her grin into grimace is the neglected vegetable garden she yearly resolves to maintain; however, cultivating herbs are one of her delights, and she is in the process of publishing her first devotional book based on her herbal endeavors. She can be found at awalkdownchamomilelane.com.