Please note that the following piece talks about  pregnancy and infertility.

We bless you with God’s peace and comfort if you choose to read it.  

What you’re about to read testifies of God’s perfect timing and the refining that happens in our season of ‘waiting’ for the fulfilment of His prophetic promises. 

My husband and I battled with infertility for seven and a half years. It was a very challenging time. We yearned to be parents. We longed to have children. Yet no matter how much we tried, how many tips we followed and how many tricks we did (like standing on my head!) we weren’t able to conceive. Everyone else around us was getting pregnant left and right without issues, but that wasn’t the case for us. We didn’t understand. 

At one point we literally had twelve couples we knew, including close friends and family, who were all pregnant. As much as I tried to be a good sport, every pregnancy announcement was a dagger to my heart and a reminder of what my body could not do. Sometime between our second and third year of infertility, a random man walked up to my husband at a Friday night worship service and said to him, ‘The Lord said He is going to open up your wife’s womb. He is going to give you a son and you are to name him Nathan.’ When my husband came home that night and shared this with me my initial response was, ‘Who is this guy? And I don’t like the name Nathan.’ The only reference I had at the time that name was Nathan the prophet to King David. It wasn’t until a few years later when I researched the Hebrew meaning of that name, that I learned it means ‘Given by God.’ 

After three years of infertility I became depressed and utterly discouraged. And it wasn’t that I didn’t believe God could or would fulfil His promise, but my soul was experiencing the first half of Proverbs 13:12 which says, ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick,’ It wouldn’t be until many years later that I would experience, ‘but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.’ It was during this season of hope deferred, that a prophet, unknown to us at the time, called us up during a church service and after speaking over my husband he turned to me and said, ‘I break off barrenness in Jesus name.’ Bam! His words carried authority and I broke. I wept and wept. 

Yet I thought this meant I would be pregnant the following month or maybe that year, but that wasn’t the case. And while I would love to share with you the miraculous story of my son, all of the prophetic history that occurred before his arrival, the pain of miscarriage, the wrestling with God, and more, what I want to share is actually this… Psalm 105:19 in the Amplified says, ‘Until the time that His word [of prophecy regarding his brothers] came true, The word of the Lord tested and refined him.’ This passage of scripture is in reference to Joseph in the Old Testament. Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back after holding my beautiful son, whose name is Nathan, I realised that His prophetic word regarding my son tested and refined me. 

It was in my season of waiting that my faith was tested. It was in the wrestling that I developed my faith muscle and my character was refined further. Though you may not resonate with my journey with infertility, I know you can relate to having a prophetic promise over your life. There is something you may find yourself ‘waiting’ for. Something you’ve been trusting the Lord to fulfil, but the time has been long and at times you’ve grown weary. Perhaps you’ve questioned whether you heard correctly or wondered if they got it wrong. Maybe you’ve wrestled with God, you’ve gotten raw and real. Your heart has been sick and you don’t know if you’ll ever see the day of your desire and His promise fulfilled.

Friend, if you find yourself in despair. If you find yourself struggling to stay strong and muster up the faith to keep standing. If you’ve been consumed with grief over the season you’re not yet in, I want to encourage you with this… Stop grieving the season you’re not yet in, and treasure the season you are in. Don’t let fixation with what you don’t yet have rob you of the joy of what you do have. Don’t allow the grief, comparison or hope deferred keep you from seeing the blessings all around you. Sometimes we spend so much time focused on the thing we long for, on the promise we are waiting for, that a) we miss what He is doing in us right now, and b) the promise becomes an idol and we lose sight of the Promise Giver and Promise Keeper. I implore you to keep your eyes on Jesus. Trust Him and lean not on your own understanding. Embrace the season of ‘waiting’ and allow Him to shape and mould you. After all, it’s in the waiting that you grow in ways you never knew possible. It’s when perseverance and character are built. 

Lastly, I want to remind you that God is faithful and His timing truly is perfect. He is not a man that He should lie. When He speaks, His word goes forth and accomplishes what He sent it forth to accomplish — though rarely in our timing. What He has spoken over you, over your spouse, over your family, it will be accomplished! ‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earn, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ And here’s the part I want you to grab a hold of and treasure in your heart, ‘For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it will accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.’ (Isaiah 55:8-11 NKJV) 

Though we experienced seven plus years of infertility and disappointing losses along the way, He did so much in us during that season that I am grateful for today. To bring the story full circle, on the seventh year we conceived. Seven is the number for fulfilment and completion. On the eighth year, Nathan was born. Eight is the number for new beginnings. We walked out of our season of waiting and hope deferred into a season of a promise fulfilled! And when I think of all of the women in the Bible who struggled with barrenness, their promised child had to be born at a very specific moment in history; not a day sooner. 

God’s timing for the birthing of your promise is perfect. So my friend, embrace the waiting! It is worth it!