Getting ready for Claire...11 more weeks!

This week Claire's name and verse came in! I bought the frame for her picture last week and was so excited to get it all up last night! The verse we picked for her....we spent lots of time searching, praying and waiting on the Lord for Claire's life verse but finally when we found it we knew it was the perfect one for her. I found it and texted it to Dustin and he texted me back saying it was definitely her verse and as he read it he felt like crying, it touched him so. Her verse is Galations 4:28 "You are a child of promise." Her verse is two-fold. After Andrew was born the Lord convicted both Dustin and I about using a birth control pill. Dustin had come home from a lecture on side effects and details of the pill during a medical lecture and after understanding that they do not have medical findings with 100% certainty that by merely taking the pill you are not only preventing pregnancy but that at times it may be terminating pregnancy as well. This was very scary for me to think that I could be unknowingly allowing a birth control pill to terminate a life that God had created. We decided to pray for a period and seek what the Lord would want for our family. We decided with complete peace and confidence that we would just trust the Lord and His timing for our family. Scary...trusting the Lord sometimes, but what we have learned and God has allowed us to experience through this has been complete confidence in God's faithfulness. We have learned that by using natural family planning their will inevitably be more pregnancies and that may not mean that we will be able to hold that child this side of eternity. That has been very hard, losing two children in miscarriage however God has been so good to us. He has restored us time and time again. He has given us a greater sense of His love and faithfulness. He has given us a way to minister to those that are going through miscarriage. A burden to pray for them and encourage them during such a very difficult time. Promise. After our second miscarriage during the restoration process God gave us a wonderful peace and contentment. We were completely content with the blessings of three children that God had allowed us to raise here on this earth. Not long after that period the Lord began to give us visions and confirm to us that He would bless us with another little girl and that her name would be Claire. Dustin and I both had dreams. It seemed that everywhere I went the Lord would send me just a little reminder of His love and promise of Claire. I would go to the park with the kids, the library, chick-fil-a, the mall and time after time we would meet kids that came up to us and started talking to us and inevitably their would be a little girl in the midst of those visits with a sweet little smile that we would soon find out whose name was Claire. It was as if God was healing my heart time and time again and reminding me that when His time was perfect he would bless us with Claire. I doubted it. Yes, I know but after losing children it is hard sometimes to really wrap yourself into a new baby again and we were so content with what the Lord had already given us. In June we moved to Cushing, excited about what the Lord had in store, little did we know he had already fulfilled His promise and blessed us with Claire. Pregnancy after miscarriage is scary. I guess because you know what can go wrong and have experienced it time and time again it seems easier to worry that to simply trust God. God was so patient with me continuing to confirm to me that this baby girl named Claire that he had placed in my womb would be an addition to our family. That she would be okay. What I continue to remember even now as we are within 11 weeks of holding her is how worthy He is of our trust. He didn't have to love us and bless us with another baby. He didn't have to constantly confirm the fulfillment of His promise to us by easing my worries time and time again. But He did. He does. Because He loves us to very much and because He is faithful! He alone is worthy of our trust! The second part of her verse is God's promise to Claire. She is a child of promise. He has already prepared a way for her. The promise of salvation if she will only trust in Him. What a wonderful God we serve that He would love us so much to prepare a way for us to be with Him forever. What wonderful plans He has for her life! We pray that she would always remember that she is a child of promise!