My life is a combination of many different interruptions!
When I was 16, I knew EVERYTHING! I was grounded for something (and for the life of me, I cannot remember why…we won’t say it’s because I’ll be 37 next week), but I wanted to go out anyway. So I took off and went out with a friend of mine. It was a Sunday night, so my curfew was 9 pm on a school night. I knew that even though I was out and my parents knew where I was, they weren’t happy since I was grounded. I was on my way home from dropping off my friend (who, consequently is now my sister-in-law), I knew I would be home before my curfew, so my parents wouldn’t be any madder at me. As I approached our town limits (that sounds funny, but village limits sounds even funnier even if it is what I lived in), I saw a car heading out of town. But what was so significant about this car is that it was in my lane…I pulled over as far as I could without hitting the parked cars on the side of the road and BAM!! The car hit me…head on (more on the passenger side than the driver’s though). And at that moment my life would NEVER be the same.
I was 16 years old, in a hospital bed, with a broken femur, being told I was lucky to be alive since my bone was resting on the main artery in my leg while I was in the car…only to be told that I may never be able to have children because of my injuries! What a devastating blow that was! As a young girl, I had always dreamed of being a mommy…always had baby dolls and stuffed animals that I “mommied” growing up. My life in that moment was interrupted!!
When I met my husband a few years later, we had talked about how I may never have any children. Being the person I am, I kept telling myself it was fine, but deep down, it wasn’t. After being ministered to in our church by a minister who only spoke Spanish (I don’t know any Spanish…I can only speak English), he prayed for me and in that moment, I knew God had moved in my life. A few months after that, I became pregnant with my 1st son.
When my son was 1, my husband got a new job…it was a great opportunity, I would be able to be a stay at home mom. The problem…we had to move from Ohio to Colorado. I didn’t know anyone in Colorado (except for a cousin that was estranged from our family). I was a shy person by nature, so this sort of freaked me out…A LOT!!! We moved, things worked out just fine, I met friends, and the best thing about those 2 years in Colorado…my husband and I grew so much closer to the Lord. And we were pregnant with our 2nd child (another boy).
2 weeks after our 2nd child was born, we were moving again…from Colorado to Minnesota. Again, there wasn’t anyone in Minnesota that I knew, and I was 2 weeks postpartum! We enjoyed the 4 years we lived out in Colorado. God taught me how to open up more and not to be so shy. Again, our marriage grew stronger.
In 2004, we were so excited to find out that we would be moving back to Ohio…an hour from family, but what’s an hour when you lived 20 hours away? Our family was complete, 2 boys, back in Ohio, what more could we want? My oldest was in 2nd grade, my youngest was 4, he’d be in Kindergarten the next couple of years, and I was looking forward to the time that I would have while the boys were in school…all the scrapbooking I would get done, how I would be able to volunteer in the schools, etc. In a moment, that all changed…with a positive pregnancy test staring me in the face! How could this be? I was 30 years old, I was done having children, we just moved closer to family, we sold all our baby items before we moved to Ohio…it took a month or so for me to accept that I was actually pregnant. 18 weeks later, I had invited my mom to come to the ultrasound to see our baby (something she’s never seen before). I laid on the table, the ultrasound tech came in and turned on the machine, took 1 swipe across my stomach and said, “Yep, there are 2 in there”. As if just being pregnant wasn’t interruption enough, now I’m having twins!! Instead of having to buy 1 of everything, we would now need 2 of everything…and both were boys! How could that be? Well, I only had 13 weeks to process the idea of having twins before I was being told that my body wasn’t handling the pregnancy well and that I had what is called HELLP syndrome…my liver wasn’t working properly and if it stopped working, the rest of my organs would stop working. 2 days later, I was standing in the NICU staring at my 2 – 2pound babies in their beds! Processing the fact that I was now a mother of 4 boys, I had almost died having them was a lot to comprehend. I went through a lot of emotions. God was there, he brought us through their 4 weeks in the NICU and they just celebrated their 6th birthday yesterday…both are healthy boys!
As I said earlier, my life is one big interruption after another!! But with each interruption, I’ve grown closer to God and have seen the blessings multiply in each time. To go from not being able to have children, to having 4 boys…my life has been altered drastically and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world!
**Note: This is the comment I posted on http://www.goingbeyond.com/blog/altered-plans
the group video sessions of this in-depth women’s Bible study of Psalms 120-134. Traveling pilgrims sang these psalms both on the way to the great festivals of the LORD and as key elements of the worship at those festivals. Just as a song or poem can express feelings of fear, doubt, hope, and joy, these 15 psalms model how we can voice our own petitions and praises to our God, who is always available and ready to hear us.
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