Ask Me Every Day

Several people have told me how much they like the stories in my recent “Lessons from a Baby” series.  There is some background to this continuing saga that I want to share because I think it will be an encouragement to someone.

My son and his wife (Josh and Brittney) have been married for six years.  Both of them have always wanted to be parents and the desire to have a family was in each of their hearts years before they met and married.  Unfortunately, there is a fertility issue and doctors have told them that their only hope of conceiving a child is through in-vitro fertilization (IVF). While they considered this, they also were trained and licensed as foster parents, hoping someday to adopt a child through the foster system because private adoption is far too expensive.

In April of 2015, a sweet baby girl was placed in their home.  Though social workers knew that Josh and Brittney only wanted to foster a child that could be adopted, they persuaded them to take her.  I watched them become parents as they cared for that child. Through all the typical first-year stages, they loved her and helped her grow and develop, all along taking her for visitations to her birth father, knowing that she would probably leave them one day.  That sad day for all of us came in February of 2016 when she went to her father permanently. 

Later in 2016, they were able to attempt IVF with the help of a sweet friend of Brittney’s who was willing to go through the grueling process of being an egg donor for them.  Sadly, that one expensive attempt was not successful.

On one of the early days of January 2017, Brittney wrote something on her Facebook page about the heartbreaking year of 2016 with the loss of the foster baby and the failed IVF attempt.  Her faith amazes me sometimes.  In the middle of all that sadness and disappointment, she was still trusting God to build their family and she shared that hope in the same Facebook post.

The evening that I read her post, I was sitting in my recliner, just thinking about their situation.  I was thinking that I really wished that God would bless them with a child.  I wasn’t even really praying – just mentally wishing.  Now I don’t know how you hear God because I believe He communicates with all of us uniquely, but I saw in my spirit – just like seeing giant capital letters in my mind, “ASK ME EVERY DAY”. 

I have prayed about this situation many times, but not necessarily every day and maybe not with as much dedication and earnestness as I could have.  So, when God tells you to pray about something every day – you pray about it every day! 

Four days later I was sitting at the desk in my home office, working on something or another, when Brittney sent me a Facebook message and asked me if I had time to talk.  They had been contacted by social services and had been asked to take a newborn baby girl.  They had to make a decision by the next day and she wanted to discuss all the issues surrounding this child with us and with Brittney’s parents before she and Josh decided what they wanted to do. Four days later!

Obviously, they decided that they wanted to pursue the adoption of this precious baby and as of just a few days ago, she is now and forever, officially an ELLIS!

I’m not telling you that if you pray for something every single day that your answer will come in four days or a week or a month or a year.  I am saying that we should not give up in prayer. Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”. (KJV) I’ve read some articles that look at the meaning of this verse in the original Greek and they suggest that a better translation of this would be, “Keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find.  Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.” (NLT) 

All I know is that the Holy Spirit prompted me to pray in this way and the result for us is a blessing in our lives every day.  Being a grandmother, watching a little one grow and learn and change again, is teaching me new lessons about God and our relationship with Him constantly.  That’s why so many of my recent blog posts have revolved around her.  I still have much to learn about faith and prayer, but I am so very thankful for the lesson I learned this last year. I think I’ll let Josh and Brittney get her through potty-training before I start praying in the next baby!

(By the way, I asked Brittney to read this and give her permission for me to publish it. She agreed to let me share it, but she told me that I didn’t have to wait to start praying in that next baby! Feel free to start praying in agreement with me. 😊 )