Wow. Where do I even begin? I haven’t posted since August 26th…there’s a new domain name for our site…so much has happened…

The Lord has been knocking on my heart to begin blogging about Him – to share His Holy Name with the world, and to be honest, I’ve been lazy. I’ve been intimidated by the responsibility. I’ve been hiding in my grief after losing my precious baby boy this summer. But God continues His knocking, His beautiful persistence. And this morning I literally had no choice. I was compelled to follow His nudging. So let me catch you up on our journey to now.

I’ll begin at the beguine. If you are new to The Not-So Newlywed Lefebvres, I would ask you to back up a few posts and get a little bit of back story…but for any of you who have followed us for awhile now, you might remember that all Craig and I have ever longed for is a child. God promised us our precious Jonah Elizabeth, and we have been waiting patiently for nearly five years now. We were called to serve God in Maine this past year, and at the end of June 2016, we packed up our home in Georgia to move to a tiny town in Maine, into a big farmhouse we fell in love with. Almost immediately upon our arrival, amidst all of the painting and decorating and revamping, we received a call from the adoption agency we had been courting (but had not yet committed to), with amazing news: they had a precious baby boy (to be born in a month) for us.

As you might imagine, we ran the gamut of emotion: overwhelming joy, utter fear, anxiety, love, and were especially filled with praise for the amazing Father God who had blessed us in such a MIGHTY and unexpected way. Adoption had always been on the table for us. We have always wanted a house-full of children, and the moment we were exactly where God called us to be, here was our baby boy. Overwhelming cannot begin to describe the fullness every emotion carried during that month.

The adoption agency demanded every cent of their funding at the drop of a hat, and while scrambling to prepare a nursery and a home for this precious child, the Lord, literally, blessed us with every cent and every single thing we needed for our miracle. I could not have been more in love with a child if he had been growing in my own womb. I  must have cried tears of joy 60% of every single day. Every. Need. Was. Met. In less than a month. How can that be attributed to anyone but God?

I spent afternoons with the birthmother. I heard our boy’s heartbeat, watched him wiggle on the ultrasounds, saw him kick her stomach. He was my miracle. And then, he was not.

On August 17th, the birthmother’s parents intervened and told the agency their daughter could not give her child up for adoption. This precious child who they had tried to abort in the first months; who was the victim of alcohol and heroin and methamphetamine and cocaine abuse… And there was nothing we could do, but pray.

And we did. A whole army of prayer warriors rose up and prayed for this situation. But alas, what I believe was God’s Will was not done. And we were left standing there, not knowing if we could move or breathe or smile ever again. I have never known that kind of pain – pain I still face whenever I allow myself to think about our would-have-been baby boy…So I try not to.

Our failed adoption led to persistent longing. In prayer, the Lord was urging us on as He had never done before in pursuit of parenthood. It was as if a lion had been awakened from slumber. Friends reached out of the woodwork and recommended specialists and volunteered themselves to help in anyway they could have. It was beautiful.

On one such recommendation, we made an appointment with a doctor of functional medicine in Minnesota, Dr. Paul Deglmann. And in the same breath, we also made an appointment with Boston IVF, to speak with them about our options – maybe after 4 years and all of this heartache, we felt it was time to see if an IUI was an option for our family.

‘Dr. Paul’ in Minnesota, proved to be excellent and bring-about some thought-provoking insights for us about our infertility. After numerous tests, we began to solve many issues that didn’t seem directly related to infertility, but were certainly underlying factors. Eight months later and my blood work is what doctors have been referring to as ‘fantastic’. I feel better than I have in years. I don’t even need coffee in the morning. It’s pretty amazing.

Meanwhile, in New England, we had been to see Dr. Lannon at Boston IVF for an IUI consultation. After looking at our medical charts, he told us an IUI may not work with our particular fertility issues, because I may still (even after my procedure to reopen my collapsed Fallopian tubes in which I woke up from anesthesia during said procedure) have tubal damage. However, he said that in looking at my charts, we were a very unique case because I had been ‘diagnosed’ with PCOS, but had almost none of the  symptoms. Dr. Lannon said he didn’t feel like I had been properly diagnosed (the same thing my endocrinologist and Dr. Paul thought), and that there was a clinical study that almost no one qualified for (but I did), in which we would undergo IVF for *only* $6,000 all-inclusive.

1. We were shocked. $6,000 is actually an unbelievable savings to undergo in-vitro fertilization.
2. IVF is something we had never considered for ourselves, and in fact, had always been opposed to doing.
3. Dr. Lannon felt that given our age, and our medical history, this could be our ‘only shot’ at having children biologically.

This was quite the amount of information to process…So we told him we would consider it, and get back to him…

Again, IVF is something that had been totally off the table. We both felt as if it would be unnecessary in our case, but after our summer of surprises, we decided we needed to seek the Lord about the options that lay in front of us.

Now, when Craig and I both ‘go off’ to seek God’s Will about something, we always acknowledge we will be praying, and don’t reconvene until the Lord has spoken. In this instance, God showed me some things, pretty emphatically, very quickly, but I knew Craig hadn’t received a Word yet – so I waited, as I have in the past, and lo’ and behold, several days later, he called from a trip to tell me what the Lord had revealed to him. Interestingly, God showed us the same things in different ways. Because God is AWESOME like that!

He showed me the book of Genesis, and pointed out that His first command to His creation was to “Be fruitful and multiply.”

“So God created human beings in his own image.

In the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.’ ” Genesis 1:27-28 NLT

To Craig, He revealed He is the author of life, and that this step would not be ‘taking matters into our own hands’ – that only God gives life, no matter science’s role in the ‘process’. We both felt, after years of feeling otherwise, compelled to take this step.

And so we did.

We began repeating every. single. fertility test known to man at the flagship Boston IVF clinic in Waltham, Massachusetts, driving there several times each week. Giving blood samples like candy to kids on Halloween and being poked and prodded and tested. Everything was set in motion. This was really happening.

And then it wasn’t.

We received a seemingly standard call from Boston IVF, and were told that the group heading the clinical study had decided against my participation due to the fact I take the prescription Metformin – a fact they had known all along.

And once again, it felt like the world was crashing down around us. But still we felt IVF was on our table. Still, we felt the Lord right there, next to us, in the midst of all this pain. After four years of being still and silent, all of a sudden, this summer had become tumultuous and sad.

Dr. Lannon called us and apologized that this had happened to us. He felt that everything was handled incorrectly, but told us he still wanted us as patients and that the clinic would take our particular case into consideration, and possibly be able to discount our own in vitro fertilization journey. Honestly, he was more considerate, kind and caring than any other physician we had seen – and we had only met with him in person once.

Fast forward to today. After much prayer, we are in the midst of an IVF cycle. I won’t say it has been a fun journey – because injecting yourself with three shots per night would only be fun if I were a masochist, but we are here. And we are at peace.

I’ve seen and felt the judgement when we have told others we decided to pursue IVF, and I want you all to know this isn’t a decision we came to lightly. This isn’t a ‘last-ditch effort’ to have children, and we didn’t decide to take this path because we feel God is any less powerful than we know He is.

I mentioned above that in our failed adoption, I don’t feel like God’s Will was done. And I don’t. I think many times something happens, or doesn’t, and people say, “Well, I guess that was God’s Will.”

I respond, emphatically, “No!”

We live in a fallen world. God’s plan is not always heeded. If it were, this would be Heaven. All of creation would be following the Will and the Word of the Father. And that is not the case.

In the case of the adoption, the ‘birth grandparents’ intervened, I feel, against the Will of God. In the case of the clinical study, the megaset medical study team went on their own protocol and procedure, without giving a thought to God’s plan for the study.

Could I be wrong? Sure.

But I don’t feel so in my heart. The Lord let Craig and I be ‘us’, and led us to the place He called us, and now He has called us to fill our Ark. In the midst of these appointments and injections and medicines and procedures, we feel peace. And it’s the same peace I have felt when I relented to God and gave Him His way.

Watching a Joyce Meyer broadcast last week, she said something that really resonated with my soul:

Sometimes a miracle involves medical science. It isn’t that God couldn’t do it Himself, but Who gave the doctors and scientists the ideas in the first place? Without God, human beings wouldn’t have the intelligence they do to perform the medical miracles that are being accomplished.

God can use anyone, anything and any situation to bring about His Will. All that is necessary are His willing followers. Can He heal people miraculously? Absolutely. Does He always? No. Sometimes He uses doctors to heal His children. Sometimes He doesn’t bring us healing on Earth at all.

And so, my friends, here we are. If you wish to follow our IVF journey up to this point, check out our YouTube channel. We began vlogging about our experience because it is such an invasive and intimidating process and in our research and anticipation, we learned so much about it from other Christian IVF vloggers that we wanted to share the wealth (of knowledge).

And one other thing – I will be blogging again, as well. That’s no empty promise. God has been on my heart to write again, to tell the world what He places on my soul, and I plan to do just that.

So pray for us. And share this page. Tell your friends. You never know who God places in your path that might need a certain Word. Really. You never know…

Ta-ta for now, folks.