 Radiant Church presents Radiant Stories, a collection of stories that showcase God's faithfulness to take our hopeless situations and craft them into beautiful testimonies of His power, provision, and love. What are we talking about today? I should have asked you that. Great question. I mean, I would love to talk about the... We kind of spoke about it when we were at your house. I'd love to talk about the process that you guys are in right now because I think you have a unique view because you obviously are not at the finish line yet. I said we start at the very beginning, like before it happened. Do you remember where we were driving when we started listening to the podcast? Yeah, you can share about that. So it was this summer, three summers ago, we started listening to a series by Ray Van Der Laan and it was all about... One of the main themes was about the desert and just the metaphor that is used frequently in the Bible about just the hard times we go through. One of the things he said was everyone goes through just an intense desert at some point in your life and if you're not going through it now, you will go through it. That's a guarantee. We both kind of looked at each other and were like, I don't think we've ever gone through a desert. Both of us had pretty easy upbrings. I mean, families that loved us and got into colleges and we both had jobs or kid was in grad school. So neither of us had really experienced anything traumatic or sorrowful and so we kind of not blew it off but just knew it was going to come. But we also kind of at that point, I feel like I had a sense that he had been preparing me or us for something deep. And four months later, something like that, we started down the path of trying to have children of our own and that's, I guess, where our story begins. Yeah, we started in November of 2016. I'll say this too in January or February, whenever have you heard of If Gathering with Jenny Allen? It's a women's conference and I attended it in Grand Rapids with some friends and at the end of the conference, she handed out stones to everyone who was significant to what the conference was about and she asked you to write down what the Holy Spirit was speaking to your heart and my word was adoption that I wrote on the rock. After that, we were still on the road to trying for a baby of our own. The first year was really hard. We heard a lot of different things, like, oh, you know, you're just stressed or you work out too much or whatever. I heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people. Everyone has their own opinion on why you're not getting pregnant or what is wrong with you. But those things are not that useful or helpful. Yeah, so then I went to my doctor and it's suggested that you go to a doctor after a year of trying if you still haven't conceived. So we went and then from there, we started our year of basically medications and procedures, fertility treatments, basically. Right. And so it was a long road. I feel like every month kind of feels like a loss because you're like hoping for something and then it doesn't happen and then you try again and you're hopeful again and then it doesn't happen. And I think the hardest part too Christmas or Mother's Day or holidays were really hard too, especially a couple of times we found out we weren't pregnant on Mother's Day or on significant holidays. Our first treatment that we'd went through was an IUI and it just seemed like it was so fitting that it was gonna work because the day that we were gonna find out if she was pregnant or not was on Mother's Day and it was a Sunday and so we were very excited to check before we went to church and it was just one of the most cruel, crushing feelings that you look at the test and it's almost like it's unbelievable that that would happen. And at that point too it's like, is God punishing us for something? Are we doing something wrong? Have we done something wrong? But it just kept going. That was the first treatment we had done and each month like Kate said was like we had lost something. But that's how it felt to me at least when we were just trying without treatments. And with treatments there's kind of this promised expectation of something greater or like it's gonna work or this is gonna give you this much better of a chance and then for each one of those to not work, that for me was just that much more difficult to make through. Especially because we don't have a diagnosis still we're told we're healthy, we're all our numbers and everything that they've checked our spot on like healthy individuals to be able to conceive. And I was really hurtful too and I remember like being at church that day and I had to like force myself to sing and force myself to even just like raise my hands a little bit just because I just remember being so upset and like you feel so forgotten in those moments too of just and then it makes you like want to forget God too as well. So we went through three rounds of IUI which are fertility treatments and those were all unsuccessful and that was really really difficult because after that they suggest if those don't work then you move on to IVF which is more invasive and that's kind of like your best option ever in the fertility world. We were really hopeful for that everything went well prepping for that so it's this past year so in September we were scheduled to have our IVF in October and in September I went to a training it was a really awesome training in the foster care system for adopted families because I was working as an occupational therapist and a lot of my kids were adopted or in foster care. I remember being at the conference and just feeling like the Lord saying like this is like what I have for you and in my mind I was like I don't want this like I have it in my job I don't want this for myself but feeling like he's giving me gifts and even in my own personality and in my own heart to be able to be a mom to kids in the foster care system Even from an early time when we started dating we wanted to adopt that was something we always expected to do but we always kind of had our own timing like yeah we'll have one or two of our own and we'll kind of evaluate and see do we want another boy or another girl we just had this expectation that things were just going to go however we planned it and obviously they haven't but that kind of played into that same thing where even with the treatments we expected like that was going to be the thing that got us over the hump and then down the road we'll consider adoption because we still wanted to but we had our own timing about it So then we were super excited we went to our first IVF procedure everything went beautifully so many people were praying for us we prayed for a church this was like the first time too that we had really shared with a lot of people openly that this is something we've been praying for two for years at that point or almost two years so it was something that we decided kind of add that moment like we need to be more vulnerable with this and just open because all of the keeping it closed and just to ourselves just made it that much more difficult to get through because people weren't praying for us we weren't in community about it and it just made it feel that much more isolating because we didn't have other people who either had been through the process or people who could encourage us about it because nobody knew about it so going into that first round we kind of pretty widespread told anybody that would pray for us that this is what we were doing and we were just 100% going into it believing God was going to do this miracle and at that point we had words spoken over us and things had happened in our own personal life of like promises God's given us about us being parents so it just like seemed like it was bound to happen and then it didn't and it was the most devastating moment I think I've ever experienced after we had you know given it some time we tried to see if we could do it again before the year ended because insurance changes for the new year and whatever thankfully we did we had enough embryos and so we're like okay they scheduled it they're like we don't normally do this but for you guys like we're gonna make it work that was like okay like we're here we go another like time to be hopeful and the stars just kind of aligned everything was just like God was definitely orchestrating this because without him setting up the timing of everything it shouldn't have actually been time-wise feasible to make this happen so it just worked out just right so that it could happen before the end of the year and so despite the fact that we were still kind of in probably the lowest low of realizing that the first round didn't work but having to go right into that second round so it was kind of a blur for me I don't really remember a ton of the specific details or even the emotions because it was still kind of numbing that pretty fast it didn't work all of this not just what we had been praying for but with so many people had been praying for and because it was so much more public that second time sorry that first time it just made it that much more difficult to now have to tell everybody it didn't work everything that you were praying for everything that we were believing for just failed and man that was that was rough were you guys pretty open about that part of it coming back to the people that you really trusted and spoken to and the people that had spoken over you were you pretty open about that part of it too or was I mean Ross you said one of the hardest things for sure it was definitely the hardest thing and yes because everyone knew when we were going to find out so even if they didn't ask you knew that that's what they were wanting to know and even if we didn't tell them they knew based on just our demeanor we didn't have a joyous spirit about us that day when they knew that that was the day we were going to find out so because everything is very planned it's not like it might be this day or that day like you go in for blood test and that determines explicitly yes or no there's no maybe let's try tomorrow so because everything was planned a lot of people knew the day that we were going to go in for the test so you did tell a lot of people some people kind of found out because we didn't say anything so they just knew it was not positive at that point too I felt like such a burden like here's another prayer request it's the same thing like I've been going up to get prayer for so long for the same thing and so that was hard for me too of just being like no it didn't work can you pray again? at some point it's just like I just don't want to ask people because it just seems like it's not working even though I know people care in your mind it's just like I don't want to be a burden the devil is deceiving during these times get in in very clever ways to make you feel like you shouldn't ask for prayer totally we've seen just isolate you more and more and realizing that too gave us more confidence to be more public that first time because all of those moments of isolation we realized that that was why we felt so depressed like the state that we were in why we were in that state so then feeling like we can combat that but then for it also not to work and not only for it to not work but we had basically like our number was basically zero which is very definitive but it was almost like there was absolutely no chance that that was going to work which was to me because I'm an engineer I'm analytical like the numbers mean something like that was devastating for me alone just because it felt like that was it's not going to work period so then we did our second round of IVF right before Christmas and it was successful we found out we were pregnant so you do a blood test and then two days later you do another one to make sure that your numbers are increasing for pregnancy and so that was like I'll never forget that day I like went and surprised Ross at his work to tell him and he was gone so that was awesome I remember our celebrations and I remember my cry was different this deep emotion of longing I was like thank you Jesus we're finally worked and then asked for prayer again from friends and I should mention that the nurse was like your your number is low she wanted me to be aware of that it wasn't like super high but it was in the range of pregnancy it was well over the mark for clinical pregnancy so it wasn't on the border where they're like yeah probably isn't going to work but it was still below the number that they like to see it but still for us this was the first time we had any inkling of hope that our bodies work physiologically this could happen so we kind of took it as like it worked so then I went two days later to do the blood test and found out that it didn't work and the numbers didn't increase it was just like another like oh my gosh like here we are yet again and this is I'm just having that that I think felt the most cruel to me of just like God like why would you allow that like why didn't you just do the zero number again like why would you even give me a glimpse of of that hope and I think anybody who experiences miscarriage or loss can relate to that feeling of just like why like and the answers I'm never going to know why like that's it's just something painful and it happens in our broken world and that at that point I was like I'm done like this I'm so over this already feel like a failure my body can't work I felt like a failure for Ross and our marriage a lot of feelings of disappointment and those can turn into you know bitterness and just felt very very forgotten for sure I remember like just praying like why did you give me these desires in my heart like this whole my whole life like I've been a nanny I've been around children I work in pediatrics I love child development I feel like God created me to be a mom and and so I remember praying like God just make me more of like a businesswoman like make me more of like something I'm not because this is really hurtful that you would like create me like this and I can't like inward and you're not letting it happen like you know just change change it up like I'm willing to give it up and do something else if that's what you want me to do I think part of the hardness to is clinically it's considered a miscarriage and despite the chemical pregnancy at that point yeah but just the the poignancy of the words that are used when you are pregnant and then it doesn't work like that seemed like it was just another one of the times that it didn't work but for it to have technically happened we had a child and then it didn't survive that was another moment where it just kind of had a heightened sense of emotion to it that we just had a miscarriage and I think the time we went to do our post-op with the specialist and that was what he reiterated many times and I think the point for him doing that was to encourage us that it did work like it your body did work but the more he said like you had a miscarriage just made it that much more difficult to realize what had just happened and I don't think either of us had really processed that occurrence until that appointment where we realized truly what had happened and so that just made going into Christmas again another one of those times where it's supposed to be joyful that much more difficult so now the story gets really good I promise this has been part one of Kate and Ross's story we'll be back next Monday with more of their testimony