This post was written by Mark and Kendra Rohl. Mark is an elder and worship leader at Life Connection Church in Phoenix AZ and Kendra sings on the Our Rising Sound band. They tell the story below of their struggles to start their own family by having children of their own.

Beginning a family

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.  Those words ring true for us as we have headed down the path towards parenthood.  The last three and a half years have been filled with anticipation, hope, heartbreak, loss, joy and redemption and the story is still being written. The decision to start a family is a scary and exciting decision for any young couple and we were no exception. After 4 years of marriage we felt God was leading us to be fruitful and multiply and we wanted to be obedient to the Lord of course so try we did! The first few months were exciting and with every twinge of nausea we thought we were pregnant. Then a few more months went by but without much concern, everyone told us to just be patient, try eating peanut butter or oysters or any number of strange magic fertility enhancing foods (it’s really quite fascinating how all of a sudden everyone becomes an expert on the subject and has lots of advice to give on how to make a baby).  But we were not worried and continued the old fashioned way with full confidence that at any moment we would be peeing on sticks and seeing pink plus signs.

Approaching the 1 yr mark our hope was turning into frustration so we thought maybe we just weren’t timing things right or taking the right vitamins so we got the gadgets and gizmos that help you to know your cycles and so forth. I won’t go into all the gory details but for anyone who has tried to make a baby you know the crazy lengths you will go to and try every bizarre thing anyone recommends when you get to the point of desperation. After a few more months of that we decided it was time to head to the docs for a check up and see if anything was causing this seemingly epic delay in procreation.

Doctors start testing

Mark was the first to get tested (wow, the process of that was another interesting moment in our marriage we never thought we would experience) and much to our surprise his tests came back as infertile, what, infertile? How can that be we thought. The doctors said there was no explanation for how this could have happened, no hope for any sort of cure and we spent a while reeling from that blow. We went through the cycle of sadness, then anger, then bitterness and finally landed in fight mode. We weren’t going to give up this easy and we knew God could do a miracle so that is what we prayed for. We had prophetic words about God restoring the seed of life in Mark and we clung to that and had our amazing friends and family praying and interceding for that to take place.

In the meantime, the doctors wanted to test me just to make sure we didn’t have the double whammy of infertility happening, and low and behold we did. After a painful procedure and testing that was more like torture than anything else we discovered that a ruptured appendix when I was in high school caused massive scar tissue to form around my fallopian tubes causing them to be completely blocked. Awesome, we now were faced with both of us being diagnosed as infertile in our 20′s with no hope (according to the docs) of ever conceiving naturally. It’s a strange feeling to have someone tell you that you can’t have children, it feels like some right has been taken from you and it all seems so unjust. There was a period of time when we could barely go out in public because of the seemingly innumerable amounts of pregnant teens walking around looking pissed and disgusted at the gift of life inside of them.

God’s response is Faith

Questions flooded our heads and God was there with the answers, pain flooded our hearts and God was there to comfort us and when we were finally ready to take the next step God was there to guide us and put Spirit filled people in our lives to fight for us and with us. One such couple was Bob & Michelle Ryan, an amazing Godly family who had been a part of our lives for many years. We had asked people to be praying for whether we were supposed to contend and pray for healing or if this was God’s way of saying that having our own children was not part of His plan for us. After praying for us they felt like God was saying to fight for a miracle and He lead them to play a song for us. They were hoping the song would confirm something for us but didn’t quite know what. As we listened to the lyrics of this song our whole world seemed to stand still as the first lines hit us like a wave.

“Faith, the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.  Little Faith, little baby come forth, you will live and not die, thus says the Lord.”

The reason this spoke to us so deeply was because the name we had for our first daughter since we were first married was Faith. God used this song to show us that He was going to give us the daughter that He had placed a desire in our hearts for years before and that it was going to be a miracle! One of the lines is,

“Your life will be a sign and a wonder, a testimony of the faithfulness of God.  Let Faith be born into a world of disbelief, let Faith be born into a world of faithlessness”.

That is our prayer to this day, that our child’s life would point to God’s goodness and that people who were in disbelief of God would find themselves on their knees giving Him glory because of His power and love.  We are still waiting and praying for the arrival of Faith and we trust that God’s timing is perfect.

Healing and Hope

The doctor recommended Mark get tested again to see if maybe they could use any of his sperm with some extracted eggs of mine for in-vitro fertilization so the testing began again, this time with much different results. The tests came back 100% normal and God had done as He had promised! The doctors were dumbfounded and had no explanation as to how this happened but we told him exactly Who was responsible for these amazing results. With renewed hope we felt God confirming to continue to pray for a miracle for me and that we would get pregnant naturally. So that is what we have been doing the last 2+ years; praying, fighting, crying, and seeking God for our baby. We don’t know when this miracle is going to happen or how it’s going to happen but God is good and He is faithful and we have learned so much about His heart through this process.

When all our plans and dreams get stripped away we are left to rely totally on Him and His plans for us and there is no where we would rather be than in complete reliance on His grace. We can’t force this baby to come, all we can do is trust that God has a plan and that as we walk in faith we will see His hand through all of this. God has already used this journey to touch the people around us and as we were in the thick of things and having some really rough days, I had friends come around me who had never prayed, never sought God for anything or at least not for a long time, but now they were praying. They were moved to come to their Creator in a desperate plea for my husband and I because that was all they could do. It forced some intense conversations with people about the character of God and His ultimate goodness, the saving power of Christ and the peace that passes all understanding through the Holy Spirit; which sparked revelation and a renewed desire in them to seek God, and what more could we have asked for out of our story than for people to see and find God in all of it.

God births a spirit of adoption

A couple months ago God spoke very clearly to me about something, adoption. This came out of a conversation I was having with someone about abortion and how disgusting and wrong it was. We were going on about how we need to pray for laws to be changed and that God is so angered by it etc…, when God spoke to me. He said, “Kendra what are you doing about it?” Uh, about abortion I thought, not much I suppose, praying I guess? He continued,

“No what are you really doing about it? You say you are passionately pro life so why aren’t you pro adoption? You can look at a pregnant teen who wants to get an abortion and tell her all the reasons why she needs to carry this baby to term but have nothing to back it up. You are telling her, it’s her duty to have this child but I’m not interested in actually helping you and more importantly, the Christian community isn’t really that interested in adopting any of these baby’s that we want you to have, it’s just important to us that you have them.”

Wow, what a wake up call. All this time we have been asking God for a child and praying for one to come from my womb but there are thousands of kids out there praying for parents so why not bring those two needs together? Now, let me just say that we totally 100% believe that God has shown us that we will have our own natural born children but, He has also placed a desire in us to adopt and we are in the process! The prophetic song we were given lays out our journey in a beautiful way in 2 parts.

The first part about Faith being born, the second part about the Father’s heart for adoption, just like our story that is in the process of being written. It’s such a beautiful and interesting path we are on now and we can’t wait to see what God is going to do in all of this. We have come to realize more than ever that God is faithful, true to His word and that His timing is perfect and we are trusting in Him to build our family through both adoption and conception. And more importantly, we know that He will get all the glory through this because He is the only one worthy of it! Without Christ and His love this story would be one of pain, anguish and fruitless searching but because of His grace it’s one of redemption, healing and life.

Related posts

• God In Our Worst Times: “Our baby is Faith” … the conclusion (5)
• God in Our Worst Times: “I commited adultery” (1)
• Pray for Steven Curtis Chapman and his family (1)