Around this time last year there were three big potentials on our horizon: a PhD program, an out-of-state move, and a pregnancy. As we headed into what we knew could be a very full year, I can remember praying for very specific things. However, despite my specificity, I was really quite casual about the details. It wasn’t that I didn’t want them—it was just that I would pray for these “smaller” things in more of an “Oh, I would really love this, but I doubt it will happen” kind of way. If I’m being brutally honest, these were the prayers I didn’t really believe God would answer. It was almost as though I felt guilty about getting into the nitty-gritty when the big picture was already so… BIG. There were way more important prayers that I was praying. I didn’t want to waste any of my “good fortune” on the small stuff.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on how much has happened since late summer and early fall of 2016—the time when a lot of the journey that we’re now on was just beginning. In August we made the decision to pursue a PhD program in Ohio, and in October we started trying to get pregnant. Both felt like giant leaps into the unknown, and both were blanketed with a lot of discussion and prayer.
If you know anything about our current situation, it is abundantly evident that the Lord answered our prayers in a huge way, and He has continued to heap His favor on us during this full, rich season of life. But lately He’s been bringing to mind all of the “small” answers to prayer He has provided along the way, as well.
When we first started trying to get pregnant, I can remember thinking about the timing of our pregnancy and when I would (ideally) want to have a baby. I feel the need to note that I try to be very careful about setting expectations, well aware that I am that it’s our preconceived ideas about how something “should” be that often lead us to great disappointment. Even still, I remember praying that we would have a fall baby—an October baby even. With a potential move during the summer, I wanted a few months to get settled in. And, a newborn in the fall, right before heading into the holidays? I was kind of in love with the idea.
As I sit here tonight writing this, the air is crisp outside and my 35-and-a-half week belly is moving with life underneath my hooded sweater. I’m due in less than five weeks—on October 5th to be exact. The fall baby I prayed for is wiggling inside of me right now, a testament to God’s faithfulness in both big ways and small.
I find it evidence of the kindness of God that He would not only answer our meta-prayer of conceiving a child, but that He would also meet me in the details, orchestrating the timing just so. He didn’t have to do that (and there have been many times when He hasn’t), but whatever the reason, He chose to answer my tiny whisper of a prayer—almost an afterthought—and bless us with a sweet baby boy who is due in October.
I could list three or four additional “detail” prayers the Lord has recently answered, but what I most want to communicate is that He cares. He certainly cares about the big stuff, but he also cares about the small stuff. He’s been teaching me that over the past 12 months, and I want you to know it too. It doesn’t mean that those prayers are always going to be answered (or even that the big ones will). But He does care. And He has chosen to reveal that to me in fresh ways during this particular season.
If you stop and think about it, all of life is small compared to God and His immeasurable greatness. And yet, He still loves us and pursues us and blesses us with dreams come true—whether those dreams are in the form of a PhD program, a baby boy, or some other desire of our heart.
If there is one verse of Scripture that most accurately represents this past year of life for Ty and I, it would be Ephesians 3:20:
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,”
FAR more abundantly. All the time. Oh, why do we ever doubt?
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