"Whoa!"
I know what it looks like. I freak out a bit and go back to sleep.
I'm up the next morning and Holy Spirit says, "You're pregnant, you're pregnant, you're pregnant!" It is such a strong word of knowledge that I cannot possibly dispute it. It goes on for hours.
Over the next few days I have clear symptoms and I tell a few people I am pregnant again. I am only three weeks pregnant but I am swimming in pregnancy hormones.
This time it feels totally different to the other times. I have peace and joy and I believe this is my baby to keep. I think it is the baby whose name God gave me in March, eight months earlier. Micah. God shows me that the baby and I are in a protective bubble.
After the last miscarriage God said, "Next time you are pregnant you can be happy and peaceful." I truly am.
Then my best friend reminds me not to assume anything. I remember what God taught me the first time. I have to stand on who God is, not on what I think is going to happen. I realise I don't know what will happen. But I know that God is loving and faithful. I can stand on that.
When I ask God which baby this is he keeps telling me the song Oceans.
"You call me out upon the waters, the great unknown, where feet may fail. And there I'll find you in the mystery, in oceans deep, my faith will stand."
"I will call upon your name, keep my eyes above the waves, when oceans rise, my soul will rest in your embrace, for I am yours, and you are mine."
I do somehow know for sure that this baby is a boy.
Otherwise I feel strongly that God doesn't want me to know what is going to happen. He wants me to learn to trust without knowing. To walk blindly but calmly. Not trusting for a certain outcome, but trusting in who God is. This is a deeper level of faith for the girl who normally hears Holy Spirit's wisdom pretty clearly and tends to know what will happen. This is hard.
I feel a strong connection to this baby. I pray for him, I love him, I sense his presence. A week after I realised I was pregnant, something changes. The connection snaps. I see blood. I think it is over.
"Say goodbye baby," I tell my husband when he leaves for work the next day, as if the baby is still happily alive in my belly. I want to believe this baby is still okay.
"Bye baby," he says grinning. But it feels so wrong to me. Incredibly wrong. I don't think the baby is here anymore.
For the next week I don't feel anywhere near as pregnant. Physically. Sometimes I forget I am pregnant. I grieve and then I accept that this is another miscarriage. Pregnancy and miscarriage has become strangely normal. This is the third time in four months.
God gives me three names for this pregnancy. Joseph, Isaiah, Josiah. None of them stand out Any more than the others. I wonder which is the baby's name.
Joseph in the prison waiting for God to bring forth blessing. Isaiah for Isaiah 62 I had prophecied to me that week. Both Joseph and Isaiah mean "God will add/increase."
Josiah feels like a promise for the future. I look it up and it means, "God has healed." I love the name Josiah.
Later that day more names come: Matthew, Malachi, Luke. Gift from God, God's messenger, light. Why are there so many names? Why do none of them feel like they are the baby's actual name?
A couple of times I have a strong sense flash into me that 'Micah' is with me but I'm not sure whether it is true.
I don't talk about the pregnancy this week. I just stay quiet and I wait. I wait for the miscarriage to begin but 'four weeks pregnant' comes and goes. I am still pregnant.
A few days later I wake in the night and everything hits me. I don't feel okay emotionally anymore. All the thoughts come. I can't face another miscarriage. I can't face the physical side of it so soon. Three miscarriages means something must be wrong with my body doesn't it? For the first time ever I doubt God's promise for me to have a baby soon.
We visit a church. The sermon is about prayer. God says to me, "You are powerful."
I have been feeling a bit helpless and surrendered to whatever occurs. God says i am not powerless, I can pray. I can pray and claim the things of the kingdom - peace, healing, all the things of God.
A couple of women pray for me. They are speaking so much positivity and life. It feels good.
That night a friend calls me. God has given her a verse for me:
"Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine, flourishing within your home. Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table." (Psalms 128:3 NLT) My faith in God's promise for a baby in 2015 is restored.
God has also given her a picture of red, ripe coffee cherries. She feels strongly that God wants me to believe for this baby, to speak and act like the pregnancy is going to come to full term.
Really?
"I have a name..." she says. "It is Josiah."
That's the name God gave me! Josiah. Not Micah. Josiah.
I am still confused and I don't really know what is reality. Could I possibly have a life growing within me still? Is it possible there were two babies? Could Micah be here? It doesn't feel like he is.
I do realise I have been speaking death over my body and my womb. All week.
I see that God wants me to learn to speak life. Of course he wants me to speak life and hope. I imagine how healing it will be to learn to speak the things of God in faith, rather than speak according to what I see in the natural or what I know in my mind.
I could speak health and healing into my body. I could have more physical healing.
The next morning I ask God if the baby is inside my womb, or in heaven. God shows me a scene in my mind of a little boy running around in a field of grass. He is so happy. I really sense his Joy. I assume the grassy field is in heaven and that the boy is Josiah and he is not inside me anymore.
I realise perhaps God actually wants me to speak prophetically. I speak life and health into my womb. I speak prophetically into the baby I will carry to full term, whenever that occurs. God wants me to speak into the full ripeness of coffee cherries as a prophecy, as a promise, as the desire of God. He does not want me to speak death even if that is what I see.
Finally I take an actual pregnancy test. I want to have something to keep. It is positive. In that moment I have so much peace and joy even knowing I have another child in heaven. How can I feel sad seeing that Josiah is so incredibly happy?
I decide that Josiah's middle name will be Luke. Luke means light. I choose it from the six names God has given me. None of the names ever jumped out strongly as our baby's names but I chose them anyway.
The next morning I wake very early and start to feel afraid. I feel to pray and claim the things of God. I claim healing for my womb and for a smooth, easy miscarriage if that is what is to occur. Jesus has already paid for my healing. I can claim it, I can expect it.
Later that morning I think the miscarriage has begun. I am relieved. Then it stops.
Still waiting. Still trusting.
I reach five weeks pregnant. I have been feeling a little more pregnant the last few days, but not like I did the first week. I am so angry and overwhelmed with all the possible outcomes in my mind.
I finally stop trying to believe I could have a baby within me still. I decide to let myself believe this is a miscarriage. I have no doubt that Josiah is in heaven and I now have three children in heaven. I will allow myself to believe Micah is coming next year.
Now I feel much more peaceful. But now I have a strong feeling that I am pregnant with Micah. It is not a logical feeling, just a feeling in the spirit that comes with much peace. I wonder, is this prophetic? Perhaps there is so much spirit going into preparing for my child that I often get confused when I feel it and think it is already happening.
Or perhaps I have a baby inside me. God doesn't want me to know yet.
One day I do ask God what is going on in my belly and he says, "A battle."
During the seventh week I run all the things God has said around in my head and I decide that maybe there could be a baby. Nothing he has said would be wrong if there was. It could have been twins. Or more likely, the names he gave me were just spoken over the pregnancy, not the baby's actual name, and Micah really was here. Maybe the little boy running in the grass joyfully wasn't a picture of my baby in heaven? Maybe it was just a picture of joy?
A couple of days later I am struggling with something and my husband is praying for me. As He prays aloud and I lay there receiving I have an incredibly strong sense come to me suddenly. It says, "There is no baby." It is crushing. It brings despair. My heart wants to say, "No, please don't be true!" but I accept it. As I feared all along, there is no baby.
I figure God had to wait for me to think there might be a baby before he could speak the opposite and have me know it was him, not my own thoughts.
Eight weeks, nine weeks, ten weeks. No sign of miscarriage. I feel so pregnant. I am firmly holding onto that voice though. "God said there is no baby. He is teaching me to stand on what he says no matter what anyone else thinks or what circumstances say."
Sometimes I pray for a miscarriage to start. But it doesn't feel right in my spirit to ask for that. So I always add, "if that is your will God."
I am getting so stressed because I am going back to work in a few weeks and I thought the miscarriage would be over in the holidays!
I have a message prepared in my head that I will send to my friends and family to announce that we have had another baby join his sisters in heaven.
I decide I need to visit the doctor. It is getting too far into the pregnancy. I tell him I don't think there is a baby there. I haven't felt pregnant enough, I say. He sends me for a scan to see what is going on.
At eleven weeks and five days pregnant we head to the scan. "I don't think there is a baby," I tell the ultrasound technician. I am saving them the stress of having to think I am devastated by a picture of an empty uterus. I am okay with it, I grieved the baby many weeks ago. I will honestly be relieved to see the proof.
"There's the baby," says the technician.
There is a baby on the screen. He wiggles.
I am totally shocked. I am happy. I grin widely and mouth to my husband, "Battle!" He can't work out what I am saying but he is really happy too. Wow. A baby!
I was wrong. There is a baby. But God said there was no baby! I think about the morning I heard that strong impression. I realise it didn't actually sound like God. It didn't have hope. It wasn't a voice of encouragement or a voice of comfort. It didn't say "unfortunately this, but yay for this!" It was full of soul crushing despair that put a lid on possibility. It was a dead end scenario. "There is no baby." Final. The enemy lied to me.
I was tricked and believed it was God. I have never heard the enemy speak so clearly in my life as he did that day. He sounded like Holy Spirit. But if I had been more wary I would have realised the character was all wrong.
The pregnancy stays "Josiah" for over a month. The promise that God will heal me. I feel that God isn't ready to reveal the baby's name yet. It isn't time. The baby is in the secret place still. He will come forth in time.
We continue to wait...
