God Is Faithful – April’s Story

April Starkey is the beautiful songbird that helps with praise and worship at Aaron and I’s church, Community Bible. In fact, one of the first things that I began to fall in love with was the actual praise and worship, and I will never forget the first Sunday we attended. With April singing, both Aaron and I’s eyes welling up with tears, and we just knew God had us where He wanted us. I have had the pleasure of getting to know April and her husband Jim and I am so thankful for her willingness to share her story of infertility, adoption, and the birth of a child. Our God is such a good God and He always has the best plan for us even when it may seem so out of reach.

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a mom. Jim and I started dating when we were just 15 and so by time we got married, we had already been together for so many years and we knew we wanted a family! We actually ended up getting pregnant with our first baby one month after our wedding. It was a surprise to us but a happy one! We were happy, the pregnancy was going great and we even got to see his beautiful little heart beat! Then when I was around three months along I started miscarrying and ended up having to be taken by ambulance to the ER and have an emergency D&C because I hemorrhaged. That was the beginning of our long, hard BUT very worth it journey to being parents.

Through those coming years after losing Jeremiah, our first baby, who would have turned 10 this month, we would come to realize that becoming parents was not so simple as we thought it would be. At various times throughout the next 7 years we would try, we would get pregnant another 4 times, only to lose them during the first trimester. I remember a specific day when I laid my face flat on the floor and cried out to God. I wanted to be a mother so bad and I poured my heart out to Him praying for that to happen.

Well, little did we know that He was working in us and doing things in us that at the time we didn’t realize but now we look back and realize we wouldn’t be the people we are today without going through what we went through all those years. In 2009, Jim and I started praying for God to replace our desires with His. I remember a distinct moment I had with God where I gave it all to Him, all my desires and I asked Him to put all of His desires for us in me, even if it meant for me to never be a mother. I just wanted what He wanted for our lives. That was when an amazing thing happened and He started putting adoption very strongly on our hearts.

We would go on to start our first adoption journey in January 2010 and go on to meet our firstborn son Isaac in June of that year! Little did we know until after he was born, all the ways God was working throughout those months on his birthmothers end and our end, to bring us together! One example is the very time that God was changing our directions from international to domestic adoption was the same exact time his birthmother decided to not abort him and instead give him up for adoption. It was a feeling I will never forget, a feeling I wish all could feel. It was instant love, an instant bond, a family brought together by God! Our amazing little guy is now about to turn 6 and his name fits him so well! Isaac means laughter and boy, is he ever our laughter, always bringing a smile to our faces and laughter to our hearts! God did immeasurably more than anything we could have ever imagined when He gave us Isaac.

When Isaac was just 6 months old, we had a huge surprise. We were PREGNANT! We figured we’d miscarry again early on as we had so many other times. To our surprise, we made it past the first trimester and I was oh so sick, but so happy to be sick. We got to see her on ultrasounds and fall in love with her. Since we made it past the first trimester we figured we were out of the danger zone and so we were completely naïve still at that point of what all could still go wrong in a pregnancy. Two weeks before Isaac turned one, when I was around 21 weeks along with Annabelle our daughter, my body went into labor. I had what they call cervical incompetence. She was perfect, fully formed, just a few weeks from viability where the doctors would work on her. We even got to see her one last time on ultrasound happy and alive inside of me. However, my body would not let her stay in and I delivered her on June 6^th, 2011 and we buried her on June 10th. This was the moment that tested all I ever knew. I grew up as a pastor’s kid and was in church my whole life, so I knew all the verses, all the clichés that I knew I could say to myself or that people would be saying to me and yet at that point I didn’t want to hear any of it. It felt like time had froze and I was only breathing because my body naturally made me. It was the deepest, darkest time of my life. At one point, I wondered if I could truly make it out of it. Day by day, God helped me, reminded me of His love for me and through those times after her death was when I had the most beautiful, raw, & deep times of personal worship and growth with God. It’s so true when the bible says God is near to the broken hearted.

Fast forward another year to 2012, much healing had happened. I missed her oh so much still, I still do. However, we felt we ready to try to have another little one. We got pregnant with our rainbow baby, Micaiah, and at 10 weeks along in the pregnancy we had to have a special surgery in Chicago to save his life. There was a risk that he would die during surgery but it was almost a 100% chance he would die without the surgery so we took the risk and it paid off. On March 11^th 2013, a month early, Micaiah was born into this world. I never thought I’d get the chance to hear one of our babies actually cry at birth since all our others were either stillborn, lost in first trimester or in Isaac’s case, we didn’t get to see him until 2 days after his birth. To hear Micaiah’s cry as he came out was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.

Now as Jim and I look back on the 11 years of marriage we have so far, we see nothing but God’s faithfulness. We both have talked about how we know for a fact we would not be where we are at in our relationship with God, with each other and just who we are now as people and parents without those years of having to lean on Him & trust Him even when we didn’t understand. Those were the years He was molding us and drawing us to Himself in ways I don’t think we could have ever seen or known without going through what we did. Those intimate times of worship I had with Him during the darkest times of life were also some of the sweetest times. Never once did we ever walk alone, never once did He leave us on our own! Now we have 6 precious ones in heaven that we have the hope because of Jesus, knowing we will see them again one day and it makes us long and get more excited to be there, knowing that they are there already!

So if you are reading this and you are or have walked the infertility road or miscarriage/baby loss road and you feel hopeless, I pray & hope you can read our story and see how we were one of the most hopeless couples by the worlds standards. With 6 losses and years of infertility, I’m sure many people and doctors just wanted to tell us that we were just destined to not be parents.

However, you have to remember the same power that created Light, that rose Jesus from the dead LIVES in us who trust & know Him and He can make ANYTHING that seems impossible, become possible. We are a living case of God’s power of making something impossible, POSSIBLE! So cling to Him, rest in Him, as you wait for whatever He has planned for you, don’t miss out on those times of waiting in Him. He is Sovereign, faithful and His love is so huge for you that you will never be able to fully comprehend it!

By the way, our family is growing again! We started our second adoption journey a few months ago and we are so excited to bring home our next baby and see who God has planned for our family. I hadn’t blogged in 2 ½ years but I’m starting it back up to document our adoption journey so feel free to head over anytime to see updates on our journey to bringing home baby #3! Thanks so much! www.OurImmeasurablyMoreJourney.blogspot.com