Maybe you thought your belly was starting to curve. Maybe you let out your gut in front of the mirror after your shower, and could swear it was protruding.

Maybe you felt a wave of nausea on the drive to work.

Maybe your bra felt tighter than usual.

Maybe you felt extra tired this month.

Maybe you had some major mood swings and your husband quipped, under his breath, “She must be pregnant.” And you pretended to roll your eyes, but inwardly you were rejoicing.

Hoping.

Dreaming.

And then you woke from that dream, two minutes after the pregnancy test. And you woke again, several days later when your period began without fail.

And maybe you scolded yourself for letting yourself believe, hope, wish that this month was different.

Maybe you vowed that you would never let yourself “expect”that you were expecting again.

Maybe your heart grew a little harder, and your dreams shrunk a little smaller. But I want to tell you something, and it might sound cliché, but it’s true:Don’t stop hoping. Don’t stop dreaming. Don’t stop praying for a miracle.

Because when you stop, something dies in you. Something that very much needs to be alive if you are going to be a mom one day.

When we were trying to conceive, I wanted to give up. There were months I charted my cycles like a statistician, and other ones I picked up all those stupid charts and threw them into the garbage, along with my dreams.

And it happened on a Sunday, that a seed was planted in me. Not by my husband, not by IVF, but by a dear friend, named Stephanie. It was just a seed of hope. She knew we had been trying, and failing. And longing, and despairing.

It was such a simple thing. I was just standing alone in the church ladies’ bathroom, drying my hands on a paper towel, and she walked in and said, quite out of the blue, “Can I pray for your womb?” I kind of laughed, and then said, “Sure.” Even though, my first thought was, “What good would that do?” Even though, I had stopped praying for a baby months ago.  Even though, I already accepted this wasn’t God’s path for us. And I was trying to be okay with it. But I said, “Yes,” anyway. I told her she could pray for me.  And so, she laid her hands on my flat belly, and prayed that God would bring life there, to my womb.

That was it.

But it started something in me, like a smoldering wick that suddenly burst into flame. Like the reawakening of a dream. It was hope. And it fluttered awake in me.

And I know, it can hurt to hope. It can be dangerous to hope. But without hope, everything dies.

I knew I had already tried everything in my power to become pregnant. But the great thing about hope is that, it has nothing to do with the person who is hoping, and it has everything to do with the One who is being hoped in.

And so I felt free, because I wasn’t hoping me. I was hoping in God. The One in whom all things are possible.  

To the woman who thought she was pregnant and found out she wasn’t. To the woman who feels worn out with asking. To the woman who has stopped believing God hears,

He does hear you.

And to the woman who feels “past-due” for a miracle, I want to remind you of a woman who has felt this same way. Her name was Sarah, Abraham’s wife. And she could not have children. And she stopped hoping she ever could.

But when God has ordains something, it happens. And God had chosen Sarah to bear a son, even she was almost ninety years old.

“Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; Sarah was past childbearing.” But God told Abraham that his wife will bear a child, and when she heard it, “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” And the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old?’…” Genesis 18:11-13

Maybe you feel like Sarah. Maybe you feel too old, or too jaded to believe God could do this.

But be encouraged. He can. He still can.

And you are never beyond hope.

God still brings children into the arms of a mom who will love them, at all costs. And I don’t know how it will happen. But God still does miracles in orphanages across the ocean. And God still does miracles in the foster system and the court rooms of America. And God still does miracles in the wombs of barren women.

I see one every day. She’s blonde, and her eyes are blue like the ocean, and when she smiles, it’s like Heaven breaks through.

So don’t lose hope. You need it. And let this hope reawaken your dreams. And reawaken your prayers. Because God hears you.

Don’t stop praying for a baby.

Don’t stop praying for a miracle.

Because God still hears the cries of the barren.

And He answers them.

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21