Category Archives: God

>Not If…only WHEN

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>I got an e-mail from an old SIFAT friend of mine this morning. We had lost touch for a couple years, but we’ve recently reconnected. Here is his e-mail:

“Not if, only WHEN.”

The exact words the Lord laid on my heart today when I was praying, words He told me to share with the ones I prayed for.

I know we haven’t had much chance to talk yet about a lot of things since we’ve reconnected, but you should know Karen and I have been praying diligently for you both in the matter of having a child, and today was one of those blessed Holy Spirit moments when God’s voice rings crystal clear. Just thought you might want to know. 🙂 Hang in there, both of you…the plan is always His.

Seth

Once again, God has my attention!

We didn’t really talk with Seth about our baby situation. He knows what you all know from reading this blog. He doesn’t know that over the past year, I had changed my language from “When we have kids…” to “If we have kids…” because of the hopelessness and doubt I have felt. I have been trying to be intentional about saying “When” lately, because we have received a lot of neat encouragement from God through other people. Dreams are being had, prayers are being said, and hopes are being realized again. I am so blown away that people would even pray for us, but even more so that God would speak to us through these friends of ours.

God’s words for us today are an encouraging command to TRUST that He has our family in His hands. It’s not up to us to know when this promise will come to fruition. It’s only up to us to trust God, place hope and faith in Him, and live in Him as we continue to dream. Our hope is being restored…

Thank you Lord for this awesome word today! It’s starting to sink in that we WILL have a family. We WILL be given the opportunity to raise up children in your name. Awesome!

>Facing the Giants

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>Matt and I watched Facing the Giants yesterday. We’ve been meaning to watch it for months now, and finally got around to it. I was touched by the movie, and here is where I begin to tell you why…

Let me start by saying that Facing the Giants is NOT my favorite movie…nowhere near it. It is your typical Our-team-sucks-but-watch-us-beat-the-odds kinds of movie that is intended to make you feel good and want to try harder in all you do. It’s a Christian movie as well, and in normal Christian movie fashion, the acting stinks. (Why, oh why can’t we have Christian movies with decent dialogue?) We found ourselves successfully predicting plot points, and laughing at the cheesiness of a lot of the scenes.

So why was I in tears at the end of the movie? Why would I take so much time out of my busy schedule to blog about a movie that isn’t really that good? Because Matt and I have some Giants we’re facing right now.

Life is really stressful for the Swishers these days. We are dealing with situations that make us feel angry and victimized and misunderstood. Satan is weaseling his way into our home like the jerk that he is, and we are feeling afraid and hurt and ready to quit. Our confidence is shattered, and we feel like we’re on-edge frequently.

Our hopes for a baby still have not been realized, and at times we are definitely feeling desperate and hopeless. God has been encouraging us lately through this struggle, but we still connected with the movie because of this as well.

As the movie closed, and Matt and I laughed at the cheesy ending, I couldn’t help but think about how many similarities we shared with the couple in the story. One glaring difference was clear though, and that is why I blog to you today. They prayed – we don’t.

We love God. We serve Him with our life and our vocations. We praise Him when things go well. We have never been good about praying together when we have trouble.

I just finished reading “The Shack” (AWESOME book – I’m sure I’ll blog about it soon), and in this book there is a lot of talk about sin and free will and God’s plan for creation. It became clear to me through this book that we sin because we ultimately want independence from God. Isn’t that just like us? Don’t we, as children, decide that we don’t have to listen to our parents, so we do our own thing? Don’t we get ourselves into trouble that way? Oy vey…what a predicament.

God desperately wants to be in relationship with us. He wants us to talk to him about our life, to consult him when there are decisions to be made. He wants to guide us, and he wants to help us become exactly what he intended us to be in the first place – dependent on him.

I don’t know what our future holds. It’s not really my business anyway. We may slay these giants, and we may not. Regardless of the outcome, it sure is nice to know that God is on our side, guiding us through the battle. Thank you Jesus…

>He has not forgotten me…

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>God has spoken to me through dreams on various occasions. One was so vivid I can still remember most of it to this day. It has not escaped my attention that obviously my mind is so occupied during the day that God can only get a word in edgewise while I am fast asleep! Last week God decided to speak to me through a dream, but unlike the other times, it was not my own dream. Apparently my mind is so consumed with myself these days that God is using my friends’ dreams to communicate with me.

Karen is a friend from Asbury. She and I worked together in the Admissions Office. She and I were never best friends or anything, but we got along well and had a great time working together. I haven’t really seen Karen much in the past year or more. We have moved back to Indiana, and the only time I’ve even talked to Karen in that time was for a quick minute when we were visiting Wilmore in December. Needless to say, she is not someone that I would usually confide in or keep up to date on the status of my life.

Out of the blue, I get a message from Karen on Facebook just after midnight on Tuesday. Here is what it says:

Hey Katie Swisher, Tonight is the second time in week that I’ve had a dream about you having a baby. Each time I have seen you cradling a baby saying “I’m blessed like Sarah. I have to laugh. I’m blessed.” We need to talk. Send me your phone number. I need my beauty rest and I would rather be dreaming about a rich and handsome man. Not that you’re not great to dream about…. Take this with you until we get a chance to talk — God is mindful of you and the desires of your heart — He has not forgotten you.Blessings and love,Karen

Um…okay God. You have my attention.

I wrote her back to give her my phone number later that morning, and she called me just a couple hours later. We were both surprised to be talking to each other, I think. She told me about the dream, and how she tried to just pray for me instead of calling. I think after the second dream, she knew she was supposed to call me. I’m so thankful she was obedient!

I’ve blogged on here about the issues Matt and I are having with trying to start a family. No doubt this call has totally blown me over! I’ve tried to figure out what this dream might mean for us. Obviously, the first thought I had was, “When am I having this baby?” J Then I worried about the “blessed like Sarah” part. Sarah was an OLD LADY when she had her child…am I going to be an old lady too? I swung like a pendulum between excitement for a child, and fear that I might be 50 when it happens.

It took me a while to realize what God’s message to me really was. How could I miss it?

“God is mindful of you and the desires of your heart – He has not forgotten you.”

Through all of this trying (and failing) to have a child, I have wondered where God was. I have wondered if he knew or cared about what we wanted for our life as a family. I know there are bigger things for God to worry about, but my God is bigger than that, and loves me and cares for me…right?

Right. Absolutely right.

This dream has given me hope again…a hope I haven’t had for so long. As friends and sisters and everyone around me has gotten pregnant, had babies and gotten pregnant again, I’ve become pregnant with hopelessness.

“God is mindful of you and the desires of your heart – He has not forgotten you.”

I don’t know why we are having so much trouble getting pregnant. Maybe I’ll never know, but knowing that God has not forgotten me is amazing. I knew somewhere deep down that he hadn’t forgotten me, but I guess that knowledge was shrouded by this hopelessness.

“God is mindful of you and the desires of your heart – He has not forgotten you.”

Thank you Jesus. Thank you for being mindful of me…of all of us. I have found hope again, and can’t wait to see what God brings us in the years to come…

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4