Sparrows sang cheerfully outside my window, but I couldn’t find a reason to get out of bed. Another month and I’m still not pregnant, I thought. I turned my face into my pillow and cried.
My husband, Mark, and I had been trying to have a baby for two years with no success. I didn’t know how much longer I could go on like this. The doctors, the tests, the pills, the procedures, the well-meaning friends and relatives assuring us it would happen “any day now.” Yet every month brought the same disappointment. What is it, God? I asked. Don’t you want me to have a child?
I forced myself to get dressed and went outside to sit in the garden. Maybe the rhododendrons—blooming pink, violet and white—could take my mind off my worries.
I stepped outside and breathed in the fortifying fragrance of our perennials. As I bent down to check on the progress of our daylilies, something caught my attention. There, nestled at the feet of the tall green stems, was a cluster of tiny seedlings.
Bluebells? What are they doing here? I hadn’t planted any bluebells. I’d heard the wind sometimes carried seeds to different places. These bluebells must have found a good home here. If only we could make a home for a baby too, I thought.
“I just don’t understand,” I said to Mark in bed that night. “We are ready to raise a child. Why won’t God bring one into our life?”
“He will find a way,” he said.
Mark’s right, I thought. There has to be a way. Please, God, show me.
The next day I went out to the garden again. The daylilies were thriving, as were the little patch of bluebells beside them. Those bluebells were quickly becoming my favorite thing in the garden. It was nice to have something different than what I’d originally planned there. It would make it all the more interesting to watch how the bluebells grew. It made them feel special. Like a sweet surprise from the angels sent just for me. What did it matter that I hadn’t planted them myself?
What if our child is somewhere else too, I thought suddenly. Waiting to come and find a home here with Mark and me.
“I think we should start to consider adoption,” I told Mark that night. We hadn’t really discussed the option before. I had no idea how he felt.
Mark was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe this is the way forward for us.”
That summer my husband and I emerged from a hospital elevator. “Are you ready to meet our baby?” Mark asked.
“Yes,” I said, squeezing his hand. We’d waited so long for this moment I could hardly believe it was finally here. We were going to be parents. Before us was the hospital nursery, with rows of tiny cribs lined up behind the glass. We stepped forward, and peered into each bassinet, hoping for a glimpse of the child we’d come there to pick up. But they were all empty. A nurse stood with her back to us. When she turned and saw us, she came walking out.
“You must be the Vallones,” she said, cradling something tiny and pink and wrapped up tight in a white blanket. She placed the baby in my arms. A daughter. Our daughter.
There was a way for me to have a baby. It was just God’s way, not mine. The same mysterious, magical way I got those beautiful bluebells in my garden. And somehow that made it all the more special.
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