If you live long enough on this planet, you will experience pain and suffering. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. I’ve learned that pain can be the greatest gift, because in the margins, when I’m at the end of my own resources, is where God shows up and does the impossible. The miracles happen in the margins, and no matter how deep the pain is, or how long the wait is, God always shows up, and His ways are always the best ways.

We all have a story, but not all of us have a story that could be turned into a movie. I have one of those stories, and it actually was told in a documentary called All These Flowers. The documentary follows several people with a diagnosis of BiPolar 2 disorder, and all the challenges that come with managing it. Our story was a story of hope and an opportunity to point people to Jesus as the source of life and healing.

My story includes the deaths of two of our sons, and the miracle of life, specifically my life after a serious suicide attempt in 2009. I was missing and unconscious for over 36 hours, and by the time they did find me and get me to the ER, they couldn’t explain how I was still alive. I then spent a week in the ICU and it didn’t look good.

The doctors sat my husband down and told him that if I woke up, I could be in a vegetative state or have long-term organ damage. However, my time here on earth wasn’t over yet; God had a lot more work for me to do here, and He also had many more blessings to give me. I knew God had saved me, and my heart was full of gratitude.

A path through more suffering

My dream was always to have a large family. Coming from a background of a tumultuous childhood that included many different kinds of abuse and abandonment filled me with a deep desire to provide something better for my own children. I wanted to provide a safe home filled with love, laughter, stability, and a lot of Jesus. My husband and I planned to have five kids by the time I was 30 and homeschool them all. I never once imagined we would have so many obstacles and heartache as we pursued our dream.

Things started out good; we had our first son four years after we got married. It was a delightful pregnancy, and I remember feeling like I could do this indefinitely. I went into pre-term labor at 32 weeks, but with modern medicine they were able to stop it, which allowed me to go six more weeks. On October 12th, 2004, our son, Joseph Michael, was born at 38 weeks.

One of the first things I said to my husband in the minutes post delivery came in the form of a question. “When can we do this again?” Wow! I’m sure the nurses thought I was crazy and chalked it up to the exhilaration of bringing life into the world (and the heavy duty pain meds I was on,) but I truly felt that way. My dream of becoming a mother had come true, and I never had felt that kind of love up to that point in my life. Life was good, and we were overjoyed at the blessing of our first child. Again, my heart was filled with gratitude.

I became pregnant with our second son, Noah James, in 2005—right on track with our plan to space our kids two years apart. The pregnancy was textbook until about 16 weeks when I got up to go to the restroom and fluid was leaking down my leg. This was the start of years of tragedy, trauma, and grief for us. We had no idea that the start of something so exciting would also be one of our greatest sources of pain.

My water was leaking, and though sometimes the bag of water can reseal itself, infection set in 2 weeks later, and the only way at that point to avoid a hysterectomy was to deliver Noah at 18 weeks. He was born on April 23rd, 2006—tiny, but so perfect.

He miraculously lived for four hours, and during that time we got to hold him, sing to him, and pray over his life. We got to feel his tiny heartbeat—until it stopped, and we were devastated. This isn’t what I signed up for—this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. A parent should never have to bury a child, and yet, here we were, planning a funeral for our son.

The following year we got pregnant with our third son, Eli Matthew. My doctor had figured out that I had an incompetent cervix, and in order to carry the baby to full-term, I had a surgery to try to hold my cervix shut, weekly progesterone shots for the pre-term labor, bed rest, and weekly appointments with my doctor to check my cervical length. It was a full-time job trying to get this precious child to full-term.

Despite all those measures, Eli was born on April 15th, 2008 at 24 weeks. When he was born, they couldn’t find a pulse, but just when they were about to call his time of death, they got a very faint one and rushed him up to the NICU at Children’s Hospital. He spent five days there before we had to make the hardest decision of our lives and take him off life-support.

We were devastated again, and at our follow-up appointment with our specialist, they gave us little hope to expand our family. They told us they could probably get me to 28 weeks—28 weeks . . . We went home, packed up the nursery, gave all our baby stuff to my best friend who was pregnant with her third child and first boy. We shut that chapter of our lives, devastated and hopeless.

I never felt like our family was complete though, and after four years, we decided to try one last time to have another baby. I had found out about another surgery to permanently tie off my cervix called a transabdominal cerclage, and it had over a 95% success rate for a full-term birth. We were cautiously optimistic, and so I had the surgery.

When I was in my 20’s, my husband and I could walk past each other and I’d get pregnant. So when I couldn’t get pregnant this time, we knew something was off. Eventually, we saw a reproductive endocrinologist who diagnosed me with diminished ovarian reserve—basically, I didn’t have as many eggs at my age as I should have, making it difficult to get pregnant. I went on infertility medication; then we prayed and waited.

God is attentive to the details

About a year ago, I was reflecting on our journey to have another child. God revealed something to me that filled my heart with wonder, awe, and intense gratitude. You see, we waited seven years for Eliana, went through seven months of infertility and infertility treatment; when we did get pregnant, we prayed to get to full-term, which is 37 weeks (we made it to 37 weeks to the day!) When I delivered our precious daughter, Eliana Harper, she was seven pounds seven ounces, and her birth date of April 3rd (4/3,) added up to seven.

You probably noticed that there were a lot of sevens around her story. I never realized until a year ago what the number seven represents in scripture: perfection and completion. God completed our family with her, and He showed His faithfulness to our family using the number seven. We were overwhelmed with gratitude, and awe that God cares about the details, as well as building up our faith through revealing His love and power to us.

Friend, I don’t know your story, but I do know that God is working in it, both in ways seen and unseen. I encourage you to cry out to Him today—surrender your situation to Him, pray He will help you with any unbelief, and wait expectantly for His perfect answer. I can promise you it will come to fruition, and it will be better than what you can accomplish in your own strength. He loves you, friend, and He hasn’t forgotten about you, so don’t forget about Him.

*** This piece first appeared here.

Meet Alycia Betz

Where to find her . . .

• Website
• Youtube

Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.

If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.

Creating Ripples

If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.