As most of you know, I cling to my faith to get me through the day to day; like a rat clinging to a piece of drift wood after the ship has been engulfed by the tossing sea. This is how I feel most of the time. I didn’t realize until a week ago, I had been a recipient of a miracle. As a Christian, I believe in miracles. I believe prayer changes things. I believe in divine intervention. I believe God is in control. I just never thought a miracle would ever happen to me…

Let me give you a background story. I entered into the Catholic Church a while ago and becoming a Catholic meant no more birth control, which was fine with us, we figured it wasn’t a healthy option to stay on the pill forever. We started the process of Natural Family Planning. Here we learned all about how to chart, which days were optimal to avoid a pregnancy, and which days were best to achieve one. At the time we were avoiding a pregnancy like the plague. We knew we wanted children eventually but not any time soon.

After a while, we started to notice a pattern in my cycles; they were far too short, this is what one doctor called a Luteal Phase Defect. I went for blood work that confirmed my hormone levels were low and one doctor told me it was going to be very hard if not impossible to become pregnant. …WHAT? I’m young? I am sure I can have a baby…. Right? Crack heads do it all the time and clearly they are unhealthy, I will be fine.

Now with the thought of “you might never have a child” coming into play, I was a little nervous. We still weren’t entirely ready but the baby bug had bit me but I had to wait on Chris to be on the same page.

In October 2010, we traveled to Ireland. Being a new Catholic, I wanted to make a pilgrimage to Knock, a holy site. My grandmother had just passed away during our trip and I could not make it back to the States for her funeral, I was completely devastated. I decided since I was going to visit the Knock Shrine, I would go for an indulgence on behalf of her soul. I wanted to do a plenary indulgence, which is for the purpose of the “remission of the entire temporal punishment due to sin so that no further expiation is required in Purgatory.” A plenary indulgence can only be done once a day and you must be in a state of grace, and so I went to confession, I received communion during mass at the holy site, and I prayed for the Pope. While I was there, I asked for something else. I asked God to bless us with a child if it was His will. I said a rosary and we were off to the next location in Ireland.

We get back from Ireland and we came home with a souvenir; his name would be Killian.

I was so arrogant. We were so arrogant.  We kept saying to ourselves what does the chart know? Clearly we can have kids! We weren’t even trying and look what happened. I was put on progesterone by my OB, since my body has a hard time producing enough on its own, and we were blessed with a healthy baby boy in 2011.

It has taken three miscarriages, a lot of prayer, and a reminder from a friend that I prayed for a miracle. I prayed for the impossible, when doctors are telling me “it’s probably not going to happen” and I begged God for a chance at being a mom and he gave it to me. Being the stupid, sinful person that I am, I thought the charting and the short cycles were all just a big mistake but it turns out it was all Him. God provided me with a miracle.

Previous posts in this series:

• We talk in whispers