After the miscarriage, I felt so lost. Not only had I lost my baby but I felt like God had taken away my dream of coming home and sewing full time. Remember how in an earlier post I said everything lined up perfectly and that I started making plans? Looking back I assumed that God lined everything up in a pretty little row and I started making plans of my own. I realize now I thanked God and praised him for what he was doing but I never once asked him if all of that was his plan. I decided I would work the entire I was pregnant but never consulted him about it. It's so easy to see now how I just took control of the situation instead of relying on God to lead me.
Isaiah 55:8-9 says, "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts says the Lord. And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts." When I read this verse and read Jeremiah 29:11 I slowly began to see that even though God wants to give us our hearts desires it's all about his way, his plans, his timing. I had made the mistake of assuming I knew God's timing when really I never even prayed about it.
So I began to pray and seek God's will. I could feel with all that was in me that God still wanted me to come home. He continued to bless my business. I was working 80 hours a week between both jobs soon after the miscarriage. I had no life. I spent no time with Jeremy and Ansley. Between working that many hours, the miscarriage, and not being able to do anything I slowly began to come apart at the seams. I just didn't see how God could want me to work that way. I rarely saw Jeremy. Ansley stays with us every other week and I barely got to see her because as soon as I got home from my day job I started sewing and worked til 10 or 11 every night. Plus I would sew most all day Saturday and part of Sunday. I started crying to God even louder and more frequent. Something had to give.
God showed me that his timing and my timing were so different. In my mind we would get pregnant again and I would work while I was pregnant which meant probably another year of working 80 hours a week. God had different plans for me. He began to show me that I was living but had no quality of life. He showed me that his timing was different for me. He began to impress the importance of me being there for my sweet daughter and my husband and through lots of prayer I saw that his plan was for me to come home soon.
At this time I was in sales so I spent lots of time in my car traveling. I would pray, pray, and pray some more. I praised God, I would sing songs to him, I would tell him my needs. One day on the way to the coast I was crying to him. I literally had massive tears coming down my face. I had been praying that God would show me when it was time to come home. You see I knew if it wasn't God's timing that me being home would never work. It had to be about him and not me.
I was still so heart broken over the loss of our baby and I just needed God. I needed him to heal me and let me know I was going to be ok. I needed him to show me what to do. I needed to know his plans. I needed to know his timing. I needed to know that he would take care of me.
So while praying I calculated how much money I would need to make every month just to survive. I don't mean money to go out and eat on, or to buy new clothes, or go to the movies...just the money to pay tithes, bills, put gas in my car and get us groceries. My number wasn't really big but it still scared me. I had been making that much easily in sewing every month for at least 6 months but it still scared me. So I told God I knew he was calling me to take the leap of faith and go home full time. I knew the time was soon but I was so scared. I told him exactly how much I needed every month just to survive. I was crying because all I wanted to do was just trust him and follow him but I needed something...some kind of reassurance.
There in my car, driving down the road it was like time stood still. God may not have spoken to me in an audible voice but within my soul I recognized his voice so clearly. I have always thought of God as my Daddy and that's how he reached out to me. It was like he gently touched my tear stained face, lifted my chin and said, "Mellanie, my child. Why are you limiting me? Why are you putting limitations on what I can do? Do you not know that I want to do so much more for you than that?" And peace flooded my soul once again. Even now as I type this big tears are in my eyes because I am so amazed that the God of this universe loved me enough to take the time to quiet my fears and to speak so clearly to me. I was and am still amazed at this one moment in my life.
Pretty soon after that a friend told me that she didn't think God ever intended us (women) to work the way we do. We work to buy our kids things when what they really needed was us. I was right on the edge of deciding when to put in my notice and I believe God used her to speak to my heart and push me over that edge. I realized that God needed me to give Ansley my time not the things money could buy her by working two jobs. The next day I trusted in God's plan and timing and I took a leap of faith. I put in my notice and never looked back. When I put in my notice it was like the weight of the world was taken off my shoulders. I don't think I ever realized how many burdens I was carrying up until that point.
God took the pain of my miscarriage and made something beautiful out of it. I got to come home. God broke me with my miscarriage. You see he needed me to hear him, he needed to get my attention and he used my miscarriage to do that. He took me to a place I never wanted to go but only there in the valley could I see that God was all I needed. There is where I seen that his grace really is enough. There in the valley is where I could hear God speak to me and see his plans for me. If I had chosen to be bitter I would have missed the blessing. If I had not been seeking God day and night I could of never heard his voice. If I had not given God the pieces of my broken heart and allowed him to put them back together the way he wanted them to I would have missed how he can take our heartbreaks and turn them into something beautiful.
God took away my baby but he answered my prayers to come home. God rarely answers are prayers the way we think they are going to be answered. Sometimes our prayers have some painful consequences. Sometimes those answers throw us down into the valley but if you wait, if you seek him, if you trust him, if you really listen to what he has to say to you and show you, if you open your eyes to what he is doing in the midst of the valley you will see that God is there. He is still working and he is answering your prayer.
"In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. I will be found by you says the Lord. I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land." Jeremiah 29:12-14
What a MIGHTY and FAITHFUL God we serve!
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