Updates and a Really Long Story about the Twins

So, I had the best of intentions to stay up to date on here but, well, plans change.  Let’s see what did you miss?  I got big, then bigger, then bigger still, and just when I thought I couldn’t get any bigger- I got bigger:

The houses (yes plural) that we were supposed to close on fell through and we ended up temporarily moving in with my parents until we can get a house under contract and God-willing actually close on it.  It has actually been a huge blessing having the extra help around as we had our sweet baby girls shortly after moving in with them.

I would like to introduce you to sweet Anna Jane and Ruth Abigail:

More insanity in our household came in the form of my oldest two taking sick just as we were bringing home babies.  It has been over a week and a half since I have been around my two older sweethearts as the girls and I are quarantined in the back bedroom to protect them from getting sick .  Both had brief jaunts in the NICU and are still not completely in the clear with Anna and her lungs so we have to be extra careful of spreading germs around them.

You may be wondering, “what is it like to deliver twins?”.  Well, first let me just say that my Mom would tell you I have never done anything the normal way.  There is a ten percent chance in a twin delivery that the first will be delivered the normal direct route and the second will be taken by cesarean section.  That means there is a 90 percent chance that won’t happen.  I thought that was pretty good odds… of course, I was one of the ten percent…

Ah well, during this season of life I will be honest and tell you that our life has been through a bit of upheaval.  Basically homeless temporarily, moving all our things to storage, being put on bed rest with the girls for a couple weeks, delivering twins with two very different kinds of recoveries, and then illness but through it all I have felt overwhelmingly blessed!   How is that?  God sent me these two precious blessings and the magnitude of it astonishes me every day.

Have I told you the story of how God told me we were having twins?  Here we go.

I have never before heard God speak clearly enough that I knew what I was hearing was from Him except through scripture.  I have many friends who hear God talk to them on a regular basis and to be honest sometimes I wondered if something was wrong with me because I didn’t seem to have that kind of connection with my Lord.  There were times in my life I knew He was speaking exactly what my heart needed to hear (whether it wanted to hear it or not is a different story entirely) at the time I needed to hear it.  Whether through speakers, authors, scripture or wise counsel- I have heard from God in this way.  Before this season of life, however; I would not claim that God spoke something to me individually or revealed a part of His plan to me in advance of it happening.

When I got pregnant with the girls the fatigue this time around was a lot harder to cope with then the other pregnancies, probably due to the fact that I had two little ones at home to chase after and we were starting the house hunting journey.  One night in my tiredness, I cried out to God to show me that everything was going to be okay and that my baby was okay.  Immediately, I felt kicking for one of the first times that pregnancy in my womb and it felt like an octopus was inside me.  I thought, “that’s weird how can there be hands and feet in all those places?”  but didn’t analyze it too much and thanked God for reassuring me the little one was okay.

I should mention, my daughter had been praying for girls (yes girls-as in two girls) from the very moment she found out we were expecting.  Well, as I laid in bed thinking about the life God had blessed me with my mind wandered to Ara’s prayers and I told God, “You know we love children and if You chose to send me two, I would feel so amazingly blessed and overwhelmed by Your goodness.  I can’t imagine why You would pick me to send two babies to Lord but if You do, I will treasure it.

So months pass and I am feeling huge, I am also feeling movement EVERYWHERE!  I started getting a little anxious to know if there was one baby or two babies in there.  I had mentioned my thought to the doctor but they only heard one heartbeat and said the only way to really confirm a twin pregnancy is ultrasound and since we were going for one at 21 weeks to find out the gender we would know for sure then.  I was pretty much told over and over not to get my hopes up, there was probably only one baby and I was just bigger and feeling more because this was my third pregnancy.  So, that night in my impatience, I asked God to show me if I was having twins or one baby.

Now, there are times in life when I don’t ask God to show me certain things because I am afraid of the answer.  This time I had some apprehension that I would be disappointed if it were one baby and I didn’t want to be ungrateful of even one precious life God would send me.  I didn’t want that to be my heart.  I wanted to give Him glory if there was one, two, or even no children.  But I was impatient to find out.  And God was gracious even with my impatience and He answered me.  When I asked I clearly felt two long spines push their way up against the skin of my belly.  I laid there with one hand on one little back and the other along the other little back and just felt- overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed that God had answered me, overwhelmed that He would bless me in such a way and overwhelmed with the fact that I was the only one at that moment with the knowledge of the two little lives inside of me.  I felt a bit like I feel Mary may have felt as she “treasured up all these things- pondering them in her heart”.  Of course, my human flesh and frail faith began questioning if I really had heard from God.  Maybe I am just fooling myself into thinking that I felt two backs, maybe I want to feel two babies so I believed that that is what I felt, maybe I don’t know God’s voice.  Then I was given the overwhelming urge to look up the name meanings for the names that Paul and I had picked out.  I didn’t know why this urge struck me as it was late and I was exhausted in bed already but I HAD to get up and look them up at that moment.  Well, one meant companion and the other meant twins!  So, thank you Lord for your sense of humor and indulging this doubting Thomas time and time again.

The time came for the much anticipated ultrasound.  At this point I had told my husband and a few others from church that I was sure I was having twins and that I felt God had confirmed it and so I was really nervous to go to the gender reveal.  I was afraid that if they only saw one baby on that screen I would feel like I can’t hear God clearly or worse that I had believed in “signs” that I wanted to see but weren’t really from Him.  At the same time, when these doubts crept in a peace would take over and I would feel sure again and treasured by God and knew whatever we saw was His plan.  We walked into the office and my husband jokingly said, “My wife thinks there’s two in there”.  The ultrasound tech said, “well, we’ll take a look”.  As soon as she put the device on my stomach, up on the wall screen I saw two heads.  I tried not to get excited, “maybe that’s a head and a stomach”, I thought, “ultrasounds are really hard to distinguish what you are looking at to begin with”.

“She’s right.”  The ultrasound tech said.  !!!!!  “There are their two little heads”.  🙂

Praise God!  To Him be the glory!  May I never forget exactly who these little girls came from.  At a time when so much of my life felt uncertain, God had given me what felt like a lifeline.  A reminder that He was working and He was there.  That He hears the prayers and petitions of little girls and the questions from mothers who struggle with uncertainty.

Feeling so unbelievably blessed!