Episode 38: Room to Grow

We are back! After the unexpected arrival of our newest little man THREE weeks early, we are back up and running! In this episode, I reflect on Abram’s birth story…and how God revealed some pretty beautiful truths through it.
See, in the months leading up to the due date, I had been walking. Physically speaking, I knew that keeping up with a 6 year old, 3 year old, and newborn would be demanding. I set the goal for myself to walk forty miles a week while pregnant (as soon as the first trimester sickness eased anyway). And so, I did. Forty miles a week and between 100-250 flights of stairs a week depending on my schedule. I could tell my stamina was going to be better after this pregnancy and was so excited that I was doing prep work that would pay off after the baby was born. My core felt stronger and tighter than it had during my second pregnancy..
I couldn’t help but wonder, though… if all that walking was part of what made the baby stop growing. All that walking had kept my muscles strong but maybe those strong muscles had somehow cut off baby Abram’s room to grow. There really were no answers for that. With the diagnosis of Fetal Growth Restriction, I was simply told that the baby ‘ran out of room’ to grow without a cause or even a speculation as to why.
It was so frustrating because I felt I had done the best job on this pregnancy to stay active and healthy. I had put in the work. I kept thinking about the irony of that. My preparation seemed to stop the growth of my baby.
This is where I could see God showing me something. I began thinking of how this looks like us, a lot, as christians. We put in the work. We prepare. It’s a good thing. But at some point, we have to step out of the way and hand it over to God. We can only take ourselves so far. We can only grow so much in our own strength and our own humanity. We are limited. But God is limitless.
I thought maybe, just mayyyybe, God was reminding me that we will always run out of room to grow… when we try to do it in our own strength. And honestly, I’m so thankful for that. If I had had it my way, my own plans for my life would have gone no further than a little house in a little town, minding my own business and not pursuing anything more. Safe, but ineffective at what God was really wanting from me. Instead, God DID have His way in my life…and because of it, I’m speaking thousands every week. Totally outside of my comfort zone. But pursuing the very things God put inside of me before I was even formed in my mother’s womb. God knows the end from the beginning. Sometimes, He just needs us to surrender our own way..our own life-preparation and let Him show us how much bigger it can be. And not just bigger, but more full. Because we do live in fullness when we are pursing God’s will over our own.
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