Good News :)

Family Photo

“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” Ecclesiastes 11:5

Positive Test: 9-16-11

This verse is the perfect link between our last post and this one. If you haven’t read it, feel free to look back now. Long story short, I had a miscarriage 4 months ago, a thing that is not easily understood when looking at the will of God.  But He is perfect and knows exactly what He is doing...sovereign. This is why we worship Him, after all.  On September 16, we discovered that I was pregnant again! Our God is GOOD. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17

The fortune cookie we opened at lunch after the appointment!

We have dreamt of this our entire lives. Together, we have dreamt since we were just dating. And now, it is really happening. The first time I was pregnant, it ended very early. We never were able to see a glimpse of the baby on ultrasound or hear its heartbeat. This time it has been different. We were able to see the baby and hear the heartbeat on 10.6.11! We didn’t tell people right away this time. It was our precious secret...that God had chosen to bless us with a miracle of a new life...even though we DO NOT deserve it. Our pastor, Jason, preached about it from Ephesians 2:1-10 this past Sunday (check it out here).  The part that blows me away is that even though we are born into sin and would choose sin over God, “...God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” This gift of a child is a tiny glimpse into the immeasurable riches to come as we continue following Christ. It has taken our breath away. We are so thankful.

It’s almost like this pregnancy has been even more drenched in prayer because of our previous loss. We like to believe that we would have been just as thankful and humbled by our first baby’s development, but we can’t be sure. This time around every day moving forward is a blessing. Every tiny twinge of pain and wave of nausea brings joy. It is a reassurance of growth. We are following our baby’s development on an app on our phones so that we can pray for his or her growth very specifically. We would love if you would join us in praying Psalm 139:13-17 over our baby: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.  How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” 

We know that it makes us vulnerable by sharing the news so early—today I am 7 weeks. However, we are choosing to share so that more can pray and because we are at peace knowing that God has total control. This is HIS baby.  We are just excited to be the ones who He is allowing to love this little cashew looking embryo and teach him or her about His love for them so that one day they will join us in living for the soul purpose of furthering His kingdom. Baby Wells is due May 27, 2012.

Hallelujah!  

The Wells’

Taking the Bad with the Good

Bollinger and Guenther Girls

I love babies. (this is Billy) Little girls are my greatest weakness. I can’t wait to have kids. I’m not shy about it, either, and it usually surprises people. Much like most little girls, when I was a little boy I thought about what my family would be like when I was a husband and a Dad. Having a family was my biggest dream. Sure, I dreamed about sports, writing the next Harry Potter, and other exotic life paths, but I was pretty realistic, and mostly dreamed about any job that gave me the ability to support my wife and kids. I even had a name for my first son set in stone in 7^th grade. I wrote it down, and Jess and I plan for our first baby boy to have that name. So, yes, I can’t wait to have kids (biologically and through adoption), and after falling in love with Jessica so that I now have a person to experience kids with - my desire for growing a family has risen exponentially. I’m 23. Jess and I started “not trying not to get pregnant” while I was still 22. In our culture this is young and that is what surprises people. They tell us we need to live life – that we need to experience things – that there’s so much we haven’t seen, and maybe I understand where they’re coming from, but seriously, my idea of “living life” is sharing that life with little sponges that I get to show, and teach, and love. I want to experience family more than anything else I can think of. I want to travel, experience new things, and see new places, and get to share that with my wife and babies. When I talk like this around most people my age it weirds them out. Our friends that know us well understand. We finished college fast, got married young, bought a house young, and want kids now. That’s just how it is. There’s many, many reasons Jess and I are soul mates, and this desire for children is just one of them – it actually freaks me out HOW MANY things we have exactly the same thoughts about. So, long story short, Jess and I have been trying to get pregnant. I like when it’s said like that because I like the idea that I get pregnant, too. It’s funny.

Wheelock Babies

Elliana Rose

Back in May, Jessica came down stairs and showed me a positive pregnancy test. You can’t imagine my joy. We agreed not to go crazy telling people because we know the risks in the beginning, and didn’t want to potentially have to announce the bad news later. Joy is contagious. We couldn’t NOT tell, and we ended up letting a few people know. Everyone was happy. Some annoying doctor’s visits and bad customer service later it happened. It was a Sunday. Jessica had a miscarriage. I had heard of people having them, but never thought, in any real way, that it would happen to us. Even though we’d never heard a heartbeat, and were barely into it (maybe 4 weeks or so) the sadness I felt was overwhelming.  Our first ever creation together, the thing we had both longed for for so long, just died. And for the first time in my 23 years I understood how hard it is to trust that the will of God is perfect, and that He will work all things for good. We have worked through it. We’re not sad anymore, but it doesn’t mean we’ll ever understand. We just trust. That’s what faith is. After a while I felt selfish. I was so worked up about this miscarriage because it was MINE, and it made me realize that my heart doesn’t hurt enough for the rest of the pain in the world – the kids starving, abused, dying everyday, and every other consequence of sin’s stain on the earth. Thankfully, it was as early as it was. Thankfully, we were less attached than we could have been. Thankfully, the whole process of it for Jess was actually as easy as it could possibly be. We can use these things to ease our pain, maybe try to sugar coat it, but when you get down to it, it can never be a GOOD thing. We’ll always have the memory. There is no perfect way to handle it, but it’s a chance for us to lean a little harder in to God. We get to walk in the “perfect understanding isn’t a prerequisite for faith in God” posture. We have a different perspective. When thinking about “living life and experiencing new things” that people long for, maybe they forget that you have to take the bad with the good. In times of pain Job would probably have the best wisdom, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10) We’ve experienced more now in our life together. We’ll never be entirely ready for what is to come, but God is teaching us, and we’re trying our best to follow Him. 

+Billy

A flower Jess got from Camille the day she found out she was pregnant.