The Whole Picture

My friend Amanda and I worked together at WHPC from 2005-2006. I actually met her when she volunteered to go on a mission trip with us for Spring Break 2004 while she was still in college. We spent a magical week together in Corpus Christi with about a million 7th and 8th graders. While working at the church together, I was blessed to work alongside her and watch God work in her life as she and her boyfriend, Brian, got engaged and then married in 2007. She and Brian now live outside of Houston, so we don't see each other very often, but our friendship has reached a deeper level as she is now walking the hard road of infertility. So you should read her blog and join me in praying for a baby Joiner to join (pun intended!) them soon.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Amanda wrote this blog post that went along with some other things God has been showing me about how He knows all things from beginning to end. Nothing surprises Him. And sometimes we get a glimpse from the past that proves His infinite knowledge and it's so comforting. That's what her post was about and it inspired me to share this story along those same lines:

In April of 2009 Scott and I were getting ready to have a garage sale. I was reluctantly cleaning out all of our junk in all of my free time, which was sparse with our not yet 2-year-old twins. One afternoon as the babies were napping in the next room, I started cleaning out our bookshelves in the office. As I was pulling out books to add to our garage sale pile, I quickly discovered that Scott had left bookmarks in most of his books that I deemed appropriate to remove before selling them. These "bookmarks" were funny because they were so random: a grocery list from college, sermon notes, a 10 year old to-do list.

As I flipped through one dusty book checking for scraps of paper, the book naturally fell open to the bookmark and the words Kaimey Julia Hammerle jumped off the paper into my now intrigued eyes.

There were many phrases written in list form. Some read: left-handed; parents-John and Pam; Hobbs, NM; Jan 21st-bday; likes green-flavored candy...

Since Scott admittedly doesn't have that great of a memory he writes everything down. Apparently, he was really nervous on our first few dates that he would forget something he should already know about me, so he kept this little list to remind himself of things I had told him. Some were basic things and then some were little things I liked, the green-flavored candy for instance. I thought the then 5 year-old list was so cute and endearing and was really enjoying pausing from my cleaning to read little things my almost boyfriend didn't want to forget about me.

So here's where this long story gets good. One of the things he had written down to remember about me in the early dating days of 2004 were the words, "wants b/g twins." I probably would have screamed upon reading this, if it weren't for the sleeping boy/girl twins down the hall.

Crazy, right? For one, I never remember telling him that. Even though I have always thought it would be so fun to have twins, I didn't know I had ever vocalized a specific desire for boy/girl. And I would like to think I was smarter than to tell a guy I had just started dating about my desire to raise multiple children at once. Apparently I'm not. Thankfully, he stuck around.

And it's not like it just said "wants a boy and a girl" or "wants 2 kids" or even "wants twins." It's such a specific desire for me to throw out there. And a random thing for him to write down to remember. It's not like he could go out and grab me some boy/girl twins to surprise me like he could the green-flavored candy. It makes me wonder why he cared to remember this information at that point anyway.

I love this little slip of paper with those 4 little words. It's such a sweet reminder that God knows our desires and cares about them. And that He has a plan. And that He can accomplish anything. Even specific things. Obviously, on our first few dates, we had no idea we were approaching marriage. And definitely didn't know we would walk together through all of our fertility stuff and wonder if we would ever get pregnant at all. But in God's infinite knowledge and seeing how the whole scene would play out, I know He allowed us to have that conversation at the very beginning and then write it down in permanent ink to now serve as a symbol of His glorious work in our life.

It's such a comforting thing to know that we don't have to get to see the whole picture at once. Even when we desperately want to. We have a God who goes before us and holds our desires, our specific desires, in His hands.