Christmas Brings a Family's Answered Prayer

After three years of marriage, Elizabeth and Kevin were ready to start their family.

Kevin says, “We were just excited. ‘Okay, this is a new adventure.’ And I couldn't wait.”

Elizabeth adds, “You just think, ‘Oh, this is going to be amazing’ and you know, wanted people to start praying for us.”

But when months of trying produced no results, Elizabeth’s enthusiasm began to diminish. Elizabeth says, “Kinda feel like maybe this should have happened by now.  And then when you hit that like eight, nine months, and you're creeping up on a year, I started getting kinda panicky like ‘What if something's really wrong?’”

Still, they continued to ask God to bless them with a child.

Elizabeth remembers, “I remember my prayers gradually getting more anxious and more desperate.”

After one year of trying, they saw several doctors in hopes of finding a reason for their infertility.

Elizabeth says, “But we really weren't getting any answers. It was uh unexplained infertility.”

“There was no easy solution,” Kevin says. “So that was frustrating.”

Elizabeth says, “I remember the Dr. saying, ‘We need to do everything we can right now, because if you come back to me in two years I may not be able to help you.’”

With Kevin employed as a minister in Atlanta Georgia, they both spent a lot of time working within their church. But Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling like she was a failure.

Elizabeth says, “I started feeling like ‘I'm the girl who can't get pregnant.’ And I was getting some of those phone calls from friends. ‘You know we’re not even at a year yet but, we’re pregnant!’ Hanging up and I mean, I just wept for hours.”

Kevin says, “It broke my heart more to see her really sad.”

One year turned into two, and still no baby. Their faith remained in God, but for Elizabeth, the silence was becoming unbearable.

Elizabeth says, “I would show up to my morning prayer times and just kinda be like ‘Well, God, we both know what I have to say, now it's your turn.’ In that silence the enemy's voice really starts whispering doubt into it. ‘Does God hear me? Does he see Kevin and me? Does he hear our prayers?’"

Christmas time was especially difficult.

Elizabeth continues, “All throughout the month of December my refrigerator filling up with pictures of all my friends' babies in Christmas clothes and Santa hats, and I wanted so much to have that big family Christmas and…what if I never have children, like what does Christmas look like with no children?”

Kevin says, “Christmas is supposed to be loud and crazy and kids everywhere and the emptiness is right there at the surface.”

With Christmas approaching in 2004, Kevin and Elizabeth knew their chances for having children were growing thin.

Elizabeth says, “I just remember feeling very aware like, if we got to that three year point, being considered in long-term infertility, it probably won’t happen. Just this desperation, kinda this sense of now or never.”

After presents and Christmas dinner with Elizabeth’s family, they all gathered together for a time of prayer.

Elizabeth says, “So we start going around, we'll all praying for the year to come, and I mean, without fail, everybody, prayed, ‘Please God, by this time next year, give Kevin and Elizabeth a baby,’  that was our prayer, by this time next year.”

Kevin says, “It made such a huge difference, that prayer, that night. Uh and it was a very significant moment.”

Three months later, Elizabeth decided to take a pregnancy test. She and Kevin waited to see the results.

Elizabeth says, “We buy one of these digital ones. And we’re waiting. Staring at it…and when that word ‘pregnant’ popped up on there, I just burst out crying, and we’re sitting on the bathroom floor and we’re hugging each other! I can’t believe it, I’m pregnant!”

Exactly one year after the Christmas prayer with her family, Elizabeth gave birth to their daughter Cassidy!

“We’ve waited for you for so long!” Elizabeth says. “The moment they placed her in my arms, and I'm looking at this little blinking wide-eyed baby, I'm thinking, God gave her to us. And this really happened. And I’m a mom and Kevin is a dad. Happiest –happiest minute of my life.”

“She was gorgeous,” Kevin says. “We just realized what God did. And right at the moment. When we prayed, by this time next year and-and – when you start connecting those dots.”

Elizabeth says, “It was like God went out of his way to say ‘Yes. I do hear you and I was waiting for my big reveal.’”

Today, the Thompsons are blessed with 4 children, and have an extra reminder every Christmas, that God hears them, and loves them.

“I look back and I see God just guiding– all the details, just so that he could say, ‘I am always there. I have never stopped listening. I have never stopped loving you.’ And that's what God gave us through that, Little Christmas miracle baby.”