I believe in miracles. They come in all shapes and sizes. There are miracles so astounding and wonderful that need to be shouted from the rooftop and shared to all the world, like the miracle of Jesus Christ; His life, His mission, His gospel. All are miracles that have touched and shaped my life.  I believe that miracles still happen everyday. If you follow Humans of New York, you have watched a miracle unfold as the words of one young boy praising his principal have lead to over one million dollars of funds raised for his school and a scholarship fund in his name.  Last month, a neighborhood friend and her two sons were hit head on by a semi truck, totalling their car, but all three of them somehow walked away literally without a scratch.  And the friend’s mom who worked tirelessly to earn money for that month’s mortgage payment who despite her efforts, was still coming up short, only to find a check in her mailbox from estranged family members who just happened to send money her way for no reason.

Stories like these send chills up  and down my body.  For those involved, these are big, incredible moments that have altered their lives forever.

I fall into the second category. I feel that life is made up of little miracles every day and we may not ever discover or fully recognize their importance, but they are there. Some may disagree and feel that these are just matters of chance with no greater plan behind the events, but there have been too many extraordinary moments in my life to deny that they part of a bigger plan sent by a greater power.

I feel very strongly that I have been blessed with miracles in my own personal life, many of which are a part of our infertility journey. Some of them I have shared with you. Many are seemingly insignificant or too “every day” for others to see how much they have affected us. But there are some big ones that I would be ungrateful if I did not acknowledge and share with you.

The miracle that stands out in my mind as the first to affect our road to Baby Knoell is our sweet, tiny, adorable house. About four years ago at a regular Sunday dinner with my family, the topic of being home owners came up. Dad made an unexpected and generous offer of loaning us some money for a down payment on a house. Jason and I were at our second apartment and had no thought to buy our own home for quite a while, but immediately took him up on his offer. We were secretly trying to have a baby but had not yet realized our infertility and we decided that having a house when baby came along would be a wonderful step to take.

We started looking  at houses and fell in love with quite a few, even making offers on two. But none of them worked out. Our real estate agent had suggested that we take a break from looking for a while and maybe try again in a few months, but we decided to look at just a couple more before stopping. We met our agent at a house and while we waited, Jason and I admired the area. We liked the nearness to our family, work, and school, its easy access to the freeway, and the kid-friendly street. Many of the houses nearby featured beautiful flowers, including tulips and roses next door. We went inside the house and weren’t especially impressed. It was ok; nothing screaming at us that this should be our home. We looked at the post information about the house and realized we never found the crawl space that it mentioned. Our agent speculated that the house next door looked like a similar floor plan and maybe the neighbors could tell us where the entrance may be. We wandered over to the tulip house and spoke to the neighbors. They eagerly let us in and showed us where their entrance was and let us know that their own house was up for sale; it was posted just this morning in fact, they had yet to put  a sign in their yard–would we be interested in  a tour? Um, yes! Love at first sight.

Jason and I were so giddy. We loved everything about this little house and were so pleased that we were literally the first potential buyers to look at it. We put an offer in and were under contract within the week. This house literally fell into our laps.  Had we taken a break from our search, this place would’ve been snatched up quickly. And if you’ve ever been on the seller’s side of things, you can appreciate how rare and spectacular a situation like this was. You can see that for the couple selling the house, it was a miracle to sell their house so quickly!

We loved our home, we loved our neighborhood. For us, it was a good buy and lucky, but maybe not a miracle. Fast forward about a year. I was newly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (a little more on that later) and was freaking out with what this meant  for my future and how to afford the medications and treatments. Jason felt very strongly that we should go meet with our bishop and make him aware of our situation. I was hesitant but agreed. Jason and I didn’t know him especially well because we’d been hiding out with the kids in primary and I was a little uncomfortable with sharing this news with a basic stranger. But we went and were amazed to find out that the bishop’s own son has multiple sclerosis! We didn’t know this since the son wasn’t in the ward and it had been a few years since his diagnosis, but Bishop was eager to extend their knowledge and experiences with us. I could not doubt his sincerity when he said we knew what we were going through because he had personally been there. We left our meeting and I marveled over the odds of having a bishop who could relate so personally to this experience. I was touched with the tender mercy of being placed in this ward.

But the final moment that opened my eyes about how miraculous our house was happened last spring. We had met with Dr Foulk, we had learned that our only chance for conceiving our own child was the expensive procedure of IVF. Moving forward was financially out of the question. We did not have that kind of money in savings and waiting to save that amount would take a very long time, which was heartbreaking when all we wanted to do was take the next step. Ideally, we would have loved to save money and avoided taking on so much debt. But Jason and I felt very strongly that  waiting a few more years to save would be a mistake for us and that we needed to go forward now. There are companies that you can get loans from specifically for infertility treatment, but their interest rates were scary high and just researching them made me and Jason uncomfortable. It didn’t seem like the right choice for us. So we went to the bank to see what kind of loans we could get through them. Long story short, being home owners gave us the option of a great loan for the bulk of our IVF money that we couldn’t have gotten otherwise.  The timing of everything was amazing to us. If we didn’t have our own house, we couldn’t have gotten the loan at all. If we hadn’t been in our house as long as we had been, we wouldn’t have gotten such good rates. If we had gone with some of the other bigger, more expensive homes we had looked at and and placed offers on,  we wouldn’t have been able to get the amount we needed. To quote Marshall Ericksen….

and if you don’t know what this is from….please, change your life and watch this.

In all seriousness, I consider our house a miracle to us. I strongly believe that Dad had been prompted by a higher power to make his offer to us and that  we were led to this specific house right as it came on the market, making a domino effect of blessings in our lives.

We’ll be sharing about other miracles that we have witnessed. We also have another doctor’s appointment tomorrow  with the Urologist specialist to make some more plans about Jason’s next procedure and following up with Dr Foulk in a couple of weeks to officially schedule it. So stay tuned for some more posts!