A testimony about how the trials of postpartum sleep deprivation created a perfect storm that led to a full surrender and, therefore, full discovery of Christ.
When I was eight months pregnant with my third daughter, I had a dream about her. In the dream she was a toddler with a thick head of dark curly hair and a big beautiful smile. She was giggling and happy. At the time, I didn’t think much of the dream, other than experiencing pure joy at the sight of her. I wasn’t sure if that’s what she was going to look like or not. Now I know that not only is that exactly what she looks like as a toddler, but that God sent me that dream to help carry me through what He knew was going to be one of the hardest years of my life.
On April 30th, 2025 my due date had arrived…and then it passed. Then more days passed. If you’ve ever gone over your due date, then you know that every day after your due date actually feels like 100 hours, not 24 hours, and that you enter into this weird alternate reality where you’re not sure what’s even happening anymore or whether you will be pregnant forever. That feeling wasn’t new to me. My other two were born past their due dates as well, but at 42 weeks, I had never gone that long while pregnant, and I didn’t know how much more I could endure.
But then… she came fast and furious in the middle of the night at home. Despite it being one of the toughest experiences of my life, having her unmedicated at home was an answered prayer that I was so grateful for. Once the birth was over I held her in my arms curled up in bed with a hot cup of tea and my amazing family surrounding me. In that moment I thought to myself I did it. Thank you God. After conquering natural childbirth of an almost ten pound baby I thought the hardest part was surely over and that now life would be smooth sailing. I knew the newborn phase would be tough at first, but I reminded myself that after 6-8 weeks she would be sleeping through the night like my other two children did. Little did I know at the time that for the next year I would actually be facing a huge mountain, and that I would not handle it with ease.
The 4th Trimester
That first night she slept pretty well (just as many babies who are new to this wild world do as they are adjusting). The second night (notorious for being the hardest night) was rough but I was still riding on a wave of adrenaline from my unmedicated birth and the lack of sleep did not phase me in the slightest. By the third night she was refusing to sleep in her bassinet and she cried nonstop until I brought her into my bed and nursed her to sleep. This pattern continued every night. From then on I co-slept with her in order to conserve energy. I was too exhausted to get up and down every hour and my body needed to recover.
Two weeks later when the birth adrenaline had worn off and my baby was still waking up every hour I really started to struggle physically. I was still doing well mentally and emotionally, but my body was utterly exhausted!
I began dreading every night from the pit of my stomach. As soon as the sun would begin to set a wave of despair would come over me knowing what was to come that night. Every time I settled into a stretch of sleep I would be ripped awake just as I was entering the coziest part. It got to the point where I didn’t know which part of the 24 hour cycle I anxiously anticipated more – the nights where I was consistently pulled out of my sleep every hour, or the daytime where I had to try to be awake and functioning to take care of all three of my children (ages 5 and under).
When my baby was just seven weeks old, my four year old daughter developed an intense cough. At first I let it run its course and gave her the usual natural remedies. When the cough got worse and worse and was incessant we decided to take her to the ER where she tested positive for RSV. My stomach dropped. RSV can be very scary in children, but especially so in newborns. A day or two later my newborn baby started showing signs of heavy mucus (the first symptom). I started to panic. My coritsol was already out of whack from continuous lack of sleep but the stress of knowing what could come with this virus for a small baby made my stress levels skyrocket. During her peak days with the virus I went from waking every hour to not sleeping at all. I had to watch her breathing all night, as I was told by her pediatrician that newborns with RSV can start struggling to breathe suddenly. Her back to back coughs and wheezing sent me into a spiral. I kept checking her chest for retractions, in which case we would need to take her to the hospital. It was a very long and exhausting ten days of worry and no sleep at all (which is even harder when I was coming off of weeks of waking every hour). I prayed my way through it and my baby did not have to go to the hospital. All 3 of my children recovered from it at home with some time and TLC. One day, in the middle of their sickness, one of my prayer warrior friends drove to our house and stood in our yard praying over our house and our family. It was soon after that when all three girls started improving.
After all of my children recovered, I got my first three hour sleep stretch! My baby was so tired from battling RSV that she did three hour stretches for two nights (instead of the usual one hour stretches). I temporarily felt like a new woman (albeit still exhausted and yearning for a 6+ hour stretch). It was a wild feeling to be jumping for joy over three hours of sleep, as someone who has needed 9+ hours of sleep to be able to function for most of my life. But after months of waking up every hour, three hours felt like a luxury. However, in just a few days she was back to waking up every hour again and I was back to hanging on for dear life – mentally, physically and emotionally.
Attempting to Fix
After the eight week mark came and went (the magic week when my first two children started sleeping through the night) and I was still being pulled awake every hour, I began to feel more and more defeated. I felt as though something must be wrong with my baby. It seemed extreme, even for a newborn. So, I made an appointment with a pediatric chiropractor. They did a scan that showed her nervous system was in constant fight or flight mode. Each time we went in they explained that the area of her neck where her vagus nerve was located was always tense and needed adjusting. I wondered if it had to do with how she came out at birth (her hand by her face), but regardless of why that part of her neck was always so stiff, I just wanted her to be healed and sleeping longer stretches. After weeks of taking her to the chiropractor twice a week I noticed improvements in her mood, her bowel movements and her neck seemed more comfortable, but her sleep had not changed.
I frantically tried other methods to help my baby sleep. I thought about switching to formula. I didn’t want to because for the first time I was having a successful breastfeeding experience (full supply, good latch) and her weight percentile remained in the high 80s. She was my first chunky baby. No one doubted that she was getting more than enough milk from me. I thought surely breastfeeding can’t be the reason she is still waking every hour. However, I was so desperate that, just in case it was the reason she wasn’t sleeping, I thought maybe I should just try to give her a bottle of formula for bed to see if it helps give her a longer stretch. I prepped a bottle of formula and tried to give it to her but she knocked it away multiple times. I finally managed to get her to take a sip of it but then she spit it out immediately. Another striked down. Another sense of defeat.
At that point the only thing I hadn’t tried was sleep training. I had previously been against it, but I was desperate for a change. I thought maybe my baby just needed to learn how to put herself back to sleep without me in order for us all to sleep through the night. I signed up to work with a sleep training consultant which included a game plan, a schedule, and daily text support with her for two weeks. She told me that she’s never had a client who she didn’t successfully help within a two-week period. She was confident she could help me get my baby sleeping through the night, in her own bed, within two weeks. I did everything she suggested to a T. It was a modified Ferber method of sleep training that I was comfortable with. I could go in there and show her that I’m still there for her, but without taking her out of the bassinet at all. The first few nights were rough and she would cry continuously for hours. Instead of getting my usual one hour sleep stretches, I was getting no sleep due to the constant crying and getting up to soothe her every ten minutes. But by night five I was beginning to see a little bit of progress and I could feel my body filling up with some hope that soon both my baby and I would be getting good sleep. Then, just as soon as progress seemed to be mounting, it all came crashing down with the onset of a bad cold. Her congestion, combined with her nervous system being heightened from sickness, took us right back to square one. She wouldn’t settle without me and I couldn’t let her continue to cry when she was already struggling to breathe from the mucus in her nose. So back to my bed she came and back to waking up every hour to nurse. Now it was even worse, because I also had to suction the snot out of her nose which woke her up enough to not want to go back to sleep for an hour each time. She was the first client my sleep consultant couldn’t successfully train using her method. She referred to my baby as a “tough case”.
On top of all of this, she was beginning to get her teeth in, very slowly and one at a time. Her teeth were so slow to cut through and each tooth that came in led to even more sleepless nights than usual. It also led to her biting my nipple, which was excruciatingly painful. Some nights she was fussing and screaming and chewing on me for the whole night, nonstop.
I kept praying to God for her to sleep and begging God to let me get even just a couple of nights of decent rest so that I could have the strength to continue on this journey. When it felt like God wasn’t hearing me, I continued to try various things to help. Homeopathy to help with sleep, magnesium foot rub, probiotics (as I was told this could help with sleep), amber teething necklaces, all of the teething remedies you can think of and more. Nothing seemed to work and as the months went on she continued to wake every 1-2 hours.
Cognitive Decline
Daytime became harder and harder to function through. I started making careless mistakes. Some were harmless, and some weren’t. Trying to put my laundry in the rerigerator was harmless, but accidentally burning my hands or fingers while cooking wasn’t as harmless. My cognitive decline from lack of sleep was affecting my reaction time. I would be cooking and not realize a finger was touching the pan until a few seconds of it being there. To add insult to injury, my burn marks and scars felt like a painful constant visual reminder of what I was enduring.
While driving in the car I would pray for God to keep me awake and splash my face with water to keep from falling asleep at the wheel. During this time I got a letter in the mail saying that my driver’s license was suspended due to an unpaid traffic ticket from 11 years ago! It made no sense as I fully remember resolving that case and paying that ticket over a decade ago. I had to go to the municipal court in Atlanta (where I had received the ticket all of those years ago) and then get a new court date and wait months until I could get my driver’s license reinstated. It was the strangest thing. At the time, I saw it as yet another inconvenience and setback. Looking back now I know it was divine protection and that God was keeping me safe from falling asleep at the wheel.
Because I could no longer drive, two major things happened. One was that I had to put a pause on my brand new real estate career and put my license in retirement because I couldn’t afford all of the dues and fees without being able to make money from it. The other was that my husband had to quit his job and become a Doordash driver instead so that he could choose his own hours and be available to drive for us when needed to get groceries or take the kids to appointments.
I also began slurring my words when I spoke. The even more alarming part about it was that in my brain I thought I was speaking normally, but my husband would tell me it sounded like gibberish.
My short term memory seemed to vanish in thin air. I would walk into a room and have no idea what I went in there for. I would stop speaking mid-sentence because I forgot what I was even saying.
I couldn’t even do homeschooling with my toddlers because my brain couldn’t figure out anything at that point and I was too exhausted to even do that anyways.
Physcal Decline
My physical body was also severely struggling. All of my muscles and joints hurt. My back was always in pain. It always felt like I had a rib out of place. My hip would also come out of place due to having to sleep in a crunched up position on the edge of my bed (the only place she would sleep at all) so that I didn’t roll over on her. Some nights she would only sleep with my breast in her mouth as a pacifier, so I had to learn how to contort my body into an awkward position where I could do that and still sleep. Due to the pain I went see my chiropractor frequently. It was a cost we couldn’t afford to take on at the time, but also we couldn’t afford not to because of the physical pain I was in if I didn’t. I had to use a cain for a while because my plantar fasciitis in my left foot was so bad that I couldn’t walk on it.
I was also gaining a lot of weight. The weight gain was in part due to the fact that I was afraid to cook and burn my hand again, which led to me eating more fast food or snack food. But mostly the weight gain was from the lack of sleep and what it did to my metabolism and my cortisol. Instead of gradually losing the baby weight I was gradually getting bigger and bigger. I was even starting to look like I was pregnant again because all of the weight was going to my belly. Even my postpartum clothes weren’t fitting me anymore and I had to go and buy some extra large clothing to wear comfortably. This was just another layer that added onto my feelings of defeat and failure and being worried about what people thought of me. I felt like everyone was judging me for “letting myself go” but the reality was I wasn’t eating more than I did before. I just didn’t have the energy to work out and my metabolism was out of whack from the sleep deprivation.
The Crumbling
Every month that went by I wishfully thought maybe this will be the month she starts sleeping through the night. Yet, as more months went by, there was no change. Meanwhile, it seemed as though the rest of my life was crumbling around me.
I felt guilty about giving my other children too much screen time and not playing with them enough because I just didn’t have the energy to do anything other than keep up with the bare minimum chores. My husband and I were fighting more because I was on edge and snappy from lack of sleep. He wanted to help me but she wouldn’t take a bottle. I she didn’t have me she would cry until she got me, so every wake up had to be me. I also wanted him to sleep so that at least one of us would have the energy and strength to drive the car and take care of our other children.
One of the hardest parts about this season was that when she was around five months old we realized we were going to have to sell our house. We had bought our dream fixer upper two years prior. We fell in love with the location and the yard and knew we could fix up the house with some of our savings. But, because I had to give up my brand new career, and my husband had to switch to working a part time job with flexible hours, we ended up having to dig into our savings just to live off of for months. At that point we not only no longer had enough to fix up the house, but we didn’t even have enough to maintain the current bills for our house for much longer. So, we decided to sell, and our dreams of living there forever and fixing up our dream home on our dream property seemed to fade into the wind.
It was not long after that decision that I started to spiral emotionally (I had already been spiralling physically for a while from the lack of sleep). My mind started going to a scary place. I was so desperate for solid sleep that I started fantasizing about needing a hospital stay. I would wonder if it was possible to check myself into the hospital, citing my illness as sleep deprivation, and then maybe, just maybe, finally rest. Then the baby would just have to learn to take a bottle and others would come and help, because I would be in the hospital. Even though I never had thoughts of harming myself or others I did feel so ill from the sleep deprivation that I thought it might kill me, and at that point, I didn’t care if it did. I thought at least then I can sleep. I knew I could never do that to myself because that would be too selfish to my family, but I just thought well, I feel really unwell so if this is how I go so be it, then I can rest.
My talk became very negative, which didn’t help anything. For a large part of my life one of the battles I have struggled with is a victim mentality and negative talk. I always thought for some reason that I just needed to say what I thought was going wrong even though I knew it wouldn’t make the situation better. It’s been something I’ve tried to work on for years with God and with therapists, but whenever things would get really rough, I would slip back into the negativity and the “why me” attitude.
My friends in my prayer warriors group lovingly told me over and over again to watch my mouth and they reminded me that the power of life and death is in the tongue (Proverbs 18:21). I would temporarily try to stay positive but then I would feel so tired and defeated and start speaking negatively again. “Why is this happening to me?” “Why do some other moms get to sleep and I don’t?” “What did I do to deserve this?” “Whats wrong with my baby?” I knew I should stay positive and watch my mouth, but I just felt so frustrated and exhausted that I would fall back into the victim mentality and keep slipping up with my words and my attitude.
I would walk around public in a haze. I’d observe other people with jealousy, thinking about how they looked as if they got a full nights sleep (happy, energetic, on their A-game). I would think to myself all of these people have no idea how good they have it that they can just choose when they want to go to bed and stay asleep once they fall asleep and wake up feeling rested.
I would be standing in the grocery store slowly trying to find (or even just remember) what I needed while trying to stay awake. I’d notice other women, even moms with multiple children like myself, breeze past me on a mission. They had some pep in their step and knew exactly what they needed to grab all while having an upbeat conversation with someone on the phone.
I would see other women in their fitness outfits and think wow they must have slept last night or what it must be like to have the energy to work out and stay fit. At this point, the lack of sleep was not only deteriorating my body and my mind, but it was deteriorating my emotions.
5 Stages of Grief
It felt like I was going through the five stages of grief (grieving loss of sleep)
- Denial – The first few months I was in denial. I thought Ok well my baby is taking a little bit longer than most babies to give me longer stretches, but she’ll start sleeping longer stretches any day now, I just have to hold on (aka this isn’t really happening – at least not much longer).
- Anger – Months 3-6 of waking every hour I felt angry, resentful and thought “why is this happening to me and why do other moms with babies younger than mine already get 6-7 hour stretches?
- Bargaining – Thinking I could change the situation through my own methods (sleep training, remedies, chiropractor, formula) or, at my worst, the thoughts of what if I just went to the hospital for sleep deprivation and then someone else will have to take my place)
- Depression – Feeling sad and defeated that this was my life and all of the things it was having a detrimental affect on.
- Acceptance – Accepting that my new life involves not sleeping and becoming numb to the fact that I will spend the rest of my life tired and unwell.
Despite reaching the acceptance phase, I was still miserable. I begged God every night to end my misery and help my baby sleep through the night so that I could feel human again. I felt sad and angry that it seemed as though God didn’t hear my prayers. People don’t realize how damaging and unbearable chronic sleep deprivation is and the repercussions it has on you both mentally, physically, emotionally and circumstantially. Not until you go through it yourself.
Feeling of Torture
I felt like I was being physically tortured with no way out and no one coming to save me.
Sleep deprivation is a form of torture used to interrogate criminals and it has even been criticized for being inhumane. Read that again. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture that has been considered inhumane to use on criminals. Yet, loving mothers everywhere are dealing with chronic sleep deprivation and many are given little to no help or emotional support through it and are still expected to keep up with multiple responsibilities. I was being tortured long term and I felt guilty for complaining about it because the person causing my stress was one of three little people I love the most in this world who was an innocent angel who was not trying to hurt me. It wasn’t her intention for me to feel physically ill and in distress. In any other physical torture circumstance people would run to help the person, but in this particular circumstance, I was the only one your baby wanted. No one came to the rescue because they didn’t want to give up sleep either, and even if they did, my baby cried for me and my nervous system cant handle hearing her cry.
Rock Bottom
I was at my rock bottom. I’ve been at rock bottom in various circumstances multiple times in my life but none have felt THIS hard. Just like when Elijah asked God to take him out because he was so exhausted (1 Kings 19:4) – that’s the point I was at. I was so completely exhausted that I asked God to let me just go in my sleep so that I could rest.
When I was much younger and struggling to connect with God my mother had told me that God gave her a verse in regards to my faith. The verse was Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”. I didn’t realize just how much I wasn’t seeking God with all of my heart until this battle broke me in a way that I didn’t know was possible. And that’s saying a lot because I have overcome everything from suicidal depression in my teens, to a heroin addiction in my early 20s, to a mysterious illness in my early 30s and more. Throughout all of my prior trials in life, I would white knuckle it and then commend myself for being strong and getting myself through it without fully surrendering to God and asking him to carry me through.
But this… not sleeping for months on end… this was the trial where no amount of strong will could carry me through. The only way to survive was to completely and fully surrender to God in a way that I had thought I had done before but then realized I hadn’t. Just like the verse he gave my mother all those years ago, for the first time I sought him with ALL of my heart… and what I found was life changing.
The Surrender
In Mark 8:34 Jesus tells his disciples “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”.
I knew I had to deny myself and what my flesh wanted and continue to praise and worship the Lord despite my suffering. Jesus never promised we wouldn’t suffer, but how I was going to choose to steward that suffering moving forward was up to me. I could either continue to try to fix/handle things myself or finally let Yahweh take over, fully this time.
I prayed to God and said “God I cannot do this on my own I can’t do anything on my own I need you fully and completely. I need you to operate through me and carry me through every single day. Let your will and your strength work through me, I am nothing without you and I need you and want you to take the wheel. I cannot do this or life in general through my own strength only yours. I deny myself and put you ahead of all of my personal desires and plans. Only you know my path and only you can get me through this so give me strength, light my path, and lead me in the direction that YOU want me to go. I fully commit to you and whatever you want me to go through and I trust you completely”
God didn’t immediately make my baby sleep longer stretches but he did give me a supernatural strength and peace to help carry me through. I was no longer burning my hands while cooking. I was able to drive again. I was able to maintain a better mood throughout all of it instead of taking out my frustration by projecting negativity towards those around me. But The biggest breakthroughs I had after my total surrender were spiritual.
Spiritual Breakthroughs
- Removal of worship block
The first thing I noticed was that I had a strong desire to worship. This may not sound like a big deal to some people but for me, it was. My whole life I have always felt some kind of blockage when it comes to worshipping. I grew up going to church with parents who were close to the Lord but every single time I was in church I would shut down during worship. I would feel uncomfortable and, not only would I feel unable to throw my hands in the air, (despite the pressure of the worship leaders urging us to) but my hands would lock up and I would fold my arms shut. I never knew why I had such a hard time with it but when I surrendered that blockage was removed. I discovered it when I put on a worship song in the car and suddenly felt tears of joy and gratitude and put one hand in the air singing at the top of my lungs and truly worshipping. That was the first time in my life I had truly worshipped and in that moment I felt like I finally understood true genuine worship.
2. Removal of the Victim Mentality
The second thing I began to noticed in the days and weeks following my full surrender was that I was feeling sorry for myself less and less. My negativity and victim mindset was fading. That was yet another barrier that I have battled with for as long as I can remember. My attitude naturally shifted to gratitude and instead of thinking I was so unlucky that my baby wouldn’t sleep, I felt thankful for all of my blessings and honored that I was entrusted to take care of this baby no matter how tired I was. I noticed the victim mentality changing in other areas of my life as well.
3. Bearing Fruit
The whole concept of the fruits of the spirit finally clicked for me. Like I said, I grew up in church so I had heard about the fruits of the Holy Spirit since I was a small child. I always just thought it was the way Christians were supposed to act. We’re supposed to display joy, patience, love, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control and peace because we are Christian and that’s what good Christians do, right? But now I was beginning to see the Holy Spirit change my behavior from th inside out not because I was trying to be a good Christian but because it came naturally from a full surrender. I noticed my words were kinder, I was more patient and less frustrated. I felt more at peace, I was more gentle with my parenting, and so on. And this wasn’t coming from my own self will trying, it was coming from the Holy Spirit working through me since I had fully surrendered and allowed it to operate through me.
4. Removal of Self-Judgement
I’ve always been very hard on myself and with the weight gain that resulted from this season I was extra hard on myself at first. Beating myself up over the fact that I didn’t have the energy to work out and that I wasn’t eating as healthy as I should be. Embarrassed by the weight I had gained and the way that I looked and didn’t even want to go out in public often due to how self conscious I felt. After my surrender I stopped judging myself and gave myself more grace. I knew I would get back in shape when I have the energy to work out and that once I am able to get a full nights sleep my metabolism will naturally balance itself out better. I also gave myself grace about how tired I looked and for the days I walked out of the house with my shirt backwards or my hair not brushed. I was in survival mode and doing the best that I could.
5. Speaking Life, not Death
When my friends had reminded me about how the bible tells us the power of life and death is in the tongue I tried to watch what came out of my mouth but struggled. After I fully surrendered it came more naturally to censor my speech. Now I speak so much more life into not only the situation, but to my whole life and everyone in it.
A Change of Perspective
After fully surrendering to the Holy Spirit, I made the decision to use this time awake at night for good. Instead of spending my time awake in the middle of the night feeling sorry for myself and doom scrolling, I decided to use it to become an intercessor. I would nurse on one side and lift my other arm in the air while I prayed out loud for anyone and everyone. Praying over my family, my friends, over this nation and over the world.
I started blasting worship music and praising God despite not seeing a change in my situation. My favorite song to play was “Do it again” It resonated with me so much because of how many trials God has brought me through in my life. He’s done it many times before and I knew he would do it again.
I decided to start praising God through it all and stop speaking negatively. It didn’t happen perfectly overnight and there were still times where I would catch myself and correct myself but I stopped letting the victim mentality and the negative talk take over and got better and better day by day.
I created a nighttime routine where I rocked her to sleep while praying over her and singing worship songs to her and started expressing gratitude to God for all of the blessings he has given me and thanking Jesus for dying on the cross and then asking God to take over this battle for me and give me the strength I need to carry on.
I started spending more time in prayer and in the word and each day I gained more and more strength and confidence that I would make it through this season no matter how long it took.
I saw something on social media where someone was saying how they started telling God “thank you for trusting me with this trial” and I thought that was a beautiful shift of perspective and I started to say it for my situation.
God didn’t miraculously make my baby sleep through the night. Even now, at 15 months old, shes still not sleeping through the night. BUT… what God DID do is give me the strength and supernatural stamina to carry me through this storm. God helped me safely cook and drive my kids around. God kept my depression from overtaking me despite my history of severe depression and a history of a need for 9+ hours of sleep to function every day. I wouldn’t say I am perfectly thriving physically, but I am functioning and now I have joy and a level of strength I didn’t have before. Something I never thought I could overcome or survive I am here surviving and that is only because of God. I do still pray every night that it will be the night she finally sleeps through the night, but every time it doesn’t I remind myself that in time she will and that in the meantime God is carrying me through.
His Grace is Sufficient
One day while reading my bible, God led me to 2 Corinthians 12:9. Apostle Paul had just asked the Lord to remove what he described as “the thorn in his flesh” and instead of removing his personal struggle the Lord said to him “My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness”. Paul goes on to say “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me”. Then verse 10 says “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I broke down in tears at the realization that my human weakness that I had been complaining about created the perfect space for God’s strength to show up the most clearly.
The Best Outcome
Even through all of the strife, everything that I lost in this season, and all of the physical, mental and emotional despair, it brought me to a special place with God. A place where I now feel stronger than ever in my faith and I’ve learned how to completely surrender to him. Now I can see that God wasn’t trying to make me suffer, he was trying to refine me and draw me closer to him. The circumstances, combined with postpartum hormones and vulnerability, could have led to a heartbreaking outcome. But instead it made me a stronger person, a better mom and wife, and a better warrior for the kingdom. What the enemy hoped would steal, kill and destroy me, God meant to bring me life to the full (John 10:10).
Fireproof
If you are a mama who is also going through a similar struggle with a baby who doesn’t stay asleep for long stretches, I want you to know that it is possible for God to carry you through. Pray and surrender to Him. Who knows, maybe your prayers will lead to your baby sleeping through the night. But even if they don’t, that doesn’t mean God isn’t listening. He will carry you through regardless of what your baby does or doesn’t do. Sometimes the answer to what we want comes differently than we expect but that doesn’t mean it isn’t HIS perfect answer for us.
No matter what fire you are walking through, it doesn’t matter how tough you are or how good you are at white knuckling it. Things are always better when you surrender to Him and His will. For some people, it comes naturally. And for others, like me, who are a little more stubborn, you might need to be broken to fully experience the kind of relationship you have with God that only comes from a full surrender. Just like 2nd Corinthians 12:9 says, God’s grace is entirely enough to sustain you and his divine power shines brightest when you admit your human weakness. Your limits create space for God to show his true strength through you. Letting go and relying fully on God is what this season will teach you and ultimately lead you to your best life possible.
Sometimes God delivers you from the furnace and sometimes he just makes you fireproof. I wanted so badly for him to deliver me from this season as quickly as possible but he had plans to make me fireproof and now im so glad that He did.
Come to Him
In Matthew 11:28 Jesus says “Come to me, all ye who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”. Through this season of my life and the testimony that came from it I have never found this to be more true. Your circumstances may not change overnight but the Lord will give you rest.
No matter what you are going through and what level of exhaustion it is causing you, rest assured that if you put your trust and faith in the Lord he will keep you going. Psalm 55:22 says “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.”
The Lord will not let those who trust him fall or fail. My story is proof of this. What the enemy hoped would destroy me God used to make my faith stronger than ever and lead me to a full surrender to him that led to a joy and peace that can only come from submitting yourself fully to the Lord.