(Photo by Molly Kelley)

Blessed is She Who Believed

By Molly Kelley

“Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord”

– Luke 1:45 (NKJV)

I was cleaning out my jewelry box and found this scripture scrawled onto a small, pink piece of paper. It was a verse I had been given at a retreat years ago, and it had divinely resurfaced at the exact time I needed it to. I had been in a long season of waiting, and my faith was growing tired. I didn’t know what God was doing or when this season would end, but I knew that through this scripture He was reminding me not to lose hope.

I have an autoimmune disease, and it is the root of the greatest trials I’ve experienced in my life, one of them being the inability to know if or when we could have children. When I rediscovered this scripture card, we were going on eight years of marriage, and the question of whether we would have a family or not still remained unanswered.

For about a year prior to this, my health had gotten increasingly worse. We were forced to make a decision to either put me on stronger medications or stay off medications completely so we could try to get pregnant. Through much prayer and conversation, we decided we were going to hold off on treatment and try to start a family. I was thirty at the time, and in my mind that is when these things are done! But God’s timing is never our own.

That week, I went to my new rheumatologist, confident in our decision, but as I shared our plans for the future, he unapologetically stole them away. He told me it was a terrible time to get pregnant, and not only that, but pregnancy may never be an option for me because of my declining health. I remember sitting in that sterile room, stunned, with silent tears streaming down my cheeks. For much of my marriage, I wasn’t even certain what I wanted in regards to family life, but I am absolutely certain of this, no woman wants to hear she can’t have children “not now and maybe not ever.” Just like that, our plans were over, and our future looked distinctively bleak.

I cried a lot that night, the weight of my doctor’s words weighing heavy on my heart. I went to bed re-playing the words of an old hymn in my head, “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” and tried to remember that God watched over me; however, I still awoke under a thick blanket of sadness. I needed to hear from the Lord; I was desperate for His comfort and peace. As I read my daily devotional that morning, God in His grace made His voice so clear: Do you believe I work all things together for good? Do you believe I’ve allowed this trial in your life for my glory and your ultimate good? Molly, do you believe?

That morning I made a decision to put my faith in God’s Word, to believe, even though there was no evidence I could see, that all things were working together for good (Romans 8:28). But as a year had passed and the ambiguity of our future grew, my faith had grown weak. I needed to be reminded of the truth of God’s Word. And that is when I found that little, pink piece of paper marked with the exact words I needed to hear. When the angel of the Lord told Mary she was to bear the Messiah, Savior of the world, Mary’s response was one of faith, and that is why Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, declared, “Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord” (Luke 1:45).

Now, I wasn’t promised a baby like Mary or told I would be healed, but I had been promised God was in control and working on my behalf in a way I couldn’t comprehend. I needed to believe this again. I needed to be reminded that I, like Mary, would be blessed for my belief, and God would fulfill His promises to me just as He had done for her. The day I cleaned out my jewelry box, God knew that scripture was the jewel I needed to find. It was the encouragement that bolstered my faith and reminded me to believe in God’s good plans again.

Within the same year I had found that scripture, I was pregnant with a baby boy. It was unplanned and supposed to be prevented, but God had His own agenda to fulfill. And let me tell you, it was good. The wait was long, and the road was hard, but in the end God was glorified, for faith never grows so strong as when it is under the pressure of an increasing weight.

This Christmas I pray we would be women who choose to believe and in return are blessed. That is the example Mary gives us, and I pray we could have faith like hers as we celebrate her Son, our great Savior’s birth.