A few months ago I had the opportunity speak our church's women's event. The below is the message that I gave to the ladies. I pray that it will encourage you as you journey on in life.
In our ladies
Bible study we have recently gone through the study, Jonah, “A life
Interrupted”. It really dove into the story of Jonah, and how he was a good,
little follower of God, until God decided to interrupt his perfectly planned
life.
The
study hit home and showed me how God has done such an amazing, incredible,
gracious, interrupted, hard, tear-filled, restoring work in my life, and I
would like to share a little bit of that story with you tonight.
Just to give
you a little back ground, I grew up in a simi-small town, with incredible
parents who have just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary and
one very over protective big brother. I
was taken to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights and Wednesday nights from
the time I was still in my mommy’s tummy!
Through that exposure to the things of Christ at an early age, I asked
Jesus into my heart and became a Christian at the age of 8. I was a very good, little Christian, Southern
Baptist girl, who pretty much followed all the rules, didn’t get into too much
trouble, read my Bible, tithed, went to church camp. The worst thing I did was kiss boys at youth
camp! My
view of God and the Christian life was, if you did all the right things, and
followed all “the rules”, then good stuff would be given to you and your life
would be relatively smooth. On the other
hand, if you did bad things, or broke any of “the rules”, then bad things would
happen to you and your life with not go smoothly!
To be honest that logic had pretty much be true in my life. That logic was about to be changed and
challenged as I entered into college, and the reality of WHO God is, was taught
to me through a string of “life interruptions”!!
When I was a
freshman in college several of my friends and I sat around one afternoon, and instead
of studying we talked about what we thought our future would look like! As we went around and talked, I said my
future looked something like this. My
first two years of college I would have fun then in about my junior year I
would meet the man I would marry, we would date, get married after graduation,
move back to my hometown of Greenville, Sc and then have 2 to 4 children. I really think at that moment God probably
about feel off His throne laughing!! I can
picture Him now looking over at Gabriel and saying, “Oh that sweet girl,
doesn’t know the journey she is about to take!”
My plan
seemed to be going just the way I wanted it to go. The summer after my sophomore year I met and
started dating this great Christian guy, and we continued to date through my
Senior and after graduation. After over
two years of dating I was sure an engagement was right around the corner. Yet, that was not God’s plan. Instead, after two and half years of dating,
“Mr. Wonderful” dumped me by an email!
No face to face, no phone call…just an email! What’s sort of funny or ironic is that one
of my favorite verses and a verse I hold onto as one of my life verses is Ephesians 2:10 which
states, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works
which HE prepared in advance for us to do!” Me getting dumped by “Mr Perfect” ,was
just the first of the interruptions that
God used in my life to grow me, shape me and show me the path that HE HAD
created for me!
As I was
mending my broken heart, I felt led to continue my education and started my
studies at Seminary. Not only did I
know, that a seminary degree would be a great addition to my resume, but I
figured it wouldn’t hurt my chances of getting married, if I went to a school
the was 70 percent guys and 30 percent girls!!
During my time in Seminary, I was given the opportunity to complete an
internship at First Baptist Woodstock.
From the moment, I started the internship, I felt at home.
It was such my desire to have a career at FBCW. Even though the internship was great, there
was not a position open for me, at the time, so back to seminary I went! A few months before I was set to graduate,
FBCW offered me a job! Even though it
was not moving back to Greenville, SC that I thought I wanted, God used a
“divine interruption” again, to open an even better door for me.
Now that I
was working at the mega church, and giving myself and my life to the Lord in
full time ministry, I knew that a husband was not far behind! But God had a little bit more work to do in
my life. During the next 4 years I worked
and ministered at FBCW, During those 4
years I was a bridesmaid 10 times, as I watched my friends marry their prince
charmings. I was getting to the point that
I was starting to think that maybe God wanted me to a Lottie Moon of my
generation and destined to be single forever. Yet,
God was about to “interrupt” my life, with a life changing, and name changing
interruption. One Tuesday
night during our singles Bible study, a friend of mine decided to play match
maker! She walked into Bible Study and
introduced me to one of her life long friends. That was the first time that I
looked into the eyes of my precious, amazing, incredible husband Adam. Just when I was done with guys and had given up on my dream of being a wife and mother, God
interrupted my life in the most wonderful way.
On
our first date, Adam picked me up in his white explorer and proceeded to turn
off the engine. I started getting a
little nervous, and just when I thought was going to be on episode of
American’s most wanted, he asked me if we could pray before we went on the date.
I have no
recollection of the prayer he prayed but the prayer I was praying was…PRAISE
THE LORD, my prince has arrived. Of
course I did not tell him that is what I was thinking. After just three short months of dating he
told me he loved me and then ten months later on a hike up Kennesaw Mountain,
he asked me to be his wife. On March 25,
2006, I finally became a Mrs. I became,
Mrs. Adam Cooler!! So finally after many
interruptions in the form of ridiculous guys, I was finally married at the ripe
old age at 29!! I was finally a wife!
Soon after
Adam and I were married, we decided that we wanted to start to “try” to have
children. Since I had taken sixth grade
science, I didn’t think it was going to take us too long to become pregnant! I had knew that A plus B equals C…tada, we
would be pregnant! Plus, I figured since I had kept my “true love waits”
promise I had made in 6th grade, and I had to waited so long to get
married, God somehow, “owed” me! Well getting pregnant did not happen as
quickly as I had hoped. After trying for
about six months on our own, I went to my OB and he gave me a little bit of
medicine and said, that we would check and see how it was going, but he was
sure that it would just take a few months of being on the medicine and we would
be pregnant. Yet, after 6 months, there
was still no pregnancy. So for the next
6-8 months, I was then sent to various of doctors, and was poked, prodded, had blood
taken and x—rays done of my most private parts. Still there was no pregnancy and really no
reason why I was not getting pregnant. By this point, I was
getting frustrated, mad, sad, upset and questioning God’s plan and timing!!
Finally, my doctor sent me to a specialist.
When we first met with them, I again got my hopes up. We met with the doctor and he said he would
need to rerun some of the test that I had already done, awesome, but that he
should have a plan in motion in just a few weeks. Soon it was decided that we would try the
less invasive route of doing an IUI or Inuterine insemination with me and he
felt 75% confident that it would work.
If you do not know what an IUI is, just think turkey basester. The date was set for the procedure. It happened that the date that was chosen was
Mother’s day. Well, of course I thought
that was a sign from the Lord, that the procedure would work. We went in for the procedure, it was quick
and painless. A few weeks later I went
in to have my blood drawn to see if the procedure had worked and if I was
finally pregnant. On that day, after my
blood was taken, I headed to one of my closest friends baby shower. I figured I
would not get the results so soon and if I did, how fun would it be to share
the news with all of my friends. While,
at the shower, my phone rang and it was the doctor’s office. I quickly ran and answered it, just knowing
the answer would be yes. Well, the
minute I heard the nurses voice I knew it was not good news. She gently told me that the results were
negative…I was not pregnant. At that
point I was devastated and just started crying hysterically. Remind you, still at my friend’s baby
shower. At that point, I was shown just
what amazing friends God has placed in my life.
They all jumped into action, getting me something to drink, hugging me,
drying my eyes and helping me get to my car and home. Once I got home, I just fell to the ground
and sobbed. I felt so broken hearted and
honestly so very let down by the Lord. With
little strength I did have, I got my Bible, turned to the book of Psalms and
just started reading them out loud. One of the Psalms that I
kept reading out loud was, Psalms 18:1-19
(READ PASSGE). As I read
that passage I just felt the Lord, over and over say two thing, “It’s going to
be okay and soon and very soon!”
As I was
getting back up off my face from praying to the Lord, a great friend of mine,
Sarah called me and said, we were heading out to the lake to watch some
wakeboard competition. This might sound
random and not “spiritual”, because I was facing a crisis, but sometimes when
you are facing a heartbreaking, faith shaking time, you don’t need to hear one
more Bible verse or one more quote from Beth Moore. You just need a friend to support you and get
your mind off of the experience!
A few weeks
later, which just happened to be Father’s day this time….Awesome we went and
tried the IUI again, hoping for a good outcome but really just following the
doctor’s advice. After waiting the three
week waiting period Adam and I went and I had my blood drawn to see if the procedure worked this time. As we were driving back from the doctor’s
office, in fact we were right at the intersection of 41 and 92, my phone
rang. The nurse barely got out the
words, CONGRATULATIONS…before I was screaming and crying at the same time, and
Adam had to pull off into a bank parking lot, because of all the tears in the
car. PRAISE THE LORD. After 2
½ years of pokes, prodding, prayers, tears and tantrums, God had answered
our prayers. He answered our prayers for
a child and her name is Ava Elizabeth Cooler.
She is 3 ½ now, almost 4 and if you attend Cedarcrest you may see my
little miracle in Elevate Jr every Sunday!!
Now Ava is
not only a miracle because of how hard we had to “work” to conceive her, but
she is a miracle all by herself because she decided to make her debut into the
world, 10 weeks early at just 2 lbs and 14 ounces. After spending 57 days in the NICU, and
almost 4 years of weeks filled with OT, PT and Speech therapy, it is only by
the amazing grace of God, that she has no vision, hearing or breathing issues and
has caught up with her peers in her development.!!
Because of
the dramatic experiences we had in both concieveing and having Ava, we had pretty much decided that we
were going to be an only child family.
We thought about going through
all the infertility treatments again and even looked into adopting, but I knew
that I just was not emotionally recovered enough to endure the heartache that I
may face with either option. So we went
on with our life. We enjoyed family
trips, lazy Saturdays and just each moment with the little family that God had
given us. At this point, Ava had turned
3 and I had turned 35, and we got into a groove with life and were moving
on. Again, I started putting my plan in
motion, and started preparing to go back to work, thinking Ava would be in
Kindergarten in about 2 years. Then
God again, decided to divinely interrupt my perfectly planned out life. Soon after easter of this year, I started
feeling like I was gaining weight and just did not feel like myself. I just figured that is what happened when you
turned 35. We jointed the YMCA, I took
kick boxing classes and swam almost every day, and also began trying to eat
really healthy. Still, I was feeling
very tired and the weight was adding in up on me, not coming off!! Finally, I went to Kroger and decided to buy
a pregnancy test, just to “rule out” being pregnant, so I could start figuring
out why I felt the way I felt. Even as I
was taking the test, I knew it was going to be negative. Hadn’t I had 150 negative pregnancy tests
when trying to conceive Ava. Hadn’t I
been told by my doctor, that there was NO WAY I could become pregnant on my own
with our medical intervention. Well,
ladies my God is greater, higher, and then any doubt of mine and any doctor’s
diagnosis. Because even before the 3
minute waiting period was up, I look at the test and there, in bright pink was
a positive sign!! That positive sign
will be born on December 5th and her name is Anna Mincey
Cooler!!
God is great, amazing, powerful and full of
grace and mercy. As I close tonight, I
just want you to remember one thing from my story and that is that God’s plan
and is timing are perfect, even if sometimes they can be very painful!! God
has taught me through this amazing, incredible, interrupted life, that sometime
the greatest blessings and his greatest gifts come from and through our darkest
, and hardest times!!
