Flash Backs to Declare His Glory

Psalm 96:3 - Publish His glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things He does.

I don't participate much in 'Christian culture' really. I tend to hang around on the fringes of that.

The Bible speaks a lot about what is supposed to happen when we have discovered Jesus.

Both those things – Christian culture and the Bible – basically agree that our main 'purposes' as people who say we believe Jesus is the Son of God are: to tell other people about Jesus so they can decide if they believe He is the Son of God and to tell of the amazing things that God has done in our lives so that He can be given glory. No biggies.

I don't do either of those things very often. Mostly because I am pretty sure if I started listing all the things that I know God did in my life, I would sound like I am lying or crazy. What is that? Fear, pride, undecided?

So here is one. One of the amazing things that God did in my life. Brooke.

I decided I believe that Jesus is the Son of God in 1997 I think. I am not good at remembering important dates, sorry. Shortly after that, I was consumed by an overwhelming obsession to have children, which was incredibly strange, since I had vowed to never have children. They annoyed me. With my staggeringly limited knowledge of God and how He worked, the thought dawned on me that it was HIM giving me the desire to have a baby. So then, it should all be easy peasy I figured.

Nope. We got pregnant fairly soon after we decided to try and three months in lost the baby. That did nothing good for my 'new faith'. At this point I was also struggling with depression and mental and emotional issues that I didn't even have names for. We were part of a small life group and I hadn't told them I was pregnant or that I had miscarried. I don't really remember the details of how everyone ended up finding out, but it was intense when they did. I sheepishly told them 'the thing' -- about how I felt like God was giving me a desire to have children but how confusing it was that I had lost one.

This revelation kickstarted about a two year stretch of prayer, healing and the beginnings of figuring out this 'relationship with God'. Here are three of the most prominent moments of that two year stretch:

1) Our Homechurch took a group of youth to a conference. At one point, the Pastor called any of the 'youth' up that felt they needed prayer. Of course, I was not a youth, but felt a strong tug to go get prayer. The Pastor was travelling along a line of youth and praying what he felt led to over them. He got to me and immediately began praying about babies! Side note: I spoke to him later and he was glad I had approached him because he said he had felt very uncomfortable praying for someone to have babies at a 'youth conference'! He was glad to know I was a married adult.

2) Some of the women in my homegroup felt led to pray healing prayers over me for physical and emotional restoration, so they did. One of our youth walked up to me one day out of the blue, put her hand on my shoulder, looked into my soul and declared, "Don't worry, you WILL have a baby."

3) At a different conference, the speaker offered to pray for me, and he spoke a 'life scripture' over me: Philippians 4:7 – "And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." When we did finally believe we were having a baby and picked a girl's name, the first from Koos' grandmother – Brooke and the middle from my grandmother – Olive (Olivia), we realized it means "stream of peace".

And there it is. It wasn't so obvious at the time, but looking back I can see just how involved God was with putting Brooke into our lives.

And come to think of it, even though this started out as 'one' thing God did, I can confidently add that He did it three more times.

On the way to the hospital, not-quite-two year old Brooke, wide awake at 3:00 am kept declaring, "My baby sister is coming, my baby sister is coming!" "It might be a brother Brooke, don't be sad if it is a brother." "Nope! My baby sister is coming!" Welcome Delaena – baby sister.

We decided to find out the third baby's gender at the ultrasound, except 'it' crossed 'its' legs and the technician couldn't tell. Again, Brooke - before she was four years old and I was only about five months pregnant - started asking, "When is baby Calahn getting here?" "Who is baby Calahn?" "The baby in your tummy!" What the heck? We had never heard the name Calahn and couldn't figure out where Brooke would have heard it either. And at that time, we had no idea how it was spelled or if it was a boy or girl name. But somehow, God was making it clear through Brooke, Calahn was on her way.

My pregnancies were pretty awful. I threw up almost the entire nine months, couldn't eat and lost weight. I still felt like after Calahn, we were not done having kids. It was again - a confusing thing, knowing I would be incredibly sick and trying to take care of three other kids but feeling like we were supposed to have one more.  And I thought it would be cool to have a boy.

In no uncertain terms, after Kael was born - rather dramatically because I was so sick - the doctors told us, "No more kids. You are lucky you both survived." Apparently, I had severe 'cholestastis of pregnancy'. Basically, my liver was not functioning properly while I was pregnant.  We were also informed we had been "lucky" that I and any of the girls had survived either.  It was unusual that myself and one baby had come away healthy from 'cholestastis of pregnancy', let alone four babies.

You can bet I questioned my sanity and my "God hearing" abilities after that. But just to reassure me that I was not nuts, God had one more confirmation waiting.

We were at my Mom's when Kael was born. I had been so sick I didn't have any energy to look after myself, three girls aged six and under and a newborn. So Mom was up to bat. One day a flower delivery arrived at Mom's place from Koos' employer back in Hay River. In it, were four old fashioned wooden play blocks, perfectly arranged in the order of Kael's initials: C.J.G.R. – Kael Josiah Gabriel Reintjes. Except, they had mistakenly put a 'C' block instead of the 'K'.

Brooke must have taken this picture. 
She felt she had free rein with the camera when I was busy with her new baby brother.
Who knew I'd use it in a blog twelve years later?

"No problem!" Mom declared, "I will stop by the flower shop and see if they can replace the C with a K." So Mom arrives at the flower shop and asks the lady at the counter if she could replace the 'C' block with a 'K' block. The lady kind of looked at Mom oddly, "Sure?!" "Well," Mom starts to explain, "The baby's first name, Kael, is spelled with a K, not a C." "Okay, Gwen..." Mom's town was a small town, so everyone knew everyone and the flower store lady remembered doing the order. Again, Mom was trying to make herself understood, "Well, you got the baby's other initials right, the 'J.G.R.', but Kael is spelled with a K not a C." Mom said the flower lady was quiet for a minute and then stated, "But we didn't know the baby's name, we just randomly put some old blocks in there that we had sitting in the back..." WHAT?? They both looked at each other I guess, and then the flower lady said, "It wasn't a full set of blocks, I will go see if we happen to have a K." And sure enough, there was a K.

After Kael was born, we told all our praying friends to STOP praying for kids for us, hahaha!

You can see the blocks to the left of his head. 
I just realized they were even color coordinated!

And that is how our family came about. These are just the first four of the 'amazing things' to declare that God has done for us.