We are in the middle of a seven-day 25th marriage anniversary celebration! And today is the fifth day! Praise God.

This celebration helps me to look back to the last 25 years and be thankful of God’s kindness and faithfulness to us.

This morning, after I studied my Bible, I knelt down to pray and I said, “Abba, how can I now thank You enough!” and I cried out of joy and gratitude.

The picture I shared with you yesterday brought many memories back to my mind. A week before that day – the day we took yesterday’s pic – I wrote in my journal this:

“Soon, very soon, I will sing this song in my home,” and wrote this song:

“ያሰብኩት ምኞቴ ደረደሰ

የጌታዬ ቅባት ፈሰሰ

እየሱሴ ገባ በቤቴ

አሜን አሰይ ሞላ ስለቴ!

አይተውኛል የሱ ውብ ዓይኖቹ

አደመጡኝ የሱ ውብ ጆሮቹ

ሊጎበኘኝ ወደኔ አቀና

ከጏዳዬ በታች ዘለቀና

መልስን ሰጠኝ ለእንቆቅልሼ

አርፊያለው በሱ ተዳስሼ

ጥያቄዬ እሱ መልሶታል

ልሰግድለት በእርግጥ ይገባኛል!”

Yes, as I wrote in my journal, within a week, I sang this song in my home! May the name of Jesus Christ be praised forever!

Guess what? I was singing that song the whole day today!

My Berhan, my Love, the man I was deeply in love with (still am) became a true believer of the Lord Jesus Christ in a blink of an eye. And the next day, I heard him singing a Gospel song while he was taking shower. When I heard him, in our one-bedroom apartment, I fell on my face on the floor and cried while smiling and laughing. I didn’t know that he was about to come out of the shower but he came out and I joined him and we began singing and “ማሸብሸብ” in our apartment. Praise God! Doesn’t the story itself sound like a fiction? It does to me even as I write it here.

Saying, “I was very happy” will definitely be an understatement.

Then within a month, I missed my period and I went to see my doctor. I was told that I was five weeks pregnant. I mean, just imagine how happy we were. We sat down and began to call to everyone we knew, families, friends, neighbors, co-workers and shared our good news. I went to shop for maternity clothes. I mean, talk about excitement, I was flying in the air.

Then the first storm hit our home as the Bible says,

“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house” Matthew 7:25 (please read the whole passage – Matthew 7:24-27).

On my six weeks of pregnancy, I began bleeding but it was not that bad. When we read online (yes, there was Google but was not as rich as it is now), we learned that it was called spotting. But within few hours, I began to bleed and severe pain. I freaked out! And my Berhan took me to the ER.

Without wasting their time, they told us that there had been a miscarriage and my body cleared it out so well that they didn’t need to do any procedure to clean my body. They simply said, “Sorry, you lost your baby.”

My husband didn’t know what to do with me. I was crying and pushing him away at the same time. My sister came to comfort me but I refused to listen to anybody. I cried for three days! I thought God was punishing me for all my sins. I stopped kneeling down to pray. Instead I was just lying face-down on the floor begging God to forgive me.

Since I didn’t have any knowledge about the mercy of God, I blindly followed my human instinct, cause and effect; “this happens because of this and that happens because of that” kind of instinct.

I called my mom and she comforted me saying, “In our culture, we call this a natural way of preparing the womb to the coming children.”

I said to her, “Mom, the doctor told me to wait for another year before I try to get pregnant again.”

She right away said, “Don’t listen to them. We all went through this and we got pregnant right away. Sometimes those who think they know a lot are actually ignorant. Don’t listen to them. Try to get pregnant right away.”

I trusted my mom’s advice more than the doctors’.

So, the project started in full force! And going to a clinic to take a pregnancy test every month became the new norm (yes, during that time there was no “Home Pregnancy Test Kit”. It was 1997.)

I remember the nurses at the clinic looking at me and whispering one to another. I didn’t care. Every month, I give them sample and I wait in the room, praying and wiping my tears. Then they open the door and they say, “You are not pregnant!” That statement was like a knife, going through my heart. I just say, “Okay” and as soon as I drive out of the complex, I start crying.

This went on for full eleven months!

During that time, I asked Berhan to divorce me many times because I mean, I knew all along that Berhan wanted to have kids. Whenever we go out, we sometimes stop by at those booths where you go in and put a quarter or two in the machine. Then the machine takes a picture of you and your boyfriend/girlfriend and prints out a child picture, the machine approximates the look of a baby that the couple may have in the future if they get married (I don’t know if they still have those booths in shopping malls). I used to keep those pictures (I couldn’t find them now). So, I knew that Berhan wanted to have kids. He even had names to his kids that I couldn’t give him.

We didn’t even take any test to know where the problem is but I concluded that the problem was with me (just like Johan 1-4) because God was punishing me for all my sins especially for those I committed after I became a born-again Christian.

My doctor told me, “Unless you stop being this obsessed and nervous to be pregnant, you won’t get pregnant. You have to relax and it will happen!”

I mean, how can anybody relax in this situation? While you believe that God is punishing you, and He refused to give you a child – as you believe, how can you relax?

Oh, my friends, Jesus Christ carried all our sins and died on the cross carrying all our punishments. God does not and cannot punish those who are in Christ.

However, God disciplines those who are in Christ. Listen:

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;

For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,

And He scourges every son whom He receives.

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” Hebrews 12:5-11 NASB

Don’t you love that?

Since I had a warped spiritual understanding of sin and forgiveness at the time, I suffered even more. I kept on asking Berhan to divorce me.

Was I crazy or what? Can you imagine if Berhan said, “You’re absolutely right. I need to find another woman who can get pregnant and give me a child. You’re just damaged goods,” and walked away? What would be my life after that?

I am glad that Berhan didn’t listen to me.

Then after eleven months, I missed my period and I went to the same clinic. The nurses gave me the same look. I gave them the sample. Then they came back and congratulated me. I was sitting there and listening, with absolutely no emotion whatsoever! I didn’t want to saying to myself, “What if the miscarriage happens again?”

So, I went home. My husband was in business trip. I waited until he came back home and I told him as if as a matter of fact, without any excitement. He was very excited and happy. He picked me up and kissed me. But I made him swear that he wouldn’t tell anyone until I became five or seven months pregnant.

The picture I am sharing with you today is one of the few pictures I took with my first pregnancy in our apartment. Who is in my belly? Abel Banko, the young man who recently got married. I wish my Berhan was in this pic but as usual, he was the one who was standing behind the camera, even back then.

You have no idea how happy I was to carry a child of the man I was deeply in love with. The thing is I still love my Berhan. I really do. I haven’t told you that fact recently, have I? I don’t think so. Well, let me tell you that now then! Okay, I’m kidding!///