In today’s world we are challenged in innumerable ways. And
marriage is one such institution that has incredible challenges which were not
there when my parents were married almost 45yrs ago. In the 9 yrs that my wife
and I have been married, I can safely vouch that our challenge started even
before our marriage day. But I know the one magic reason that will help us
survive any adverse situation challenging our marriage. Faith was, is and will always be the center
of our lives. I want to narrate one amazingly hopeless situation we were in
right upfront in our marriage. But for faith, we may never have recovered from
these jolts, but here we are feeling awesome as a family. The reason I want to
share this experience is because I need to share how hard GOD works in our lives and how little we realize it. And my hope is that everybody who reads this would reflect and recognize HIM in their lives.
This story started the day of my marriage on Dec 22, 2007 to
a wonderful person in Priya. Priya was so grounded in her faith and so
connected to Jesus that until this day I am the 3rd person in our
marriage. Well, the first person in our marriage is Jesus and hence I could see
how we were so connected to each other. On our first night, I learnt that our
immediate future plans were different. Priya was inclined to have a number of
children, whereas I was more inclined towards consolidating my career and building
my family was secondary. I wasn’t perturbed by this as I thought that it was
more about her being a woman and me being a man. In just a couple of weeks
after our marriage, I left India to the USA to continue my postdoctoral studies
at Yale and Priya joined me a month later. Living in a small rented apartment,
far away from our loved ones, we set about building our little home hoping our
innumerable dreams would come true. But challenges started right away. In a
month, we realized that my postdoctoral salary was not sufficient to sustain
us. And while we could barely survive
for now, it definitely would not help our future family. So, just after living together for 4 months,
Priya flew off to Columbus, Ohio, about 1000 miles away from where I was to
work for an insurance company. And thus started a game to collaborate our very
demanding jobs with marriage and future hopes. Every other weekend or two, one
of us would hop onto the plane, sometimes paying exhorbitant ticket fees in order
to spend a few hours with each other. And this continued for just less than two
years. But, deep within we had already learnt how much we loved each other and
how beautiful the institution of marriage was and we already started
entertaining the idea of having a child inspite of this difficult situation.
But, a greater challenge was at hand. We realized that we were
at the precipice of being infertile given our very stressful lives. We started
working on this issue with our medical doctor with a fervent hope that with
time, we would overcome this challenge. Interestingly however, our pillar of
hope was not the medical intervention, but Jesus himself. We started to
strongly pray to HIM everyday, believing that GOD must have had a beautiful
plan for us. What that plan was and how HE would execute it, we did not know.
As time went on, and all our situations remaining the same, hope started
slipping away, especially to me. For someone who had not taken the issue of
fatherhood as a top priority for more than a year into marriage, I started
dreading of not becoming a dad, ever. And the fact that we were working far
apart did not help matters of the mind.
How would we settle down as a family if we were so far apart and meeting
for a couple of days a month? We had no
idea how we could overcome these challenges. While my faith was strong, I did
not understand GOD’s will and direction. And clearly things had to change as
this was not what I imagined our family path to be. And then appeared a sign.
The company that Priya worked in Ohio allowed her to work
from home in Connecticut. Having lived almost couple of years apart, we
recognized the first sign for that GOD had started to work on us and we just
had to keep up our faith and work accordingly. And true to our faith, in just a
couple of months we had another miraculous news. In spite of our medical
symptoms persisting, we were pregnant. It happened over a Friday when Priya had
gone back to Ohio to attend to some urgent hectic work. She kept complaining of nausea even though
she had been fully healthy and well. And when she returned over the weekend and
her nausea became worse and persistent, we doubted if we were pregnant. We quickly
got in touch with the doctors and they confirmed that this was no fluke. They
were happy for us and we were ecstatic.
And immediately my confidence soared to such heights that I broke a golden
rule. I wanted to share this news with our immediate families right away
instead of waiting a while. And when I called, I was surprised that instead of
great excitement, we were cautioned not to reveal this news until a couple more
months. I did not understand why nobody was as excited as me. This was the most
wonderful news. And happy news didn’t come often.
For Priya and me, this was a perfect story. We had gone
through a tough test right upfront our marriage and we had come out of it with
flying colors. And we had the best news ever. But, happy news does not last as
long as we want. We were right at the
top of the mountain waving out at the rainbow when a thunderbolt hit us and hit
us hard. The very next day after discovering our pregnancy and announcing to
our skeptical families back home, our pregnancy started going downhill. We started
having symptoms of miscarrying. And nothing helped. We rushed to the doctors
and they could do nothing but feel sorry for us. It was all over for us and
when we came back home all we had was eerie silence and tears. We were just
dumbstruck and had no idea how we could recover from this. We just could not understand where our life
was heading. The worst case was that we
had nobody to console us. I always knew that life was precious. But how
delicate it is, I had just experienced.
Having no answers to lift us up, we lay at home in darkness.
Nobody said a word. Tears kept welling. We were totally shattered and broken.
Even dawn was far away. So, we encouraged each other to say the prayer for the
night and retire to bed. It was best for the worst day of our lives to end
fast. When I got up to light the altar candle, I realized that amidst all the
grief I had forgotten Jesus. And it was then that HIS words started resonating
in my mind repeatedly. “Your faith has healed thee”. This was completely
against the emotions I was going through. Here we were dealing with the
greatest loss of our life ever and here was Jesus talking to me about being
healed. Luckily, for once I was patient. I had nothing to lose, but hold onto
these words and try to comprehend. And then it hit me. For the first time I
realized how GOD had all along heard our prayers and had got to work on our
lives. And when I shared this thought with Priya did we realize the power of
GOD and how strongly HE was working in our life.
We were
HEALED now. We were no longer barren. We had conceived. Yes, we were broken
this moment. But now we had our very own angel. We had found our peace. I was
once again climbing the mountain looking at the rainbow, this time more beautiful
than ever with an angel smiling above it. We named her Gabrielle. Now we were
as ready as ever to receive HIS blessings. And till this day, each and every
moment, we feel HIS blessings. We conceived in 5 months time, and again 3 years
later. Claire and Noah are our testimony that when we act out our faith, HE
never lets us down. We know that there
will be many difficult tests on our journey. But, one thing is for certain. In
our boat, just as the disciples experienced on the stormy seas, Jesus is present
and showing us the way. As long as we keep our faith in HIM, He will lift us up
time and again. That night, just like a parent puts his kid to bed, I felt HIS
hand and HIS lullaby. And I hear HIM and feel HIM ever since.
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