Anybody who asked me about babies when I was a little girl got the same answer: I would rather have puppies. I’ve sure changed since then, I thought as I stepped into the pre-dawn darkness one September morning. My job started at 6:00 a.m., so this time of year I made the 45-minute commute in the dark.
The drive gave me a lot of time to think, and lately all my thoughts were the same: Would John and I ever have a baby?
I pulled onto the country road that led to the office. The sky was still full of stars. I tried to concentrate on the beauty instead of worrying, but it was impossible.
John and I started dating senior year of high school and wed in our 20s. The first couple of years I hardly gave thought to children. There were so many things to discover about my husband and our new life. “When it happens it happens,” John and I told each other.
But when our friends started having babies, the empty space got harder to ignore. All the prayers in the world hadn’t helped.
One afternoon at the beginning of summer, I came home from work, flopped on the bed and sobbed into my pillow. John found me there, still crying.
“Listen,” he said when I’d dried my tears. “Let’s give ourselves the summer not to worry about this. Maybe we’re trying too hard, stressing ourselves out. Then at summer’s end we’ll have a serious talk about our options.”
John was right. It was a relief to take time off from worrying. But our worry vacation was coming to an end. Looking out at the road ahead, my old fears flooded back into my mind. I’ve prayed so much already. Has God even heard me?
The stars in the sky knew nothing of my troubles and shined brightly. The road rose up an incline, drawing me closer to them. As I crested the top of the hill I gasped.
A shooting star blazed across the sky. Its glittering tail stretched out behind it, leaving a glow that lit up the darkness. Without thinking, I chanted, “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight….” I didn’t have to name the wish.
God knew what I wanted. Watching the star disappear out of sight, I felt He’d sent me an angel to catch my prayer and deliver it to heaven.
The shooting star disappeared and seemed to take my anxiety with it. I knew my prayer would be answered—how I wasn’t sure.
When John and I sat down to have our first talk about options, he was surprised by the change in my attitude. I told him about my shooting star.
Somewhere, somehow God was at work on my prayer, even if I didn’t know how. There were many options for a couple wanting to have a child. One of them was right for us. “We’ll find the answer soon,” I assured him. John couldn’t help but share my confidence.
On October 1, just four weeks after seeing my star, I learned I was pregnant. Four weeks pregnant to be exact. Perhaps the angel I imagined carrying my prayer was cradling the answer to it in her arms.
