By Marcus Tarr
One of the hardest challenges of our married life came a few years ago when our son was almost two years old. For nearly the first two years of his life, he had a very hard time sleeping. Most babies wake up a couple of times each night. Our son would wake up crying every 5 to 10 minutes. After we got him calmed down and asleep again, he would be awake a few minutes later, and this would go on hour after hour, night after night.
We (well, mostly my wife, since she was still breastfeeding him) weren’t getting the sleep that we needed, and we were at a loss as to how to help him. People told us we needed to let him cry it out and put him in his own room, but the Spirit told us that wasn’t what he needed. We felt that he needed to be close to us. So we struggled through week after week, month after month.
It eventually got to the point that we realized we needed to get professional help. We took him to a sleep specialist at Primary Children’s, where they ran some tests. They didn’t find anything that was noticeably wrong with him. It seemed like we had tried everything, and we felt defeated.
It was at this point that we started to feel promptings to have another child. These came as a complete surprise, and we resisted them for a while. We could barely handle the toddler we had. How on earth could we manage another one?
We decided to pray about it, and we felt that we needed to act on the prompting. We felt the peace that only God can give. The day we committed to have another child was the night our son slept through the night. It was an absolute miracle. We knew that only God could do this great thing and that it was a sign from Him that we were doing His will. Our son has had his ups and downs with sleep since then, but eventually he got to the point where he started sleeping through the night consistently.
Now we are grateful that we have two beautiful children. God is good, and when we put our trust in Him, He can help us accomplish things we couldn’t do on our own. And sometimes doing the thing that seems impossible in the moment is the way to unlock the blessings He has in store.
I know that we receive no witness until after the trial of our faith. So if we are having trials of faith, that is a positive thing. It is a gift to be blessed with a witness of the goodness of God. Often, our trials are the only thing that truly humble us because they bring us to our knees to admit that we can’t do it alone and that we need Him. I’m grateful for this experience and this reminder that with faith in Jesus Christ, all things are possible.