What 100 Mornings with God Taught Me About Waiting

In 2019, my husband and I started talking about having another baby. It wasn’t a big “let’s do this” moment—it was more like a quiet curiosity that kept showing up. Eventually, after enough conversations, I took out my birth control and we started trying.

Unfortunately, we struggled to get pregnant for years. Every negative test felt like a slap in the face. I tried to stay hopeful, but deep down, I knew what my body was capable of—and what it wasn’t. My history with pregnancy was already a mess: a miscarriage at 9 weeks, a successful (but difficult) second pregnancy that gave me my beautiful first-born daughter, and then a third that nearly killed me and ended with an emergency surgery that took one of my fallopian tubes.

So yeah—I wasn’t entering this next chapter with wide-eyed optimism.

I went to the fertility specialist already bracing for bad news. And sure enough, we were told that getting pregnant naturally would be very unlikely. We could try IUI or IVF, but those options were wildly out of reach financially. So we did the only thing we could: kept trying anyway.

By 2024, after two more losses, I was done. I quietly surrendered and accepted the fact that it just wasn't meant to be, and I would focus all my time and energy into my next dream, applying to medical school.

My husband was finishing flight school. We were prepping for another move. I was wrapping up my pre-reqs for med school and planning to start my application. I had plenty to be thankful for.

But here’s the truth: I wasn’t okay.

I had been out of the Marine Corps for over a year, I missed my friends like crazy, and financially we were barely scraping by. Every job I applied to fell through because of my school schedule. My grades had started to drop and everything just seemed forced. I was drowning in ambition, but totally unsure if I was even swimming in the right direction.

So I turned back to God. Hesitantly. Awkwardly?

I hadn’t touched my Bible in almost two years, so I went on a hunt for a local church that we could start attending. I found Church Unlimited’s YouTube channel and clicked on a random sermon. The pastor talked about how God had called him to pray for an hour every day for 100 days and all the changes he saw during that time.

Color me intrigued. I decided that since nothing else was working, I would give it a shot. I didn’t want to set a number though. I just needed to hear from Him. Desperately. So I made a decision: I’d give Him the first hour of my day. No deadlines. No expectations. Just a woman showing up every day, hoping God still had something to say to her.

And wouldn’t you know—it worked.

Not instantly. But enough. Enough to feel peace again. Enough to start craving those early mornings on the couch with my Bible and coffee. My mental health started to shift. My grades went up. My perspective widened. I found a waitressing job that let me pay my bills with only two shifts a week. We bought a house with less drama than ever before. The Navy finally fixed my husband’s pay.

For the first time in years, it felt like things were aligning—like I could breathe without holding it.

Before we knew it, it was time to PCS and we were packing for this move. I was cleaning out the bathroom and found one last pregnancy test shoved in the back of the cabinet. I almost threw it away, but instead I did the weird thing and took it. I can't be the only female who has randomly taken a pregnancy test when it randomly crossed her path?! I had three minutes to kill so I checked my period tracker. It said I would be about a week late from its prediction. That wasn’t new—my cycles could range anywhere from 40 to 100 days, and this would have been cycle day 40 something for me, so I thought for sure it would be negative and went back to packing. I was finishing picking up some trash and I went to grab the test off the counter...

It was positive.

I stood there in disbelief. Laughed a little. Then proceeded to take four more over the next several days. They were all “dye stealers”—so positive the control line looked weak in comparison.

I booked the earliest OBGYN appointment I could but had to wait five days (AKA an eternity). We went into the appointment, and I was bracing for bad news. Shaking as I lay on the table during the ultrasound my eyes were locked on the ultrasound tech's face. Looking for any hint of what she was going to say. "I'm sorry, there is no heartbeat" or "Yes, you are pregnant, but it is ectopic" were phrases I was all too familiar with. I had learned not to get excited.

But this time, the ultrasound tech reached for a remote, and turned on a TV that was mounted to the wall behind her. My heart sank (in a good way) because I knew she wouldn't have done that if it was bad news. I just knew.

The screen came on and there it was, something I hadn’t seen in a long time: A tiny grain of rice with a flicker of a heartbeat.

When I got home, I opened my Bible and my Bible app—and just broke down crying and singing God's praises. I was so distracted that morning I hadn't noticed it was Day 100 of my prayer journey.

Of course it was.

In reflecting on the last 100 days and our entire fertility journey I remembered the name Ava constantly popping up in my head. I am a nerd, so I looked up the meaning and in Hebrew it means "life" or "to live". There was no question that was the name I was choosing. I decided her middle name would be Grace since it was by God’s grace we conceived. I sat there with tears in my eyes and whispered, and it's so corny, but I grabbed my stomach and just whispered, "Thank you for giving me Ava Grace."

You may call it a coincidence, but I was 5 weeks and 4 days pregnant when deciding her name. I can't really describe it, but I just knew that she would be a girl and that would be her name.

Today

It’s 1:23 a.m. and I’m writing this while sitting in my rocking chair, holding a sleeping three-week-old Ava Grace. I still don’t fully understand how or why or when God chose to move—but I know He did.

I am humbled. Grateful. And honestly still a little stunned.

If you’re walking through your own season of waiting, of heartbreak, of feeling like God’s gone quiet—please hear me: It’s not over.

Even if you’ve stopped believing.

Even if you’ve stopped praying.

Even if you’ve stopped trying.

He’s still working.

And sometimes, when we finally let go of control, that’s when He shows up loudest.