October 2, 1978
A grateful memory
A story of hope and expectation
Today is one of those days when my mind wanders back in time. It’s October 2nd, and I’m thinking back to the birth of our first child, our daughter Jiska, in 1978. Her arrival was anything but simple; it came with a whole story.
A young love that endured
Ingrid and I met around 1965. I was seventeen, she was sixteen. We were two young people just starting out, with no real idea what the world had in store for us. It was a typical young love. After getting to know each other for five years—first a few years of going steady and then, as was customary back then, a two-year engagement—we got married in 1970. We had one big desire: to love each other for a lifetime and live together for each other and for the Lord. And to this day, we have succeeded.
A silent sorrow
At that time, however, we also carried a great worry, a silent sorrow. We desperately wanted a child, a regular, happy little family. A home, a tree, a pet—nothing special, just happy with each other. But that last part was overshadowed, because Ingrid couldn’t have children. Month after month, we watched for a sign of life, but each time, we were met with disappointment. The despair turned into sadness and tears. Sometimes we wondered: what’s going on? We had ourselves examined by doctors, but they couldn’t find anything. There was no physical blockage, no clear reason for our childlessness.
An unexpected question
About seven or eight years into our marriage, someone from our church approached Ingrid. Perhaps it was out of ignorance, or maybe it was a lack of tact, but she asked, “Are you still not pregnant?” It wasn’t a loving comment, even if it might have been well-intentioned.
But she added something else: “Isn’t it crazy that a child just won’t come? There must be something.” Those last words made us think. It had never occurred to us that there might be something in our lives or our history that was causing a blockage. Something that, despite the fact that we were physically healthy, was standing in the way.
Searching for answers
We started thinking about our past. What had we done? What might have gone wrong? One of the things we had done was dowsing. We thought it was harmless. You’d take a thread with an object attached—in our case, a ring—and ask a question. The dowsing predicted we would have three children. If such a simple trick could predict something like that, weren’t we allowed to have hope?
But we soon discovered that dowsing is a sin. You shouldn’t let your future be determined this way, because we knew our lives were in God’s hands. We confessed this and asked the Lord for forgiveness. But that didn’t solve the problem yet. The woman’s words stayed with us.
A prayer that changed everything
Finally, we decided to go to our pastor and ask him to pray for us. In that conversation, we discovered that in our family history, there had often been death, stillborn children, or pregnancies that didn’t develop.
He prayed for us: that the influence of death would in no way block our happiness in life. The powers of darkness were broken over our lives. As he said this and prayed for us, the pastor suddenly had a vision. He wasn’t a man who boasted about this; he was a loving, humble brother. He said, “I’m getting an image, and I’d like to share it with you.” He saw a house with closed shutters and a barren, dull garden. Suddenly, he said, it began to shine, the shutters opened, and the garden started to bloom. For us, that was a sign of hope, a signal from heaven that a change was coming. And that change did come. A month or two later, Ingrid was pregnant.
I remember a tense moment during Ingrid’s pregnancy when she suddenly started bleeding heavily. We were so scared, of course, but we immediately started praying. And it wasn’t just us—everyone we told started praying for us, too. Thankfully, everything turned out to be okay.
The fulfillment of the promise
Now, so many years later, I think back on this story. Our daughter now has her own family with growing children and is thriving with her husband. It’s been 47 years since her life began. A life with us, a life with God, and now also a life with her own family. Soon, we’ll go to her to celebrate her life and speak beautiful words about her future—how wonderful is that?
A birth announcement full of meaning
I can still see her birth announcement card. A card with a lovely, colourful garden on it, which perfectly matched the vision the brother had received when he prayed for us.
On the card, we put the text: “With joy we see the fulfillment of the promise.” That promise is found in Psalm 37, verse 4: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
We have experienced how the Lord has fulfilled the desires of our hearts. First and foremost by giving us our dear daughter, whom we remember with so much joy and gratitude. But we are also happy and grateful that God has had His hand on her and on our lives all these years. Even through all the difficult times—when our lives were in turmoil, both spiritually and physically—we were able to know that the hand of God was upon us. That we were allowed to delight in Him.
And that is how I want to honor Him, with this testimony as well.
@wimvanputten