It was about a year ago, now, when we first learned that there was possibly something wrong in my pregnancy. On that sunny Friday morning in April, I traveled to Dallas alone for my 12-week pregnancy checkup. Trey stayed home with Kate, and I was looking forward to eating at Chuy’s by myself after the appointment. It was to be a routine checkup, but it became very un-routine when when my obstetrician couldn’t find the baby’s heartbeat. We walked two rooms down to have a sonogram performed. Once the sono tech placed the wand on my gel-covered abdomen, I was quickly relieved to see the screen light up with life. My relief did not last long, though, for in a matter of moments, both my doctor and the sono tech were discussing with me nuchal translucency, genetic testing, and a possible chromosome abnormality.

I was on the phone with a friend the day I received a text that flipped our family’s world upside down. My sister was in her first trimester of pregnancy and was at her routine check-up when the nurse noticed something abnormal in her ultrasound – several markers for Down Syndrome. I remember reading her words, each one of them hitting my heart like a freight train. Down Syndrome doesn’t run in our family, this can’t be true, I told the Lord, begging Him to spare my sister of any potential heartache and hurt. She and her husband had been trying to have another child for years, this couldn’t be the way God would answer their longing.

“True joy, in fact, is never found in chasing the perfect. It is only found in chasing the genuine life of following Christ. It is the road less traveled, but it is the only road that brings us to true life!”

post from my sister on her journey of infertility, receiving news of the unexpected, and chasing Christ in life’s journey!