After 8 Years of Waiting, Prayer Answered for Childless Couple

“I don't want to tell anybody just in case. That was my thing, ‘just in case,’ which really, I was scared. I was so scared.”

What Elena Robles was afraid of was having another miscarriage. The first one came two years earlier in 2008. After years of trying, she and her husband, Eric, had told everyone their dream of having children was finally coming true.  

“You’ve had people praying for you. And then you tell all the people that you're expecting finally. And now you have to tell them, sorry, no, that's not happening.”  

Now, pregnant a second time, they had waited to share the news. “And then --it happened again. And we lost it,” Elena says.  

Like the first time, Elena wouldn’t let it show how much it hurt. “It was okay, all done. Emotionally, just kind of cried a little. But my husband was like, you should be more upset than this. And I'm like, I'm done.”

In the coming months, hiding their disappointment, pain and anger would become harder... for both of them.

"I started telling God, ‘Hey, I'm mad about this,’ Eric recalls. "You're just like, ‘God, why?’ I have to watch my wife go through this. You know, I could take it. I could do it. But to watch her go through it was really difficult."

“We were redoing some of the stuff in the baby's room. We found some baby books that people had given us – baby names, getting pregnant. Finally, I was so mad. My husband was looking at me, staring at these books and not knowing what to do with them. Do we save them? Do we hope? Do we put them somewhere where we don't see them? I'm crying, and he grabbed the books and just threw them,” Elena remembers.

Still, they prayed, hoping they’d have a baby of their own. A year later in 2011, another positive test... and another miscarriage, Elena’s third. Her doctor assured them there was no physical reason why she couldn’t carry a baby to term. So, Elena felt maybe she was to blame.

“I was mad in the kind of way where you are boiling on the inside, and you don't know what to do with yourself. Why am I disappointing myself? I'm disappointing these people. I feel like I'm disappointing the Lord. I was afraid,” Elena admits.

Even then, the couple never blamed God, as they tried to come to terms with the fact that they may never have a baby of their own.

Elena remembers that time. “It was traumatic and hard and happening again, but there was a shift in knowing that, yes, I live in a broken world. Bad things happen and in spite of that, the Lord is still good.”

"God, if this doesn't happen, I still love you. You're still God,” Eric cried. “I got to the point where as much as it would hurt, and it would constantly hurt, I was going to be okay.” 

Then, a year later, in November of 2012, Elena was at a women’s conference where one of the speakers led a time of ministry and prayer for the participants. Elena wasn’t interested.

“I had made this deal with myself going into the weekend, I am not asking for prayer for this again. I am not going up there. I can't measure up. Like, I can't do it. I'm tired.” Then, at the end of the service…

"He says, ‘The Lord is telling me there is somebody out there that has been dealing with miscarriages and wants to get pregnant.’”

Elena knew at once that she had to give everything over to God.

"Despite my stubborn ‘I am done,’ He was still willing to call me out. Any hesitation I had just melted away. I'm done trying to put my hands on this thing. I think that was the most vulnerable I let myself be. I couldn't hide anything. I couldn't hide how hurt I had been, how disappointed, how mad. I was surrendering myself, and instead of feeling looked at in a judged way, I felt held. I didn't feel abandoned.”

A few months later, she took another pregnancy test that, again, came back positive. Cautiously hopeful, she and Eric went for an ultrasound.

“We were holding our breath until we saw or heard a heartbeat,” Eric recalls. “We saw the heartbeat, and that was like, okay, okay.”

In fact, she was three months along.

"When we were looking at the monitor and we see this baby moving, it's like, ‘Wait, that is a person moving around?!’” Elena exclaims. "And I'm looking at the technician. I'm like, 'Wait, you have to understand, we've never been this far, and we're already this far.”’

On September 23, 2013, Elena had a healthy baby girl via c-section. Her first name “Isabel” means “God’s promise” and her middle name “Esperanza,” means “hope.”

“It was just the greatest thing to see her healthy, whole, loud as could be,” Eric laughs. “It was eight years of wanting that moment.”

“They bring her over. And I'm like, this is finally here, this moment,” Elena remembers. “And my little girl is in my arms finally. It was heaven on earth.”

Elena and Eric have since welcomed another daughter, Annabel. They want others to know that even when things seem hopeless, God hears and answers prayer.

“If I could encourage people to have the guts to let go, I think that allows the Lord to move in a way that we can't even imagine,” Elena says. “All of the things that you have felt that you've had to build up walls and protect yourself regarding, He's going to give you reason to have those melt away, and He's the only one that's going to be safe. He wants to know you; He wants to know the real you.”