Elyse's Waylane Story ♡
Hi, my name is Elyse Albritton! This is my Waylane story.
I have wanted to be a mom my entire life. My love for others and desire to take care of everyone and make others happy has led to the desire to start a family. I have prayed for my future children since I was a child. That was something my parents taught me to do, because they did the same for us. God always gave me a feeling that it wouldn’t come easy, as I had female troubles throughout life. Maybe he was preparing me for the journey before it even began. Waiting to have a baby. I was ready to have a baby a while before we ever started officially trying. The journey turned into one of waiting and wondering will it ever happen? There were many issues I had that caused me to fear what the future held for me. After the first month of trying, I knew I needed to make a choice early on. I could either live in fear for who knew how long and let anxiety control my life and marriage, or I could put my hope and trust in the Lord and know that His timing was far better than ours. So that is the choice I made. I by no means was perfect. In fact, I had many moments of sadness, weakness, and confusion. I had times where I took it out on my husband, and I had times where I felt more lonely than ever before. Not one person knew for over half a year that we were even trying, and even when people knew, I had times of feeling like no one understood what it felt like to wait on something that you were created to desire. In those moments, in my weaknesses, that is when He was strong. When I shifted my eyes to the Lord and asked Him to show me that He was there, I always found Him. When I put my trust in the Lord, he filled me with joy. He filled me with hope. He filled me with peace, just as Romans 15:13 says. I realized that my weaknesses and doubts were lies from the enemy and the only way to drown them out was to fill myself with Jesus and what He says.
Prayer journaling has always been an outlet for me. It is something I have done throughout my life, but I really picked it up at the beginning of 2020 ironically enough. As I read through my prayer journal, I came across so many “God winks”. These are times that God gave me ways of letting me know that He was right there with me. He gave me eyes to see what He was doing in some of my hardest moments.
God Wink 1:
Dreams. God gave me dreams throughout the wait that gave me hope. I have one dream specifically that was of a little girl. I was holding her in my arms, palms out just looking into her eyes. It was so real. I had dreams of positive tests. I just didn’t know what the dreams meant at the time. I was confused, but truly believed God was just reminding me He was there.
God Wink #2: Using others
In my prayer journal, I was reminded of a week that I was struggling and praying that God would give me a sign of hope. I was going to a conference that weekend, so I just knew it would happen there. Then it didn’t. I wasn’t sure what it meant. Later that week, God used a student to speak to me. A student randomly raised their hand and said, “Mrs. Albritton, I have a feeling that you are going to get pregnant this year.” I had to hold the tears back. Not this month, but this year. God used my sweet student to relay that hope to me, which also showed me how special it is that even though I didn’t have a child of my own, I had these precious students as my babies, and I could use this time to be there for them.
God Wink #3:
I cling to songs when I am going through something. During this season, Maverick city had so many songs that spoke straight to my heart and were the words I wanted to say, but sometimes couldn’t. Some of the songs were Jireh, Great is Your Faithfulness, and I’m Gonna Wait on You. I would sing these songs at the top of my lungs, especially on my worst days, because I knew i needed to shift my focus back to the Lord. Not against Him. Luke and I decided that “I’m Gonna Wait on You” would be our song for this journey. Wait on the Lord. One night, i was feeling low. I was down and pushing Luke away. I started a silly argument and was just sulking in self pity to say it bluntly. What does Luke do in that moment? He went to his “hunting room” where He does His bible studies. I heard him turn on worship music and I knew He was doing His quiet time. What was I doing? Laying in bed feeling sorry for myself, and probably scrolling through social media, which would only make me feel worse. God spoke to me in that moment, and I’ll be honest, i tried to tune it out. I kept hearing God say go pray with Luke. I told God I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay right where I was. Repeatedly God said go pray with Him. Finally, I said okay and walked the walk of shame slowly to the room. When I walked in “Talking to Jesus” was playing. God was telling me loud and clear that we needed to talk to Jesus together. So the only thing I knew to say to Luke at this point was, “Can we talk to Jesus together?” He said yes without hesitation even after the way I had been. I asked if we could kneel by the bed to pray together, so that’s what we did. Out of hundreds of songs on shuffle playing, as soon as our knees hit the ground, “I’m Gonna Wait on You” started playing. I instantly understood why God wanted us to pray together. To take us back to Him. To take me back to Him. This was just the start of many moments of God revealing himself to me when I had eyes to see Him.
God Wink #4
My favorite of all - the ladybugs.
I had a friend who struggled with getting pregnant. We connected and she prayed the most intentional prayer over me. She told me that the month she got pregnant that she started seeing red birds everywhere. She would see them every single day all the way up until the day she found out she was pregnant. She prayed that God would send me my own version of a red bird the month that I found out I was pregnant.
I have seen God work in mighty ways that are undeniable. I have felt His presence in moments like I can't explain. I knew this could be possible to happen for me, but I still wasn’t sure. I still wondered if I could see God so evidently. Sometimes it is easy to wonder if He is really there? Does He see me? Does He know how I am feeling and does He care? Let me tell you right now that God is always there and always cares. The question is… are we looking and listening for Him or are we blinded to what He is doing?
Q: Do I want Jesus more than I want a baby?
I made myself pray that prayer out loud. I wanted to speak it and to make sure that before I brought a child into this world, Jesus was and would always be my number one priority.
This was an experience of feeling God right there beside me like never before in the most intentional ways. And then November of 2021 came.
At the end of November, after much time spent praying about what was next, Luke and I felt a peace in starting a new medicine to help me get pregnant. At the beginning of December, we were outside putting up Christmas lights. Out of nowhere, a ladybug flew and landed on my arm. I don’t know why and I can't explain it, but at that moment I knew God sent it. I felt God’s presence come over me. This was my sign from the Lord, but it was just the start. I started seeing ladybugs everywhere. I saw them at my house, in my classroom at school, in my parents house, and even when we went to a deer camp. Sometimes I would see just one, but other times there would be over 10 in groups. These are all places I had never seen before. Does that mean they weren’t there before? NO, but God opened my eyes to seeing them in an undeniable way. The more I saw, the more curious I got. Even though I believed God was sending me ladybugs, I wasn’t sure why or what they meant. I decided one day to look up what ladybugs mean. Much to my surprise, ladybugs mean: “bringer of gifts”. I wrote in my journal a prayer, thanking God because no matter if those were my sign and this was my month or not, I knew God saw me and I felt his presence. I felt seen. As time went on, the lady bugs never went away. Due to tracking, I knew the earliest day that I would be able to test would be on Christmas day. How crazy is that? Fast forward to Christmas Eve. My sister-in-law asked if she could come over because she had a gift for me. When I opened it, it was a stuffed animal ladybug. Little did we know that the next morning I would receive my true ladybug. The night before christmas I wrote in my prayer journal that no matter if I tested the next day and got a positive or negative, I would receive the greatest gift of all and that is Jesus, so I knew it would be okay. The next morning, I woke up at 4 am to sneak across the house and take a test while Luke was sleeping. As I waited to see the results as I had done many times before, I prayed. I was able to have peace as I knew that I may not celebrate a baby in my belly, but I would celebrate the birth of my savior. After many tests taken and many negatives, I finally decided to look, and to my surprise, the test was positive. On the day God have us the greatest gift of all Jesus, he also gave us the gift of my baby. How selfless of a Father is He? You can imagine the overwhelming tears of gratitude that flowed. But it doesn’t end there. Here is how long God planned this out. On Christmas day when i was at my parents, we open presents in no particular order. The gift I grabbed I opened to find on ornament with a lady bug on it from my mom. I always prayed I would see a lady bug on the day I found out and there it was. Then the next present my mom picked to open was the one that would tell them I was pregnant. I used the lady bug to tell them. It was so special! I though that was the end of the ladybugs, but fast forward 2 months later, and my mom was in the attic looking for baby things. She came across a piggy bank that was mine when I was a baby. Guess what the piggy bank was? A lady bug. God knew from the beginning that this is the story He would give me. He was never late, and he was never not answering prayers. He knew from the moment I was born that although I had no clue that ladybug piggy bank existed then, it would be used significantly for this moment. He knew the entire time, even when I couldn’t see it.
God knows what is best for us. He knew this was the time that my baby girl would be needed in this world. He knew that this journey would allow me to see Him like never before. He knew that the prayers we were going to pray long before I was even born, and He knew the best way to answer them. We prayed that Everleigh would be used for the kingdom, and God knew that the Kingdom work she would be needed for would be during this specific time, not my specific time. I now hold my baby in my arms and already see the many prayers I prayed over her already being answered. The prayers I prayed over her are exactly who she is. And now my sweet Everleigh’s nickname will always be my little ladybug.
A story in the Bible that stood out to me was the story of Pharaoh not letting the Israelites go and God sending plagues. It would be easy to question God. It would be easy to ask why would God allow such terrible things to happen to His people? Then I read this verse.
Exodus 11:9
“The Lord had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.””
God allows things to happen to us, so that HIS wonders may be made known. God makes us wait so that HIS wonders would be made known. God made me wait so I could remember that I need to want Him over anything else in my life. God made me wait so that my prayers would change from “ God I want _____” to “God I want YOU!” God made me wait so I would see Him like never before. God made me wait so that HE would receive full glory when we received our daughter. God made me wait so I would understand how much of an answered prayer our daughter is. All I can say now is thank you God for making a way.
-Elyse Albritton
More of the story on a podcast here :)
