VL-Issue 44- July 22

Embracing
God’s
Plan
THE STORY OF
KYLE & BOBBIE ROBINSON
KYLE: Bobbie and I were blessed to grow
up in godly homes. When we were married,
we committed ourselves to continuing the
examples of faith our families had given
us. We went to church, attended Bible
studies, served others, and did our best
to live godly lives. And God blessed us in
many visible ways.
We assumed these blessings were directly
related to doing all the right things. We
believed that if we obeyed God and served
Him, He would protect us from difficulties.
And since our belief system had never really
been challenged, we had no reason to believe
it wasn’t true.
Now that’s not to say we had never faced
difficulties. We had, but it seemed we could
always fix our problems with our minds
or with hard work, perseverance, and our
connections.
So when Bobbie and I couldn’t get pregnant,
we reacted as we’d always done. We
sought our options, developed a plan, and
did what we could to conceive—medically
and physically speaking. And, of course,
we prayed.
We had both always wanted children.
And although we knew going into our marriage
that conceiving might be difficult, we
still had faith. We hoped against all hope
for a child, just like we’re told Abraham
did in Romans 4:18.
While we waited for our little miracle, we
made promises to God. One went like this:
“God, if You’ll allow
us to conceive, we
will give You back our
child to use however
You decide.”
We followed the
example of Hannah in
the biblical account found
in 1 Samuel 1. Like Bobbie,
Hannah had also faced infertility. For decades,
she had prayed fervently for a son
and tried hard to conceive.
The Bible tells us that God heard Hannah’s
plea and blessed her with a son. She
named him Samuel, which meant, “I asked
the Lord for him.” Bobbie and I decided
Samuel would be a perfect name for our
child one day.
BOBBIE: You can imagine our excitement
when we discovered I was pregnant for the
first time. God had even helped us conceive
naturally. Our faith soared!
But then came the miscarriages. Five
of them. Kyle and I did our best to keep
our eyes focused on the Lord. We clung
to hope, reminding ourselves that nothing
was impossible with God. But it wasn’t easy.
Finally, in 2011, our son was born. Kyle
and I praised God for His kindness and
the beautiful gift of our son. We knew God
had a grand purpose for Samuel, and we
couldn’t wait to see it unfold.
Grateful, we set out down the path of
parenthood. It wasn’t long, though, before
my mother’s intuition told me something
was wrong. Samuel wasn’t developing like
other children. He wasn’t using his hands,
making eye contact, or smiling at us. Most
of the time, he just stared off into space or
rocked his head back and forth.
We took Samuel to his pediatrician and
PHOTO BY MARGARET DEBRUHL
22 Issue 03 / 2022 VICTORIOUSLIVINGMAGAZINE.COM