Blog

In 2014, Thomas and Misty were ecstatic to find out they were pregnant. It had been a three-year journey of waiting and praying. They shared the news with their immediate family and shortly thereafter faced jolting sadness when they lost the baby.

“I am going to meet that kid one day,” says Misty. “It’s going to be a person that from eight weeks old has never known anything but the perfect love of God. That’s something that I just think about sometimes…It sounds more broken than it feels to me. That’s a blessing. That’s when I became a mother. I was a mother before Hudson. But these things are good things.”

“Anytime you want something very badly that isn’t in your ability to provide for yourself, you’re in a position to be learning things,” says Misty. That is exactly the place where the Browns found themselves.

First Comes Love

The couple first met in an economics class at Austin High School. She was the theater nerd, and he was the football guy. They didn’t like each other. Fast forward a few years and the pair met again in the college ministry at Grand Parkway.

In 2005, Misty asked the group for help moving into an apartment. Several people volunteered to help. But on moving day, Thomas was the only one who came. That’s where their story began. Misty remembers carrying a couch with Thomas up the apartment stairwell. Thomas had one end of the couch and Misty had the other. Her mom stood behind Thomas at the top of the stairs excitedly pointing and mouthing to her, “Invite him to dinner!” She did.

Then Comes Marriage

They got married in 2007, and like most newlyweds, they were just excited to be married. Neither of them was in any rush to start a family. “We were 24 when we got married,” says Thomas. “We knew in our minds we had time.” But two years later, they decided to start a family.

Then Comes…

“Every month that went by, it got harder and harder,” says Thomas. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. When months turned to years, they sensed it had started to overshadow their relationship, and they decided to take a step back. “I cannot make my life about this,” says Misty. In 2013, they went to Costa Rica with Grand Parkway on their first international mission trip together. “We didn’t want that to become our identity, like ‘Oh, that’s the infertile couple,’” says Thomas. “Our life is more than that. Our relationship with Christ is more than that.”

You can’t be obedient to God…and still, have your one thing. That’s idolatry.

— Misty

Pursuing Obedience

“There’s not a secret combination, where like if I put the coin in, pull the slot handle just like this, then God will spit out the magic prize, that’s not the way it is,” shares Misty. “I can’t make my life about infertility and still have my life be about obedience to Jesus. I’m not saying it’s sinful to pursue children. It’s sinful to pursue it at the expense of obedience.”

After their first pregnancy and miscarriage, they went through a season of depression followed by renewed hope. Soon, they were expecting again. They were excited but cautious. “It was more than I was ready for. It was overwhelmingly good,” says Misty about Hudson’s arrival in 2015. “You know that that’s in God’s capacity. It’s what you’ve been praying for and wanting, but when he shows up, you’re like, ‘Look at you!’”

They now have a concreteness to their trust in God that was once just warm feelings. Misty says, “You can trust Him. It’s going to suck. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be much more than you are capable of handling, but you can trust Him.”