Keystone Stories – The Ruiter’s

Seth: In September 2020, I walked out of a meeting with my boss and collapsed in the hall. 911 was called, and I was rushed to the hospital. I still to this day have no memory of that morning. I ended up taking a leave of absence to get my health figured out. After much medical testing, the conclusion boiled down to high intense stress, and passing out was my body’s way of reacting to it. Then, in March 2021, I became very sick and went through multiple tests and procedures with specialists to hear them all say, “everything looks good”, but I didn’t feel good.

Kara: We also had been trying to get pregnant for months now with still no success, however, I was really trying to trust God’s timing in that and knew Seth was very sick and the priority was getting him better. But after many medical tests on both our fertility and Seth’s health, all results pointed to no definitive answers. It was very discouraging and the circumstances took a toll on our marriage.   

Seth: Finally, in September 2021, we found out we were pregnant, and shortly after, doctors found what had been making me sick and I received a treatment plan that seemed to start me on a road towards healing. We were thrilled! These both felt like huge answers to prayer and it felt like the heaviness of life was lifting. But just a few weeks later, even though Kara was still experiencing horrible morning sickness, at an ultrasound we were told the pregnancy was not viable.   

Kara: Shocked. Devastated. How could this be happening? We had already waited so long to conceive. I was left asking “Why would God give us this gift only to then take it away?” To begin processing this emotionally was overwhelming, but in addition, I still needed to process this physically, as my body had not yet recognized the unviability, so I ended up having a D&C ten days later. Those were some of the darkest days I’ve ever experienced.

Seth: My reaction to such loss was to question God and shut down. I still knew He was real, but I was so mad at life and at God that I didn’t even know how to pray. I was struggling to trust and felt like I couldn’t get up to even begin healing without life knocking me right back down again. I also knew Kara needed me, but I could hardly help myself through all of this, let alone help her. 

“Learning to wait on God and trust Him when life doesn’t make sense is a lesson we’ve both learned through the past few years.”

Seth: I felt like I had hit rock bottom in almost every category of my life. At Prepare in 2022, there was an opportunity to come forward for prayer. We reluctantly went forward and shared a summary of what had been going on. The elders laid their hands on us and prayed over us as we wept. Powerful is the only way to describe that moment. We went home feeling a weight lifted, and felt like that night was a turning point.

Kara: We were praying for soul healing. We both felt we were carrying such deep hurt and pain and our souls were weary. Experiencing that power of prayer together, and having more vulnerable conversations with each other, we started to feel like we were moving in the right direction of healing. 

One month before we were going to start fertility treatment, to our surprise, we ended up pregnant! We were nervous, but overjoyed and very hopeful as this was the answer we had been waiting for. We ended up having a successful pregnancy and our healthy baby boy, Tysen, was born in March 2023! He is our greatest blessing and definitely worth the wait. It was a long two years of waiting, but it quickly became so evident that God’s timing of us having a baby was beyond perfect, even when we couldn’t see it.  

Seth: Learning to wait on God and trust Him when life doesn’t make sense is a lesson we’ve both learned through the past few years. Our circumstances haven’t made sense and the suffering has been real. It felt like for almost every category of life, we just had a flashlight to barely see our next step, but we couldn’t see the whole path. It took a lot of pain and prayer to get through a long and difficult season, but how we each have grown as who we are individually, who we are as a couple, and where we are in our relationship with God, resulted in us being stronger than ever before and is something we wouldn’t trade.