God Will Make a Way - One Blessed Momma

Hello beautiful blessed mommas!

I’m new to this crew of lovely ladies, and actually very new to this momma crew all together!

My son, Benaiah (pronounced Ben-I-ah), will be one year old next month! I can’t believe how fast he has grown! A little bit about me and my family, my name is Mikayla Cogburn, (yes like Rooster Cogburn) I’m 25 years old, I live in a very small town in beautiful Southwest Colorado. I’ve been married to my best friend for almost 4 years now and together we have the cutest baby boy in the whole world! (I may be a little biased.) I am a doula and a childbirth educator as well as a mom, wife, auntie, and sister.

My husband, Aaron (not Rooster) just finished his certifications and started working at our local fire department as a firefighter and EMT, he has worked so hard and continues to work so hard for our little family. He is one great husband and Daddy.

I have had quite the interesting intro to motherhood, with having a baby in the year 2020! (Which is the year, I think we can all agree, that we’d like to never repeat.) it was a hard year to be sure, but 2020 was also a true Testament to our family of just how GOOD God really is, even when we are surrounded by the worst circumstances.

Fortunately for us, God’s goodness isn’t dependent on the circumstances we are in, He is good, just because that’s who He is. And He will always make a way for His people, no matter what.

Isaiah 43:19 “Behold I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and Rivers in the desert.”

My mantra for 2020 was, and still is, God will provide. It was a year full of tests for our family, (and I know we weren’t the only ones.) We had zero dollars in our bank account, a brand new baby, and Aaron was in the middle of fire Academy and working every other day in Albuquerque, 3-hours away, just so we could scrape by on bills.

Then when Benaiah was two weeks old we realized that he wasn’t getting enough milk from me, and he actually started to lose weight. (Talk about a recipe for stress.)

I won’t go into all of that or every little thing that happened last year, let’s just say that this theme stayed very consistent for the whole year, right up to the very end.

After my son was born, I felt like a rockstar, like I could conquer absolutely anything, climb any mountain, overcome any obstacle.

Basically I was sitting on top of the world!

But as soon as I started having issues with breastfeeding, that feeling was replaced by an opposing feeling of total failure.

I thought, this is one thing I’m supposed to be able to do, what’s wrong with me? I felt totally worthless, and I know I asked God over and over again to just help me be able to nurse my baby. But God didn’t answer my prayer the way I wanted.

I couldn’t breastfeed my baby exclusively the way I wanted to, the way I planned to, the way I made.

But God sometimes makes a way where we didn’t think to look at first.

My midwife and friends came through with lots of donor milk for Benaiah, and gifting us formula when God knew we didn’t have any money for it. My son never went hungry and he continued to gain weight at great rates, going from the 17th percentile to the 34th in his first 3 days on a bottle, and now, 11 months later, my chunky little boy weighs 25 pounds, is more than 30 inches tall, and is wearing 18 month clothes. I think he’s getting plenty to eat, and his growth is definitely not stunted!

God provided, God made a way for me.

Motherhood is messy, life is messy. So often all we see is the mess we are in, and not God’s Way through the mess.

How can we possibly see the way He has made in the middle of the mess we are in?

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path known.”

Psalms 119:105 “Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”

The answer is to talk to God about our mess and surrender it to Him, to look to his word for guidance and Hope, and then to be still and listen; waiting for the peace of God to come, and to allow ourselves to focus on that peace, rather than the mess all around us.

John 16:33 says that we are guaranteed to have trouble, but that Jesus himself is already conquered it all, he paved the way and that way is him.

In the Gospels, there is an account of Jesus walking on water towards the boat His disciples were in. Walking on water is a feat in and of itself! But the water was rough, waves crashing all around the boat, lightning flashing, and rain pouring down. The circumstances couldn’t have been worse. And yet, Peter, a zealous disciple of Jesus, got out of the boat, the only safety human eyes could see, and he walked on the water towards Jesus.

Good ending right? Well, as most of you know, that’s not the end to the story. Just like us, Peter got distracted, he started noticing that he was walking through choppy, rough water, he started feeling how heavy the rain was, his eyes caught the lightning, and suddenly he was no longer walking on the water towards Jesus, he was in the middle of an unforgiving sea struggling not to drown.

And he did exactly what we have to do, and what I did so many times over the last 11 months, he cried out to Jesus and said “Lord, Save me!”

Jesus walked over, took him by the hand, and pulled him out of the water.

Jesus is calling us to walk in his way, to walk on top of storm, not to be overwhelmed by it. The only way to do that, is to never take our eyes off of Him, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other until, one day, we reach his waiting arms. And when we get distracted by the mess around us, He is waiting to catch us, wipe our tears, and help us to keep on walking.

Meet Mikayla!

I am Mikayla. Mommy to my adorable 11 month old baby boy, wife to my incredible firefighter hubby, birth worker and aspiring doula. I love my saviour and my family and am very passionate about helping women to feel empowered during their pregnancy, birth and postpartum. My goal is to be an encouragement to the mommas in my life through sharing my experiences and offering a loving and supportive place for them to share their stories and be heard. God bless you in this season of life and may His perfect peace rule your hearts.

Colossians 3:14-15 “And above all these things put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”