Miracle Baby — the story behind Miracles Jar

This is the story that started Miracles Jar. It's ours, so we'll tell it plainly and then weigh it as honestly as we weigh everyone else's.

What we were told

In 2016 we found out we couldn't have children naturally. Dana had been in pain for months, and after the specialists had run out of guesses, they operated to see what was happening. Her fallopian tubes were blocked — they tried again and again and couldn't get the dye through. The options on the table were an experimental procedure or IVF. Dana prayed to be healed anyway. We weren't even trying yet, so we mostly set it aside.

The coffee shop

A while later I got dragged to a men's prayer retreat in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota. A meeting with an executive had cancelled, so I ended up at a coffee shop with a man I'd just met and a friend of his. Before I'd said anything about our situation, the friend looked at me and said the word "kids" had been put on his heart for me. I explained — politely — that we'd been told it wasn't possible. He said, simply, that he thought it was going to happen now. They prayed, and had me lay my hand on the idea of a child and call it forth. I didn't know what to do with that.

An ocean away

Five weeks later I flew to Genoa to meet Dana, who'd been studying abroad, and we drove up through the Alps. She — a dietitian who lives on salads — smacked my hand away from the menu and asked for bratwurst and fries. My first thought was: you're pregnant. In Salzburg we stopped for a test at the nearest pharmacy. Its name, we later learned, was Apotheke zum Heiligen Geist — the Pharmacy of the Holy Spirit. The result came back Schwanger. We don't speak German. We ran to a translation app to be sure.

Why this site exists

I'm not asking you to take my word for it — that's the whole point. We built Miracles Jar because stories like this deserve more than a shrug or a blind "amen." They deserve to be examined: the documentation laid out, the natural explanation taken seriously, and an honest number attached. So we've done that to our own story too. The records that would raise our confidence are private; the timing is what we can't shake. Make of it what you will — and if you have a story of your own, share it.