I remember feeling embarrassed when we first got pregnant.

 

We weren’t planning to be pregnant at that point. I was finally feeling good for the first time I could remember in years and then I couldn’t stop throwing up—I had the extreme form of morning sickness. It was a really confusing, intense thing for me and telling family was hard because I didn’t feel excited about it.

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Robyn couldn’t imagine being a mom. She pictured negative things for delivery and holding her baby for the first time.

All I had was that God said the birth would be full of joy and I didn’t see how that was possible. I told him, "All I can picture is crying tears of the other kind." I didn’t feel excited. I felt depressed. I was just trying to believe God.

Her First Maternity Pictures

AJ and Robyn had just moved back to Minnesota when God set them up with a house sitting gig in Plymouth.

We didn’t know anything about it, but it turned out to be a beautiful place on eight acres surrounded by woods. One of our jobs was to feed the deer that live on the property. It was a wonderland that God dropped us in. For me, it was a haven. I journaled a lot, and tried pray. "God, how are you seeing this? This is how I see it."

When she decided to take maternity pictures during her first pregnancy, the experience emphasized the beauty of pregnancy in a special way.

Our friend was so encouraging. I remember telling AJ, "I just need to look at you. I need to look into your eyes. I can’t look anywhere else right now because I need to know we’re safe and okay.”

Later, God used the arrival of their second child to show them that the structure of their marriage was off.

I was practically functioning as the head of the house and was dying under the weight of it. That’s what influenced our decision to have a vasectomy in the first place. I was dying under all of the responsibility and would rather know we were going to raise two kids well, than struggle raising more.

It was over a one-year period that God showed AJ and Robyn they were wrong about some things.

He started talking to AJ and me separately about headship and submission and we connected about it last November. He changed our understanding through his Word and showed us to an even greater extent how we’d been trusting in ourselves and our own understanding rather than being formed by the Word and shaped by Christ.

Changing Her Mind

All that I have and all that I am, I don’t deserve at all. I want my kids to know that that’s who he is. Even while we were sinners, he died for us. I’ve never understood the gospel more clearly than in the middle of these failures.

AJ and Robyn will continue to talk about things that happened before their kids were born, or before they were even pregnant with them.

I hope our testimony will point our kids toward truth and the cross and our risen King. I wish so badly I had this attitude when I was pregnant with Jubie. I didn’t know how to receive this gift at that point. God had to walk me through it.

Maternity Portraits This Time Around

When I approached Robyn and invited her to join us on the Eagle Ridge acreage to help us demonstrate what maternity portraits for you could look like, she agreed with delight.

AJ and I are overwhelmed with gratitude to you because financially this has been one of the hardest seasons for us—in obeying God, in getting the vasectomy reversal that was costly. Things have been really tight. Maternity portraits aren’t something we would have pursued. I feel seen by God and really loved.

 

I felt so comfortable during my session. I loved spending time thinking about the gift God has given us.

 

I hope maternity portraits through Cornerstone can be a little piece to change the story for some families, turning this season into a celebration.