When God Seems Silent

Dannah Gresh: Randall and Rachel wanted children, but God wasn’t giving them a baby. This is Rachel Payleitner.

Rachel Payleitner: I’d never doubted God’s love for me, but I did question His silence.

Dannah: Over time, God opened the doors to international adoption for them. Here’s Randall.

Randall Payleitner: You need to trust God with each of these steps because, in the end, we still had no certainly that it would end up any direction. Whether it was exactly what we were picturing or something completely different, we didn’t know

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for February 26, 2020. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, over the last several months, we’ve heard from several guests sharing how they have learned to trust God to write their stories, especially when there are twists and turns in that story, and things come up that are unexpected in the plot. It looks like, “Did God make a mistake?” or “Was He not paying attention when this happened?”

Maybe you’re in a hard place in your story right now, or you know someone who is. I think you’re going to be very encouraged by the story you’re going to hear today and over the next couple of days.

I was sitting in a meeting at our publisher, Moody Publishers, oh, a number of months ago, when Randall Payleitner, one of the team members there at Moody, started telling me about some things God was doing in his family. This was just as You Can Trust God to Write Your Story was getting ready to go to press. 

I said, “Randall, that’s a great story about seeing God’s hand and God’s providence. Would you come and share it, with your wife, with our Revive Our Hearts friends?”

So Randall and Rachel, here you are today, and we’re so grateful for the story God’s writing in your lives. Thank you for coming over to the other side of the lake—you live in the Chicago area, we’re on the east side of the Lake in Michigan—to share your story with us today.

Randall: There you got it. Thanks, Nancy, for having us. We’re glad to be here. I remember that meeting very well, and I remember thinking, Wow! Nancy’s sharing this and writing this book. I was thinking, Well, my wife Rachel and I have been trusting God to write our story for quite some time. Should I share? And I did . . . and here we are.

Nancy: And you were in a very fresh season of that story. As with my story, and every listener’s story, there are numerous chapters, and we don’t know what the next one looks like. We just know about the one we’re in.

Sometimes it’s the rearview, seeing the chapters that have been in the past, that we can look back and see, “Oh, God was at work. He was faithful.” And that gives us courage and hope to trust Him that the current hard place we’re in is under His control. There’s no surprises with Him. Nothing throws Him, catches Him off guard, or takes Him by surprise.

So, I want our friends to get to meet you. We’ll talk a little bit more tomorrow about the publishing partnership we’ve had with Moody Publishers over the years.

Randall: Yes, of course—twenty years.

Nancy: Twenty years! Yes, that’s right! We should have a party!

Randall: I think so.

Nancy: What a sweet ministry partnership that has been, but I want to talk about you guys,

Rachel and Randall, you got married back in 2008. Rachel, when you and Randall were dating, and you were getting ready for your wedding, and in your early years as a wife, what were your thoughts about having children, having a family? Was that something you looked forward to? What was your thinking at that time?

Rachel: I had always wanted to be a mom. I wasn’t totally sure what that would look like. I didn’t really have a set number of children or anything like that. I know sometimes you can build up ideas of exactly what that looks like. I would say I was pretty open right from the very beginning.

Randall came from a much bigger family than me—lots of brothers. I grew up with all sisters. So we had kind of a different dynamic, and it was kind of fun to talk about what our family might look like in the future.

Randall: That’s right. And even when we were dating and engaged, and then being married, we always pictured children being a part of our lives for sure.

Nancy: So how long was it into your marriage before you realized that it was not going to be as easy or natural as you had thought?

Randall: Very quickly, I’d say—months or so—and then we were realizing that this wasn’t happening on the timetable that maybe we had envisioned or had pictured. And that was okay, but it was certainly about a year to a year-and-a-half in when we realized that maybe, without having necessarily this language to use at that time, maybe this story is going differently than we had thought it would.

Nancy: So do you remember, Rachel, when the term “infertility” first came to your consciousness, about when it came to your ability to have children?

Rachel: I would say it was probably about a year after we had been married when we had kind of said, “Maybe we should be a little more intentional about trying to have a family.” And it’s only happened a few times in my life where I’ve kind of—I don’t know, intuition, God’s speaking to my heart—but I just had this moment where I was, “This might be hard. This might be a challenge. We might be going through something bigger than we expected here.”

Randall: That’s right. We’re on a different road than we thought that we’d be on. And maybe we’ve been on it, and we didn’t even know it.

Nancy: Right because at what point do you realize, “We’re not going to be able to have biological children”?

Was that harder for one of you than the other? Was it something you talked about easily? Can you just unpack a little bit about what your journey was in that season?

Rachel: I think we were very blessed to be able to easily talk about it. We were open with each other when we were sad, when we were angry at God, when we were frustrated. We’ve known other couples to struggle with infertility, and it divided them—for many different reasons.

Randall: Yes, that’s right. It never came between us. It was always something we could talk about. Some days were hard. Some days were very hard. Some days were okay. You think about it every day. It’s always there.

I love the piece of marriage counseling we got when we had premarital counseling: Whenever there’s an issue, whatever it might be—it might be a “Where does the cereal go?” or “Who takes the garbage out?” Or something way bigger than that—those are silly examples. But whatever the issue is, make sure it’s not between you. Make sure that it’s something that you can handle together. And as you picture that issue, picture it on the other side of the room, and the two of you are tackling it together rather than having it come between you.

Nancy: Not as enemies but as friends.

Randall: That’s right. And this is something that was an issue, of course, and something that we came to realize over the course of months or even a year there, but it never did come between us, although it did require us to be on the same page as we worked together.

It was very hard, and I would still say, for each of us, this is the hardest thing that we’ve dealt with in our lives. But it was always being dealt with together.

Nancy: Were you praying for children?

Randall: Yes!

Nancy: Did you pray together?

Randall: Yes.

Rachel: We did.

Nancy: And were there points at which God’s silence or lack of giving you children ever challenged your view of God or make you ask why? How did you process that with Him?

Rachel: I would say probably every day we asked why because it is difficult to understand. We know that God loves children and loves us. I think that one of the other ways—I’ll speak for myself—that I was blessed was that I never doubted God’s love for me, but I did question His silence or His perceived silence. I think believing that God loved me made a big difference because I still felt secure in that relationship.

Randall: He knew us. He knew what we were going through. We know from Scripture, and we know from our previous experiences in life, while this was the most difficult thing we went through, it wasn’t the first bump in the road or the first difficult thing.

So we knew that we had a track record with God as our Savior, as our Friend, as our Protector, as our Father in heaven. We knew that He loved us. And I agree with Rachel, of course, that that wasn’t really ever in doubt. But it was, “God, we know You love us. We love children. And here we are . . . where are they?”

Rachel: Yes. We’re kind. We love each other. We’re capable. We’re providing a good home.

Randall: That’s right. And we’re open to it. But it wasn’t happening.

Nancy: As I’ve been listening to you, I’m thinking, This is why it’s so important to get to know who God is and what He’s like before you hit the hard places.

Randall: Amen.

Rachel: Yes.

Nancy: Of course, in the hard places you come to know more of that.

Randall: That’s right, but that’s not the first step.

Nancy: Exactly. So, as we’ve talked about this book, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, we’ve hoped that it would encourage people who are in a hard place that God is trustworthy and He’s faithful. But I’ve also hoped that it would help people who aren’t yet in a hard place, or aren’t currently in a hard place, to lay a foundation in their lives of the character of God and the trustworthiness of God. Because if that becomes your default concept that God does know what He’s doing, He doesn’t make mistakes, then when those hard things hit (they’re still hard—hard is hard) there’s context of the love of God, as you’ve said.

So that was part of what prepared you, not only for this journey with infertility, but for further chapters that were yet to be written, that you couldn’t have imagined at that point.

Randall: That’s right. A spiritual foundation as well as a relational one—relationships with our families, our extended families, relationships with friends, and in the local church as well. The idea that we were having this difficult season, these bumps in the road, this uncertain future that was certainly different than what we had planned, but we weren’t alone.

We weren’t alone, because God was with us. We weren’t alone, because we had each other. And we weren’t alone, because we did have a wider circle of influence and help.

Nancy: Yes, which is the family of God.

Randall: That’s it!

Nancy: How indispensable that is—for all of life, including going through these hard places.

Rachel, do you remember when you first started thinking or talking about the possibility of adoption?

Rachel: We had talked about adoption even before we got married as something we might want to do later after having biological children.

When I was in college, I was part of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on my campus. We had a staff worker there who adopted a little girl from . . . I’m not even sure what country she was adopted from, but it was an international adoption. It was the first time I had ever met a family that had an adopted child. And I remember thinking, Well, that’s really cool. She doesn’t look like them. What an interesting idea. That was the first time adoption was even on my radar.

So when Randall and I first started talking about what our family might look like, we were both interested and open to the idea before we even knew that we would have difficulty having biological children.

Randall: That’s right.

Nancy: So after a number of years of trying to have children, not being able to have biological children, now the possibility of adoption is becoming more real. Were there some things you needed to go through to make that transition from, “We’re not going to be able to have our own children,” to “We’re going to pursue a different means of having them”? What was that part of that journey like for you?

Rachel: We had met with another couple who had done a domestic infant adoption—this was just the early phases of trying to decide, “Are we going to start pursuing this now?” And they had said something very valuable to us, which was, “Before you take the first steps, handle the pain that infertility has caused in your hearts.”

Nancy: So don’t just jump from inability to have children into another . . .

Randall: That’s right. Don’t pretend like one will solve all the other.

So we had this idea and challenge to really deal with that as a couple. And, again, it wasn’t between us, but it was there.

There’s grief associated with that. Being unable to have biological children is something you need to deal with. So we went to some marriage counseling, family counseling—with a Christian counselor—to help us work through that process, that grief process. It really set us up well to be able then to be on the same page together headed into this adoption journey, which will be with all its own difficulties. But while they’re clearly related, both biological children and adoptive children end up with families, but we were wanting together—Rachel and I—to be able to recognize that grief and deal with it.

Nancy: I’m glad you said that, because as we’re trusting God to write our stories, we’re not suggesting that when you come to these painful chapters (and we could have done this whole program just on the challenges of infertility, which a lot of listeners right now are in that very place), we’re not saying it’s like putting a Band-Aid on it, or that you want to cover it up like it’s not painful.

Randall: Or just leave it because it’ll be fine.

Nancy: Right, pretending like it didn’t happen. The thing about the grace of God and trust in His faithfulness is that He invites us to face and experience the full hardness of loss, of pain, of grief—as He did for us. So we’re not saying that if you’re trusting God to write your story then these things don’t hurt.

Randall: Or it’s all good.

Nancy: Or it’s all good. We’re saying, “Even in the bad, God has purposes, and He is at work in us and around us.”

So this is an invitation to process, but always in the context of: We don’t do this alone, and we don’t do this apart from the presence and the grace and the faithfulness of Christ.

Randall: We’re not like those who don’t have hope. We do. We do have hope.

Nancy: Exactly.

Rachel: A lot of what we were talking about in those sessions was just being reminded about God’s faithfulness to us. He would often ask questions, like, “What are your feelings toward God as you’re kind of working through those emotions?” So you get to talk about . . . “I’m angry with God. I’m confused.”

Randall: “It’s uncertain. I don’t understand.”

Rachel: Yes. “Is He trustworthy? Can I trust Him to write my story?”

Nancy: And a sweet thing about that is that we can also trust Him with our rawness. We can be honest. We’re not having to go before God and saying, “I’m doing fine,” when we’re not. He can handle our emotional weakness or need or frustration. And in the end, we can’t be angry at God because God is good. But we can say, “God, here’s how I’m feeling, and I need You to help me think right about You.” So, God can handle that.

Rachel: He can, and He meets us there.

Nancy: Yes.

So when you weren’t able to have biological children, was there a point when you said, “Let’s really pursue the possibility of adoption”?

Randall: Yes. There was a moment. It was always there, just like trying to have biological children was always there. We never doubted God’s call on our lives to be parents. And as we prayed and worked toward the idea of being parents, we were preparing—preparing your home, preparing your lives, preparing your professional life, preparing your finances. There’s all these preparations that go into being ready to be parents.

And a natural part of that conversation, since we were having difficulty getting pregnant, was to talk about adoption. So, yes, we had that moment, and we said, “Let’s do it.” We went to a meeting, an open house . . .whatever it was called.

Rachel: An introductory meeting.

Randall: We went to an introductory meeting with an adoption agency. We did our research online, asked a few people—again, in our immediate circle of influence, we didn’t have anybody who had adopted recently that we knew. So it wasn’t like we had a direct line, so the Internet was our first foray into what agency we should use and asking all kinds of different questions as it relates to that. It was the beginning of the journey. There would be 10,000 more questions after that, but the first one was, “Should we go to this introductory meeting?” And we said, “Yes, let’s go.”

Nancy: And from there, what led you to think international adoption versus domestic? Was that a big decision?

Rachel: It was a big decision, particularly because infant adoption internationally is very uncommon, and we had always pictured an infant. So when we started thinking about international adoption, that was kind of on the table. “Do we really want an infant? If we do, then we should probably look to do a domestic adoption.”

Randall: When you’re considering international adoption and domestic adoption, at least in our experience, you needed to pick one. You don’t get to pursue both roads and see what happens. You have to pick one because there’s all kinds of different paperwork. There’s all kinds of different social workers and different things that you work with, different people that you work with. So you need to pick one.

As you consider each route, you recognize, “Hey, God could use us either way here.” There are children that need families, and there are opportunities to be faithful in the adoption journey on both fronts. So as we prayed about it and thought, “Where might there be a higher need as it relates to our heart for the nations, as it relates to our understanding of how different things are unfolding around the world and here in America, where could we best be suited?” And so, we decided to go the international route.

Nancy: And, Rachel, was that a long process? I know the infertility journey had been month after month after month.

Rachel: Year after year.

Nancy: Year after year. So, did the adoption process seem . . . was that long and drawn out also?

Rachel: Yes. It took about two years from start to finish, from our introductory meeting to bringing our son home, but we kind of just took it a step at a time. We would look, “What was the next step, and how do we want to go at this?”

In each step, especially in the early stages, like with deciding between domestic or international, there are a lot of other decisions you have to make. I would say we took our time through that process, really praying about and talking about where we felt equipped and passionate.

Randall: Yes. We were deliberate, but we went at the speed limit. We didn’t try to jump over hurdles. We went deliberately through the process, and with our social worker’s help and our local church’s help and our circle of friends and everything else.

You have to consider all kinds of things from: 

• What country are you interested in pursuing adoption from? 
• What types of needs and other circumstances might our future children be in now or where are they coming from? 
• Are there financial considerations? 
• Are there health considerations? 
• And there are certainly time considerations as we kind of figured out this process. 

It was a whole new land. We had no idea.

Nancy: You were learning as you were going.

Randall: That’s right. We were learning as we were going. But as Rachel said, and, Nancy, as you asked, the process was a long time, but it’s basically forty-eight steps—I made that number up—and you take one at a time. This step takes a week. This step takes two weeks. This step takes twenty minutes. You just do them in a row.

And, really, not trying to sound cheesy here, you need to trust God. You need to trust God with each of these steps because, in the end, we still had no certainly that it would end up any direction. Whether it was exactly what we were picturing or something completely different, we didn’t know. So we had to take each step with faith.

Nancy: You were really having to trust God to select a child for your family.

Randall: That’s right.

Nancy: What country did you land on, Rachel?

Rachel: China.

Nancy: Can you describe what it was like when you first saw the child that would end up being your child?

Rachel: I believe Randall got a phone call from our office branch.

Randall: I did. The process works differently for different agencies and different countries, but we were aware of the fact that all of our paperwork was in, and we were thinking it might be weeks or months before we would hear anything. So we were not on the edge of our seat waiting for a phone call.

I was at Moody, headed into a publisher’s meeting at about nine in the morning, as I remember it, and I got this call from our agency. I picked it up, “Hello. Hello.” I’m thinking I had forgotten to sign a form or something. And this person who I didn’t know that well at the agency was describing this little boy to me. And I was, like, “I’m sorry. Hold on. Are you telling me that you are looking at a picture of my son right now?”

And she goes, “Well, yes. That’s why I’m calling.”

I’m, like, “I’ve got to cancel some meetings.”

Nancy: Wow.

Randall: And that’s how it went. I said, “I need to call my wife, and I need to call you back.”

I quickly took a bunch of notes of what she was saying, and that was—I don’t remember what day of the week it was, but it was 9 a.m. I quickly went to my boss and said, “Hey, I need to cancel some stuff.” 

And he’s, like, “Get out of here!” That’s how it went.

Nancy: What happened in your heart when you got that call from Randall?

Rachel: I was studying for my licensing exam, and I had been studying for weeks.

Nancy: You’re an interior decorator?

Rachel: An interior designer, yes, and the next day was my licensing exam, this really big exam.

Nancy: So you had some things going on.

Randall: And you take it once in your life—it’s, like, this once-in-a-life exam.

Rachel: I’d been studying for months. And he’s, like, “I’m so sorry, but we have to talk about this. I got this phone call from Elizabeth, and they have a little boy that they want us to consider. They're going to send us this information.”

My heart started racing. It was just kind of hard to believe. It was such a surreal moment. I’m assuming it’s much like it feels when you find out that you’re expecting. “Is this really happening? What is this going to be like? Who is this person going to be?”

Randall: And you love him already somehow.

Rachel: You love him already. It’s crazy. They sent a picture and a video—a really short, little video. He was this chubby little guy playing with one of those toys that has all the balls that go around the wires.

Randall: Classic doctor’s office-type toy.

Nancy: How old?

Rachel: He was eleven months at the time, so he was pretty young. And we weren’t even sure what age. I think we had said up to two years at the time of referral. So he was younger, really, than we were anticipating. He was just so sweetly playing. And we were just right away, “Awww.”

Randall: We wanted to go. We wanted to get him immediately.

Nancy: So you said yes right away.

Randall: We did. You have a few days where all the data comes in, but we had already been preparing for this moment. We had been open to whoever God would provide, so we were not going to say “no.”

Nancy: You were ready.

Rachel: We were ready.

Randall: There was no problem. Yes, we looked at each other, and we said, “What do we need to do to bring him home as quickly as we can?”

Nancy: And how long did that process take?

Randall: About five more months.

Nancy: Five more months before you went to China?

Randall: That’s right.

Nancy: And is that more paperwork?

Rachel: Yes.

Randall: Because there’s all kinds of things that go into it—paperwork in his home country, paperwork here in America, citizenship paperwork, all kinds of things that go into it. So, yes, more paperwork, but also more preparation.

You’re preparing your home. You’re preparing your lives. You’re preparing his room. You’re having baby showers. You’re preparing to travel for fifteen days to another country you’ve never been to.

Nancy: When did you name your son, and how did you pick the name?

Rachel: We named him maybe a month or two after we had decided . . .

Randall: We had decided not to pick his name until after we knew him, knew who he was.

Nancy: Okay. And you named him.

Rachel: We named him Judah Si—that’s his middle name. We played around with a bunch of names, as I’m sure most people do. We decided on Judah, which means “praise, to give praise.”

Randall: And we did, and we do.

Nancy: So you flew to China.

Randall: We did.

Nancy: That’s a big thing in and of itself.

Randall: It’s a surreal thing to be on an airplane with your wife, whom you love, and there we were on United Airlines. 

Nancy: Knowing you were going to come back three instead of two.

Randall: Yes. That’s exactly what it was. “Wow, this is a long last date before being parents, on a twelve-hour flight,” or whatever.

Nancy: Tell us about when you first saw Judah.

Rachel: We saw Judah in the circle drive in front of the hotel we were staying at.

Randall: They brought him to us at the hotel.

Rachel: They brought him to us, to our hotel, in a van. They passed him out the door, put him right in my arms, and he looked right in my eyes. Randall has a very wonderful picture he took of it. It was wonderful. Amazing.

Randall: Our lives have never been the same.

Rachel: Never the same.

Nancy: So that moment—they made the transfer just like that?

Randall: He was in our custody at that point. We had another few days, again, of passport paperwork type of things. But all the paperwork had been done ahead of time, so there weren’t questions after that as much as forms to sign, legal documents, and government things. So we had some paperwork there with the officials for the next hour, but then we brought him up to our hotel room.

Rachel: They left.

Randall: They left us.

Rachel: They brought him to our hotel room.

Randall: They put him on the bed, and we’re, like, “Hmmm . . . what do we do now?” (laughter)

Nancy: You have a child!

Randall: He was sixteen months old.

Rachel: And he was a little peanut, a tiny, little guy. We sat him on the bed, and we’re like, “What do we do?”

Randall: We took out a little cracker, like a baby cracker. We don’t know. We don’t know what he eats, what types of diapers he needs, clothes he needs. We had brought different sizes of clothes even. We gave him one of these little crackers. He put it in his little hand, and he looked at us, looked at the cracker, took a big bite. And we said, “Hey, this is going to be all right.” And it has been. It’s been wonderful.

Nancy: So, back home now with a sixteen-month-old, what were the biggest aspects of adjustment? Nothing ever goes all smoothly with young children. 

Randall: That’s right.

Rachel: That’s generally true.

Nancy: So your lives changed a lot. Were there bonding issues? What was the greatest challenge or the greatest joy in the early part of that experience?

Rachel: I would say it’s amazing, and by God’s grace, we bonded to Judah and he to us right away.

Randall: Yes. We’d done all kinds of training, all kinds of seminars. And all these things of, “It could go this way. It could go that way.” And it really, really . . .

Rachel: It seemed really easy.

Randall: Yes. In a slight harkening to the future, we have learned different lessons.

Nancy: It’s not always easy.

Randall: It isn’t always that way, but in terms of answering that question you just asked, Nancy, it was wonderful how quickly he attached to us and us to him.

Rachel: He was a delight.

Randall: What a wonderful boy, and he still is.

Nancy: I assume that the process of adoption of a child has given you a fresh sense of God’s adopting us into His family. How has that made that more real or more sweet to you?

Randall: That’s right. Of course, we know God’s our Father in heaven. He loves us. He cares for us. He wants what’s best for us. All you need to do is turn your Bible to pretty much any page, and you can see God’s hand on our stories, God’s hand on our lives, and His obvious love and care for us.

But very specifically, you can read in Romans 8 . . . I don’t know if I’m allowed to have a favorite chapter in the Bible, but I do, and that’s it.

Nancy: That’d be a great one.

Randall: You’ve got it. And there you read right there that God has adopted us as sons.

Rachel: Co-heirs with Christ.

Randall: Co-heirs with Christ. And the Holy Spirit is there certifying that it’s good. Whew! Amen!

So not only did this little boy, our son, and our second son, change our lives to become parents here on earth, we recognize the exact nature of their sonship to us. They are our children. They are our sons. We love them. We’d do anything for them.

It also changed how we understood God adopting us. He adopted us. He grafted us in. He adopted us as His children. He didn’t have to do that. He loves us so much that He did that for us.

Nancy: Well, that wasn’t the last chapter of your stories, and the one you’re in now still isn’t your last one.

Randall: That’s right. We’re in chapter seven maybe, or something like that.

Nancy: And there are a lot more to come. We want to continue this conversation with Randall and Rachel Payleitner tomorrow and talk about the next child that God brought into your family and some of the unforeseen challenges that came with that. So be sure and join us tomorrow here on Revive Our Hearts as we continue this conversation.

Dannah: It’s comforting to remember that nothing ever goes exactly the way we planned for it to go. That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in conversation with Randall and Rachel Payleitner.

As we heard today, Nancy and her husband Robert wrote a book that talks about trusting God in the midst of circumstances we could never anticipate. The title is, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story: Embracing the Mysteries of Providence. In it, Nancy and Robert tell the stories of some characters in the Bible, and people that they know and have interviewed, all of them had to trust God when things didn’t go the way they expected.

I can personally tell you it is such an encouraging read. I think it will help strengthen your faith or the faith of someone you know. And this week we’d love to send a copy of, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, as a thank you for your donation to support the ministry of Revive Our Hearts.

Just ask for the book on trusting God when you contact us with your donation. Our web address is ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959.

You know, we’re not in control as much as we’d like to think we are. That’s something Rachel and Randall Payleitner learned the hard way. They’ll talk about it tomorrow. I’m Dannah Gresh inviting you back for Revive Our Hearts.

Pointing you to the all-wise, divine Author, Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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