Teresa McRoberts had always believed God could answer prayers and work mighty miracles.

But not until she pleaded for God to heal her womb did she grasp the fullness of his love - even when his healing came in a fashion different from what she had expected.

McRoberts, of western Henrico County, was 28 and had been married four years when she learned that blocked fallopian tubes were preventing her from conceiving a much-desired baby.

A corporate lawyer and daughter of a physician, she did the sensible thing: She sought medical intervention. To prepare her body to harvest eggs and then carry a baby to term, she underwent two surgeries and five in-vitro fertilization procedures that included up to six injections a day.

She became pregnant four times and miscarried each child. Her hopes rose and fell. Sometimes she felt angry at her plight. Sometimes she wanted to give up. But she longed to bear a child with the best of her and her husband Scot's characteristics.

She was regularly tense and depressed, but she continued to attend a local Methodist church and pray for God to heal her.

Even in her despair, she held onto the hope that God could do so if he desired.

But God didn't answer her prayers with a healthy pregnancy.

Instead, he used the period when McRoberts was beseeching him to strengthen her relationship with him.

When McRoberts became a teacher for the young adult Sunday school class at her church, she found herself delving deeper into the Scriptures to prepare.

The more she studied God's word, the more she came to know him. As she knew him better, the more his Word settled in her heart.

McRoberts became comfortable enough with the Sunday school class to share her struggle with infertility, which at that point, had loomed in her life for several years.

As she revealed her wounded spirit on those Sundays, she experienced God's unfailing mercy and unconditional love in the comfort and the prayers the class offered her.

"It's very difficult to let yourself be vulnerable," said McRoberts, now 38. "But the healing and nurturing from your spiritual community happens when you open up and let yourself be ministered to."

McRoberts gradually gained a new perspective about God's ability and willingness to heal her. She began praying for his touch with a new mindset.

"We have an attitude about hope in our culture that hope is the sense of, 'That's OK, I'll get another one; things will be better tomorrow,'" McRoberts said. "What I discovered is that hope is about anticipating that future as a walk with God and not just about the replacement of things we lose.

"After a pregnancy loss or an in-vitro disappointment, [for me] it became, 'God is with me, even in this terrible, sad moment, and knowing that gives me hope for tomorrow.'"

McRoberts still wanted a baby.

But she was now ready to accept that she would become a mother whenever, however, and if God desired.

By the time 2-week-old Sam was placed in her arms in August 1999 - nine years after she discovered her infertility - McRoberts felt the joy that follows a healing.

That joy doubled when she and her husband adopted a second child, Max, last summer.

And God gave her peace a few years before that, as she cared for and watched her father die of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

"I learned that healing is not just something that happens to the body," McRoberts said. "If you take your brokenness to God . . . and open yourself up to the healing he does in his mysterious ways, you will feel healed.

"You won't walk around and say, 'Man, I wanted to walk, but all I got was forgiven,' because in his grace, you're able to see that you've been healed."

McRoberts shares the depth and breadth of God's healing power every chance she gets. She has spoken to the ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) Support Group that meets at Trinity United Methodist Church in Henrico County and to other groups in the community.

Since July 2000, she has coordinated three healing services at the church, inviting individuals who are burdened by issues ranging from broken relationships to physical ailments to pray that God will heal them in the manner he sees fit.

"When you recognize the reconciling power of God and work on the spiritual side of things, often the physical can follow," McRoberts said.

For her, that discovery has been life-changing.

"Not a day goes by that I don't thank God for the way he's worked in my life," she said. "If life had gone according to my plan, I might have 2.4 children, but I would not have this sense of thankfulness that I wake up with and go to bed with every day.

"The healing is in the way I'm able to look at the world now."