I love Christmas. I have been really enjoying getting our house decorated, planning our Christmas caroling party, and watching Christmas movies. But this morning at church, I started crying during a Christmas song. Why?
Apparently this holiday is all about a baby. And the preparations we make are all about expecting a baby.
The song this morning just reminded me how much I wish I were expecting. I still love Christmas. And I am so grateful for the entrance into the world of my savior. Without him, who knows where I’d be. I don’t think I’d be able to handle what we’re going through now.
But that doesn’t change how much I hope I will one day be blessed to be a mother.
Thanksgiving. I have so much to be thankful for. It takes effort to remember that today while cramps pulse through my body, a constant physical reminder this day of what I don’t have.
I am trying to praise. To praise the God who is outside of time, the God who sees the whole story, the God who knows where we are going and how we will serve him. The God who satisfies the longing soul.
And part of me wants to beg and plead for immediate answer to our prayers, to complain about the road we’re on, to demand that if he loved me, he would do what I want him to do.
What a petulant child. Who am I to question the God whose plan is perfect and whose ways are not my ways?
I do not know the why. I do not have the answers. But my God surely does. And he promises that all things work for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).
So today, while I am thinking about Thanksgiving and feeling the physical pain and the emotional heartache of what I don’t have, today I am thankful. I am thankful for infertility.
Not because I feel like it has made me better in any way.
Not because I would ever have chosen this for myself.
Not because I can even fathom how this could possibly be for good.
I am thankful for infertility because I choose to believe what God has said. I believe this is for my good. I am thankful because it is God’s best for me. Because God is using it for good and for his glory, albeit in some way I cannot now understand.
Thanks be to the God who sees, the God who provides, the God who heals. Thanks be to God.
I’ve been in a good place lately. We’re still infertile (as far as we know), but I’m either really in denial or beginning to come to terms with things. I guess we’ll find out which when a. I have my next breakdown, b. we start fertility treatments full force in the new year, or c. I find myself peeing on a stick if my period is late. (NOTE: both a. and c. would indicate denial; b. could really go either way.)
At any rate, I figure I should be thankful for the peace I have and not squander it. I’m glad I’ve been able to spend many of the past few days thinking about and doing things that are not related to infertility. I know some of what I say (especially “if we have kids,” instead of when) and some of what I do (like mentally preparing myself for dealing with baby stuff) is done through a filter of infertility, but it hasn’t been as all-consuming or tragic as it was a few months ago.
I also feel like going through infertility and the questions and pain it raises has helped me dig deeper in my faith. I’ve been communicating with God on a deeper level, in large part because I’ve been able to be honest with him and I’ve had something deep and meaningful to be honest about.
A few days ago, I came across Psalm 107: 8-9:
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
For he satisfies the longing soul,
and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
My soul has been longing. For children. But I think that longing has been misplaced. I should be longing for God and trusting him that what we are going through is for our good and for his glory. That what he wills is better than what I will. And that his ways are not my ways.
At my Bible study the other day a woman talked about how we need to lay our wills on God’s altar with cheerfulness and thanksgiving; we should gladly take on the will of God, believing it to be better for us than our own desires.
Profound.
I have been struggling to do this, but I am trying. And I think it’s in the trying to obey–even when I fail–that I am blessed with peace.
Thanks be to God, the God who satisfies the longing soul.
I’ve been studying and teaching Hebrews. I find it a really interesting book, and a really difficult book to relate to the first and second graders I teach. The vocabulary alone is difficult. (When asked if they knew what it meant to be an “heir,” because Hebrews 1:1-2 says Jesus was “appointed heir of all things,” one little girl answered, “I think it means you get someone’s soul.”) Add in all of the references to the Old Testament books, and things get confusing quickly for the seven-year-old mind. I’m not just teaching Hebrews, I’m teaching parts of the history and culture and laws of God’s chosen people.
This week, the section we studied called our attention to the Israelites as they wandered in the desert after being rescued from Egypt. Moses, at God’s command, had sent a group of men into the promised land to scope it out before they entered. When they came back,
They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak [basically giants] there.” (Numbers 13:27-28)
Then, this:
“We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there [the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim]. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (Numbers 13:31b-33)
These spies had witnessed great miracles. They had seen the plagues God rained on Egypt. They had crossed the parted Red Sea. They had followed God as a pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night. They had received manna from heaven. Their clothes never wore thin. It’s easy to think that they, of all people, should have trusted in God’s strength and ability to lead them to victory in the promised land.
But they didn’t.
Did they think that as big as God may be, he wasn’t big enough? Maybe they simply did not consider God at all but continued to put their faith only in their own strength. And they saw their strength was insufficient. Alone, without God, they stood no chance against giants!
They needed to relinquish self-reliance before they could truly rely on God.
And they needed to realize that their God is bigger than they can imagine.
The Israelites weren’t all of one mind in this. One of the spies spoke up for God:
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” (Numbers 13:30)
Why was Caleb’s calculation so different from the rest? After all, he’d seen the same things as the others. But he added in one important part: God. God had told the people he would give them the promised land, and Caleb (and Joshua) believed him:
Joshua son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes and said to the entire Israelite assembly, “The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the LORD is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.” (Numbers 14:6-9)
As a result of their unbelief, the Israelites were made to wander 40 years in the desert until the older generations had passed away. Caleb and Joshua, who stood up for God and believed him to be big enough, ultimately led the people into the promised land.
I like to think that I would have been better than the Israelites. That I would have been on the side of Caleb and Joshua in this. That I would have trusted God.
But then I remember how often I have failed to trust him through infertility. How I have tried to will myself to believe he can work a miracle in our life while also secretly doubting the possibility.
I’m not saying believing will mean never suffering, never struggling, never longing for something.
But I think maybe I need to examine the boundaries I’ve put on God. Do I think to myself, he can do A, but B is too much (or too far-fetched, or too unlikely)? Am I limiting him in my mind?
My God can best the giants. My God can knit together a baby in my womb. My God is big enough.
And I am foolish not to relinquish my own self-reliance.
This post is sort of a part two to my previous post. If the last post was confusing or muddled, this one may be worse. Apologies if that’s the case.
When I had my “wrestling day,” I came to realize that I don’t value my salvation the way I should. To truly value the price that was paid for my sin, I need to recognize that my sins are great. So many people testify about salvation by saying things like “God has done so much for me, I can’t help but love him/be joyful/serve him/praise him/[enter any number of nice things for God here].”
I’ve always wondered about those people. I mean, they must have been really bad before they were saved, right? And I’m sitting here praying like the Pharisee in Luke 18:11: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people–robbers, evildoers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector.”
I am embarrassed to say that I often think that my sins aren’t so bad. I mean, I know (head knowledge) that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) but I’ve been lacking any conviction of that (gut faith).
So two nights ago, I was dutifully answering my Bible study questions (we’re studying Hebrews; this week is 2:9-3:6). And I get to: “Look up ‘glory’ in a dictionary or Bible dictionary and write its definition.”
I was feeling moved, so I pulled out my old Greek reference books (I’m a total geek, in case that wasn’t already evident!). The word used for glory is δόξη (transliterated: doxa). And my Greek word study dictionary had about 5 pages of definitions and explanation of the word. A lot of the definitions were tied to specific verses. I found it fascinating.
It had a special part about Romans 3:23. My book said that when Paul writes “fall short of the glory of God,” it means that we don’t live up to what God has intended for our lives, that we don’t line up with the image and character of God.
For some reason, that got through to me.
I may not have murdered anyone or cheated on anyone, but I do know that I have not lived up to what God intended for me. I know that I don’t align perfectly with the image and character of God. And because of that, no matter the nature of my sins, I needed a savior just as desperately as all those people who may or may not have done really bad things by our worldly definition.
And if I can see how desperately I needed salvation, how truly short of God’s glory I fall, then I can have such gratitude for what God has done for me.
And I think that gratitude is where joy begins. I can be joyful because I know what a great thing God has done for me. That gift of forgiveness–of making up for my shortcomings–outweighs the temporal pain of barrenness. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel that pain or that I don’t suffer now, just that the joy should remain throughout.
I haven’t quite gotten there yet. Still working. But as long as I am still wrestling with these things, I think I am moving forward.
Yesterday was a wrestling day. I feel like I spent a lot of the day in prayer and half-sleep (which is not to suggest that I think it is good to pray while half sleeping, but hey, it happens). At the end of the day I was doing my homework for my Bible study. (Yes, I should have done a little each day all week. No, I didn’t do that. I did the whole thing last night.) As I was looking at the questions thoughts just kept coming to me and I think some things kind of came together. I tried to explain it all to DH. He listened sympathetically and mostly helped me realize that what I was saying was lacking any continuity. So apologies now if this doesn’t make sense.
At the crux of it all, I think, was the question of joy. In my last post, I wrote:
I know joy is supposed to be unaffected by emotion and that I should be joyful even when I am sad. I’m having trouble with that in practice. I’m working on it.
I guess my subconscious has been mulling that over for the past few days. And I have come to a few conclusions about this. I’ll start here with one epiphany that I think is helping me open the door to true faith in my life.
I have a lot of head knowledge. I know the Bible pretty well and I can quote it to myself. I can’t tell you how many of my recent journal entries have said things like,
“God, I know you say that ‘all things work for the good of those who love you, who are called according to your purpose’ (Romans 8:28) but how is this (our infertility) for good?”
and
“I know you tell me that you have plans ‘to prosper me and not to harm me, to give me a hope and a future’ (Jeremiah 29:11) but I am struggling to believe this is true.”
And, my favorite,
“God, I believe. Surely I have faith the size of a mustard seed!! You said, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you’ (Matthew 17:20). So why isn’t this mountain moving yet?“
I have head knowledge (which often undermines me by turning to pride, but that’s a story for a different day), but I am coming to see that I am lacking in true faith–gut faith. (It is sad really; at the end of the day all that knowledge is wasted if it keeps me from truly knowing and trusting my savior with my life.) If I stepped out of that boat onto the water to be with Jesus as Peter did (Matthew 14:29), I’d be telling myself all the while that surely I could stand on the water. It wouldn’t matter, though. Because I am lacking this real, honest, gut faith, those empty words would do me no good. I’d almost certainly find myself swimming.
I’m beginning to understand that this head knowledge – gut faith disconnect is a serious problem. It is keeping me from having real joy. It is also keeping me from being able to trust completely in the Lord in this crisis of my life.
So I’ve been praying for the Holy Spirit to move in me, to give me that gut faith. And my head knowledge says it will happen: God says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
And I am praying this not in an effort to manipulate God into giving me what I really want (to be a mom to a baby or 5), but in the hopes that he will transform the desires of my heart such that I want him and that I want to be with him and in his presence and to serve him, above all other things–even the things that seem good and fulfilling, like being a mother.
(As an aside: I’ve tried the praying with an eye toward tricking God into giving me what I want. It doesn’t work. I think he’s on to me.)
If knowing is half the battle, is actually believing the other half?
I had a bad day. I’m not going to lie–I was having a pretty good day until TCU lost to Oklahoma State. We played terribly. I know that shouldn’t affect me on such an emotional level. And maybe the fact that it does means I should quit watching football. But then I’d miss out on the good games, too.
I guess losing the game was just another ugly reminder that, no, things aren’t going the way I’d planned in this life. And, yes, I find that devastating.
I want to be positive and upbeat and trusting and patient and joyful. But I’m not right now. I’m on this mad crazy roller coaster and sometimes it drops suddenly.
When it drops I have a strong urge to punch a hole in the wall. I haven’t done it yet. I keep telling DH I want to do it. This is the conversation we had a few hours ago:
Me: I just want to punch a wall.
DH: Don’t. Punch a pillow.
Me: No. I want to put a hole in the wall.
DH: You won’t. You’ll just break your hand.
Me: Well, that would be nice. It would be nice to have something that could be fixed.
Pathetic, I know. But true.
This whole stepping away and recognizing I don’t have the ability to control even one tiny facet of what’s going to happen with our ability to have kids is so hard. I didn’t know I was so attached to the illusion that I could be in control of my life until that illusion was shattered so dramatically. I wish it had been shattered over something else. Almost anything else.
Praying for trust. And peace. Praying for joy. And, always, for healing. For us, and for you.
And, next time I post, I’ll try to post something a little more upbeat. I promise I’ll try.
PS I know joy is supposed to be unaffected by emotion and that I should be joyful even when I am sad. I’m having trouble with that in practice. I’m working on it.
I haven’t talked much about anything but infertility and how that’s affecting us here, but here’s a little backstory about how life doesn’t go according to our plans–with a little admission that sometimes those deviations from our plans for ourselves turn out to be better than we expect.
DH and I met in college. We were both economics majors. And his goal was to be an economics professor. He didn’t feel that his BS had prepared him sufficiently for the PhD, so we headed to DC where DH got an amazing job at the Federal Reserve Board–about the best possible place to work if you want to go to graduate school in economics.
He took one to two math classes at night each semester until he had the equivalent of a bachelor’s in math, too.
Last fall, he sent out applications. And we waited.
Believe me when I tell you that DH is an incredibly intelligent, hardworking, and dedicated person. His resume for grad school was top-notch and his recommendations were from some wonderful people in his field. I’m sure his recommendations were stellar, too. The only person I’ve ever known not to like my husband is a girl at his office who has complained that their boss shows him favoritism. What she calls favoritism most people would call respect for a job well done.
By all accounts, DH should have been accepted into a great program with funding.
That didn’t happen.
With the wisdom that comes with time, we’d both tell you right now that the way our lives got rerouted was for the best. DH will tell you it’s a miracle he didn’t get into grad school. God brought us to Texas (where we’d both said we’d never choose to live), and DH went to school to study math full-time at A&M for a semester before he ended up getting his current job here in Houston. The job pretty much fell into his lap, and he loves it.
I guess all that should be helping us trust God in our current situation. I think it is helping, when I think about it. God hasn’t taken us on any wrong turns yet; He’s never let us down. But how easily I forget that he is in control, that he is guiding us and has been guiding us all along.
The whole grad school thing was hard for us, and it was hard for DH’s parents. It was hard for them (as it was for me) to see their boy deal with all those rejection letters. When it came time for us to go to A&M, DH and I had a lot of peace about it. After months of anxiety about what we were going to do, the day DH sent his application in to A&M the anxiety was lifted. I don’t think his parents had that same peace at the time. It took them a few months–maybe until DH got the unexpected job offer–to really come to terms with the new direction our life was going.
When we told his parents about our infertility struggles, I know they were wondering why God would put us through something so devastating so soon after the last difficult test. We were wondering too, honestly.
Yesterday I got this e-mail from my MIL. I’m glad she’s feeling better about things, and I found her words encouraging. Her e-mail is a good reminder that God is sovereign and he’ll see us through this.
I have just got to tell you guys that my whole thinking on the [infertility] matter has taken a turn. . . . Now, instead of questioning God, I am thanking him for orchestrating the moments and details of your lives to get you here into Houston for this time in your lives. The whole time we were wondering WHY? about the grad school business and the econ professor path . . . He knew that you needed to be here; in Houston; . . . a location that is monetarily beneficial, in a good-paying job. God didn’t wish this [infertility] stuff on you, but knew about it (since he knew all about you before you were born), and he has orchestrated your life with perfect precision to get you right where you need to be . . . for such a time as this!
“And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14 (I know this was so she could free her people, but I do think it applies here too).
Lately I’ve been feeling better about our infertility. I’m glad DH’s mom is feeling better, too. I tend to forget that this IF thing affects our families, too. It’s such a deep personal issue that it’s hard to see how other people we care about are also hurting and questioning why we’re going through this.
I still have some really terrible days, but on the whole I feel more at peace with what we’re dealing with. I’d still like that miracle healing, and I am so hopeful that we will be able ot have biological kids. But I’m okay with where we are right now. Ask me tomorrow and I might scream and yell and cry, but today I’m doing well.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my perspective lately. I’ve definitely been acting like it’s all about me, but of course it’s not. I have good days and bad days, days of denial and days when I can’t think about anything but our barrenness. But I think I’m gradually beginning to accept that this is who I am, who we are, and what we’re going through.
I just started reading The Explicit Gospelby Matt Chandler for our small group. I read chapter 1 yesterday. A few things stood out to me.
1. God is in control. He can affect the tiny things and the big things. Chandler even mentions that God is in control of mitosis. Those little body processes have so much to influence on our fertility, but God is bigger than that and he can fix that–if he wants to.
2. We live in a fallen world. Matt Chandler writes (and I’m paraphrasing here) that because we live in a fallen world, we shouldn’t be surprised when things go poorly. Instead, we should realize that when things actually go the way we want or the way we hope that God has done something wonderful for us.
3. I was created to worship and glorify God. My job is to glorify him, in whatever way he allows me to do that. I wasn’t created because he needed me and he doesn’t owe me anything.
I have a lot of friends on facebook whose posts I read but who I probably wouldn’t still have a relationship with otherwise. Some of them were never really friends to begin with and others just aren’t my friends now more because our circumstances or careers or locations aren’t amenable to maintaining a friendship. Yesterday my attention was drawn to a prayer request from one of the women in that latter group. Her sister, a college student, has just been diagnosed with a terrible and painful disease that takes the life of 1 out of 3 people who get it. This friend provided a link to her sister’s Caring Bridge site and I was blown away by her family’s faith. The journal articles her mom writes are so glorifying to God in the midst of this very dark time in their daughter’s life.
I was especially touched by one story the girl’s mom recorded. She said that on the day their daughter was admitted to the ICU, her husband received a text message asking why such a bad thing would happen to such a good person. The mother refuted first that her daughter was “good,” saying only Christ is good and that her daughter would say the same thing. When they asked their daughter how her dad should respond to the “why” question, she signed to them (because the disease has made it impossible for her to speak) that she was going through this “because God loves me.”
There’s something so deep and so true and so convicting in that sentiment. And there’s something that eludes me there, too. I want to have faith to believe that we’re going through this because God loves us. I want to believe that we are dealing with infertility because God loves us. I’m trying to believe it.
Romans 8:28 “For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (NIV)
So I guess I’ve been whining a lot lately. Not just here, but also at home to my husband and to one of my dearest friends. I really appreciate how nice they’ve been to me while I just keep rambling on about my problems. My husband has been so helpful in talking through all the crazy things I’ve been thinking about and helping me find perspective.
This morning when I woke up I had a message from the one friend I’ve told about this blog. She texted to see how I was doing. I guess the blog is good therapy, though, because when I woke up this morning I was feeling a lot better. The combination of blogging, talking to DH, and letting my brain process overnight seems to have worked wonders.
I think the reason I was so upset yesterday after Bible study was that it forced me to confront the possibility that our infertility might be God’s desire for us. Until then, I had been comfortable with the idea that it was just a side effect of living in a fallen world, something that happens because the world just doesn’t work the way it should all the time. That’s why there is pain and suffering–from the very tragic, like what happened to four students in Nigeria a few days ago, to the seemingly horrific but survivable, like infertility. Not, I believe, because God wills it.
I don’t believe that God’s will is always done on earth. That may sound like heresy to some, but I think if God’s will were done all the time, the Lord’s prayer wouldn’t include “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Why would we be told to pray for something that already is? That said, I do believe that God can use what happens to us–even the terrible things–for our benefit (Romans 8:28). And it is, of course, possible that our infertility is somehow in God’s plan for us. So I imagine some good will come from our infertility. And I hope I will be wise enough to see it.
I also want to thank GardenGirl at Journal of a Subfertile for having such a positive outlook on infertility in her blog. She’s dealing with the same pain and challenges but seems to choose to live in the moment and enjoy the present. I could learn a lot from that. And so I’ll try. (I’m not promising not to whine, but I will attempt to also notice the positive things while we’re waiting.)
P.S. Did anyone else see Modern Family tonight? That Phil and Claire were jealous of their friends who had been unable to have children made me laugh. I guess these things go both ways sometimes.
Dwell in Me 