Dwell in Me

Seeking God in the Every Day

Tag Archives: faith


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Modern Miracles?

I’ve been a negligent blogger lately. I guess if I want to over-analyze, it’s probably not a bad thing. I started the blog because I needed a space to write and air my grievances, a space to heal. And I needed to know I wasn’t the only person out here on this messed up ride called infertility. So the fact that I haven’t felt as compelled lately to post–well, I think it may indicate that my attitude has improved. And it has. The peace I mentioned in my last post apparently wasn’t just a momentary fluke, because I’m still feeling it.

My circumstances haven’t changed. We’re still waiting. And honestly, hoping and praying we’ll end up avoiding actually doing inferitlity treatments. It’s a long shot, for sure, but wouldn’t that be amazing? And I know nothing is too difficult for the LORD.

All this has had me thinking lately about miracles and answered prayers. How many miracles do we ignore completely? How many answers to prayer do we miss because we’re too caught up in the day to day? This season of infertility has called our attention more and more toward how God is moving in our lives all the time, in ways we maybe wouldn’t have called out or mentioned before.

It has been amazing to grow through this difficulty with my best friend. I’ve watched his faith deepen throughout the past several months. He’s thanking God for things I don’t think he would have seen God’s hand in even six months ago. He’s taking more leadership for our family as the spiritual head of our household. I have a tendency to step in and take over, infringing on his leadership, but I’ve been praying that would change, and that DH would really be the spiritual leader of our house. Another answer to prayer?

And little tiny things–like how DH’s car passed its inspection this weekend despite having an indicator light on that best estimates suggest will require a $1000 fix we just can’t afford right now. And how our first two rounds of medicine were free because the insurance company and/or the pharmacy messed up and told us they were covered 100 percent, and they actually went by what they told us despite the fact that it should have cost $500+ each time. And how they billed our most recent round of meds as a $20 copay (by the grace of God!).

There are everyday little things that may seem insignificant, but it is so nice to be reminded that God has not forgotten us. He hears us and he cares about us. He’s in it with us and he knows how he will resolve things for us. What an incredible relief!

Ultimately, it’s a reminder that I’m a benefactor of the ultimate miracle: that God loved me enough to find a way to pay the cost of my sin. Forgiveness: What a miracle.

Miracles really do happen all the time. I pray that I won’t be blind to them in my life. And that seeing miracles–both those that affect me directly and others’ answers to prayer–will strengthen my faith that God is, absolutely, beyond any doubt, able to work the miracle of children in my life should he choose. And if not, it’s not because of any lack on his part. It’s because he has something better planned.

Praise God. The God who heals and hears and IS.  


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God’s Timing

Our church offers a mentorship program for women. It’s a six-month deal. You fill out a little card and they pray over you and match you with someone for six months of weekly meetings.

My mentor is wonderful. She’s been through infertility–though her experience was different. And she tells me I’m supposed to talk and she will listen. And she gives me advice. Godly advice.

We meet on Tuesdays at Starbucks near my house. I get a green tea latte. She gets green tea.

Recently, she said something that has changed my perspective.

She said, “You know this already, but this story isn’t just about you and [DH]. It’s about your future children and their spouses. And their children, and the circumstances that need to fit together.”

I didn’t know that already. That thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

And I thought about Sarah and Abraham waiting decades for the fulfillment of a promise. And who knows if they weren’t waiting until Rebecca was about to be born?

She is so right. There are millions of different things that need to come together for our baby to meet up with the right people, to be in the right place, to do the right things.

And what feels like ages is really just the slow ticking by of months. Of weeks. But one week might be the difference between meeting the love of his life and not. One month might be the difference between graduating high school at the right time or not. Who can know but God?

So now we pray a little differently. We pray “in Your timing” and mean it. And we are praying for the circumstances to come together, too.

Such peace for us from one little thought.


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Sharing in His Sufferings

“But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith–that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3: 7-11

So I’ve been meditating some on what it means to take joy in suffering lately. I guess that came up in my last post and then hit me again as I was doing my Bible study in Philippians 3 this week. The verses that really caught me are 3:10-11, though I provide 7-11 for some extra context here. Paul has just finished talking about why he was about the most qualified person for salvation that ever could be–by worldly, Jewish standards anyway. He has perfect lineage, “a Hebrew among Hebrews.” As a Pharisee, he knows the law forward and backward. He had great zeal for his beliefs–which he credits as the motivation behind his persecution of Christians before meeting the Lord on the way to Damascus. He is as righteous and by the book as any man could have been before Christ. But he says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

None of those credentials is worth anything to him in light of Christ. And none of those things could have saved him.

There are things I rely on in daily life all the time when I should rely on Christ. And things I feel so heartbroken that I am missing. But I was reminded recently that while “children are a blessing from God,” they are not the ultimate blessing. That is salvation.

That doesn’t change the fact that infertility means pain and difficulty and suffering for so many of us, myself included. I haven’t really suffered in this life outside of this, and I have found it difficult to become accustomed to it. I don’t like suffering. I don’t want it. I want nothing to do with it.

But then, that puts me a bit out of line, doesn’t it?

Paul talks about sharing in the sufferings of Christ not just as a worthwhile thing, but as something he desires. Wow.

This verse (verse 10) really hits home when considering how to have joy in our sufferings. We can rejoice in our difficult circumstances because in some small way our challenges allow us to take part, albeit to a lesser degree, in the sufferings of Christ. I believe this is so even when the things we suffer are not outwardly related to our faith or profession thereof. That is, even when our sufferings are not brought about by persecution.

In this sense, I should rejoice in infertility, even if all I could ever gain from it is that I will have shared in some small part in the sufferings of Christ.

I need to remember that to attain resurrection from the dead is worth it at any cost. Even the cost of my ability to bear children. That is so difficult for me to wrap my mind around. But if that is not true, what do I believe?

I think if I had read what I am writing here a few months ago I would have thought two things. First, that this writer is a bit off balance (which, let’s face it, is a completely valid concern even now), and second, that this writer has no concept of what I am going through and clearly cannot understand my pain.

But God is working on me. He is changing my heart and changing my perspective. If you think this is crazy, I don’t blame you. But this. This is what I am thinking. And this is true: My pain is worth rejoicing over if it means I am getting closer to Christ and growing more Christ like. 

And in that way, infertility is a discipline, making me better than I could make myself. And God, who knows all things, is growing me and doing what is best for me, as he has promised to do. Even when I don’t understand it.

I don’t have to enjoy it.

“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11

But I do need to rejoice in what suffering really means for me. The building of a Christ-like character within me. And that’s an investment in eternity.


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A Slight Detour

I promised in my last post that I would write about David as the first in my “They Were Called” series. And I will. But right now I need to take a slight detour. I started studying David and am a little overwhelmed by the amount of reading I need to do. And I am hosting a Christmas party on Friday. I hope I can post about David next week.

Now on to the detour:

Today we celebrated a Christmas brunch with the ladies in leadership for my Bible study. We’re studying Hebrews, and this week’s lesson mentions Abraham and how patient he had to be while waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise that he would be a father of many. So our homework asked how long we’d ever had to wait for something for which we had earnestly prayed.

Of course, the first thing that came to mind is our continuing daily prayer for complete healing and for a healthy pregnancy that leads to a healthy baby. We’ve been actively, earnestly praying that prayer since we started trying to conceive about 15 months ago. We’ve been hoping to be parents, as a couple, for nearly 5 years of married life, and we have been talking about being parents for close to 8. I’ve been planning and expecting to fulfill my calling to be a mother for most of my life, and I would say explicitly for at least the past 10 years. I know that is not a long time. Fifteen months of actively trying and daily praying is especially short compared to the 25 years (I think that’s right) Abraham and Sarah waited for their son. (In my defense, I don’t expect to live nearly as long as Abraham and Sarah; Abraham died at 175 and Sarah lived to be 127.) But it is still painful. It is still something we are waiting for. And, unlike Abraham, we wait without having received from God any promise that we ever will have children.

Another thing I’ve been praying for in the past few months is a person I could meet with in person and talk to about infertility treatments and all the pain and grief and the many challenges that go along with infertility. I love having a blogging community, but I was missing the personal contact that only face-to-face encounters can provide. Of course, we have been really picky in who we have informed about our infertility. How would I find anyone if I wasn’t willing to open up?

And God is so great. Today he brought someone to me.

D is in my Bible study leadership group. Today this is what she shared (paraphrased):

I was up this morning at 4:00 because I couldn’t sleep. And I turned to look through and go over my Bible study questions. And when I got to this question [the how long have you waited question], I felt as though God was telling me I needed to share something. We normally don’t share that we really struggled to get pregnant. . . .

After three years of TTC, she and her husband were fortunate to be able to participate in a study for a new drug. They ended up becoming pregnant in the last month of the study with their son. He is now 19. They had wanted to have many children. A year after their son was born, they started TTC again, ultimately with IVF. It didn’t work for them. And she said she has always struggled on the one hand with why they only had one child while also being so grateful to have one child. She said it is especially difficult now as their son is away at school and really leaving the nest.

When the meeting and the brunch were over, I sought her out, away from everyone else. And I told her what we are going through and how I had prayed for her. And I cannot tell you how much her hug meant to me. We both wiped away tears as we talked about how difficult it is to walk this road. She talked about how no one understands what we’re going through unless they’ve been there or are there. I know she’s right.

And I realized something. I have the great fortune of going through infertility in an Internet age with a great blogging community (thank you all for writing!) and people I am connected with who can understand what we’re going through. People who can lift us up in prayer and who we lift up in prayer. Real people who need this community as much as I do.

She didn’t have that.

I hope I can be community for her–albeit a little late–as I know she will be for me.

Praise God for 4 a.m. meetings and answers to prayer. Praise God.


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He Satisfies the Longing Soul

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.


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Wandering

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.

I pray for faith like Caleb’s.


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The Head Knowledge-Gut Faith Disconnect

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?


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For Such a Time as This

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.


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Because God Loves Me

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 Gospel by 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)


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Praise Him in This Storm

There’s a song I’ve sung along with countless times on the Christian station and in church. It’s “Praise You in This Storm,” by Casting Crowns. As you might have guessed, a major theme of the song is praising God even when everything in life seems to be going wrong. Before we were officially infertile, I sang this song and I believed I meant it. I thought, you know, I haven’t had many storms in this life, but I would absolutely praise God through any difficulty and hardship. No question.

Well, turns out theory isn’t always carried out in practice.

When we first found out what our issue was, we were (of course) devastated. But we thought surely it was fixable. When we found out it wasn’t fixable, I got angry. And I was angry with God. I’ve been faithful, haven’t I? I mean, intellectually, I know I don’t deserve anything, I’m not owed anything, but why would God do this to us?

Did God not say, “Be fruitful and multiply”? Did he not create man and woman in such a way as to be able to bear children? And did not God give me the desire to be a mother–give us the desire to be parents? Infertility feels like such a cruel punishment because it is like we are less than. We have been deprived of something that naturally belongs to each person. It is a dysfunction in the body that by all accounts should not happen.

And so when we pray for this miracle, for the healing we need to conceive naturally, I have a tendency to think: we are standing on firm ground here. We don’t deserve special treatment, but surely we do deserve to be whole in body, right? Like I am making my case to God.  (There is a precedent for this: Job 13:15, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.”)

But here I find I have no ground to stand on at all. I can’t argue that I deserve anything from a God who already has given me something I absolutely did not deserve and never could earn. And if he has decided that we should deal with infertility, than I hope we will survive it in a way that glorifies him. That’s intellectual, though. I’m not sure I’ve internalized it.

I teach a Bible study to home-schooled elementary students, and I have the blessing of working with several other godly women in that venture. One of them, Ann, lost her husband four years ago. We were talking (I don’t remember the context) and she said, “I never asked God for the gift of widowhood. In fact, I didn’t want it. But it is a gift from God.” I can’t really wrap my mind around it, but I know it applies here. I know that infertility is, in some way yet unknown to me, a gift from God. I don’t want it. I’d like him to take it back today.

I do hope for a miracle. DH and I pray every night for complete healing–supernaturally or by the scientific advancements with which God has blessed us. We pray that we would be able to conceive naturally. But I also pray for contentment. I pray that infertility is something that came into our lives for a reason. I pray our infertility will glorify God.

I pray for the strength to praise him in this storm.