Reconciling Infertility and Faith, Part II: My Conclusions

I've been giving this topic a lot of thought since my last post.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile my feelings about my infertility with my still growing faith in God and my daily walk with Christ. There are so many negative feelings surrounding my infertility fight thus far, and I pray daily for God's guidance in this and many other arenas. I ask Him daily to lead me in the direction in which He wants me to proceed. I try to temper my own desires and wants, to surrender my dreams and follow the nudges, pokes, and sometimes shoves from my Heavenly Father. I still feel confident that my desire to be a mother is a desire given from God. There's no other explanation for it. I don't believe that He would have given me this desire if He didn't have a plan to fulfill it. I just wish, in the small sinful mistrusting secret places in my heart, I wish I knew when that plan was going to come to fruition. And what that plan is. Because also in that small secret place, I have the fear that this will be withheld from me forever. And I also fear that the ache will be there forever.

I pray for the ability to “delight in the Lord” (Ps 37:4), for the ability to relinquish my dream and “be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him” (Ps 37:7).

Maybe I'm not supposed to understand. That's the hard part for my analytical part of my brain and heart to comprehend. It's hard for me to understand the logistics of NOT understanding. All my life I've endeavored to comprehend, to know WHY. To find out the who, what, where, when, why, and how. Especially when. And why. Such tiny words. Such a huge stumbling block.

I know that when I allow Him to, He can heal the ache in my heart. What I don't understand is why He won't allow my aching heart to be healed by filling my womb. (HUGE AHA MOMENT): maybe that's the lesson? That the two are not interdependent? That this is not a cause and effect situation? Well, for seven years of battling infertility, my womb has been barren. Empty. Unfilled. Unfulfilled. As has my heart. So to me, it stands to reason (in my humanly skewed perception) that the heartache will remain until I am able to conceive or we are able to adopt. Until I am a mother. Is it possible that my happiness and lightness of heart and dare I say JOY isn't and perhaps shouldn't be contingent upon my reproductive status? Perhaps God is waiting for me to realize that true happiness and joy come only from Him and that once I can experience that...then, and maybe only then, can the rest fall into place for child(ren) He has planned for us to be born?

Wow. Talk about HUGE. *(and honestly...I truly had that revelation only as I was typing this...it literally just smacked me in the head).

I know God is enough. I know this life I have is enough. (Why do I have to physically restrain myself from tacking “for now” on the end of those sentences???)

Perhaps this is what I'm supposed to be learning.

Patience.

Courage.

Acceptance.

To live for today, not worrying over yesterday, not trying to over-plan for tomorrow. Trying not to dwell on the tomorrows that I want...but embracing with open arms the tomorrows that God has PLANNED for me.

Maybe there is no reconciliation.

And I think I'm okay with that.

Reconciling Infertility and Faith, Part 1

I wanted to share with you a terrific post I read recently, taken from the website "Held".  It's a prayer ministry blog with a focus on infertility.  It's amazing, to say the least.  I've not gotten a chance to read through all of the archives yet as I just stumbled across it a few weeks ago, but I just had to share this post.  It touched me deeply and spoke to and about many of my fears and struggles regarding infertilty and my faith.  The post can be viewed on the Held website here:  Held More and Less . 

"More and Less

I had to pull the car off the road for fear of crashing into a tree or running off the winding road. The tears were falling hard and fast, leaving hot red tracks down my face. I let the sobs come as I put my car in park, allowing the grief to just be for a moment.

Dear Lord, why won’t you take away this desire if you will not fulfill it? It isn’t a bad desire. It isn’t selfish. After all, you fulfill this for most people. Why won’t you let me be a mom?

After a few minutes, I got out of my car and opened the back door so I could reach the box of tissues. Blotting my wet face I prayed,

Please change my desire, Lord. I know you can do that. You can change the desires of my heart (Psalm 37:4). I can’t take this anymore. I’m so alone. None of my friends or family understand, and I don’t hear your voice. Where are you?

I drove the rest of the way home and allowed my long hair to cover my face when I walked in the front door to hide my splotchy red cheeks – I didn’t want to talk about my breakdown to my dear husband at that moment – but I kept begging God for understanding.

I’m terrified when I think of never having children. I can’t allow myself to think of the future in case the picture of childlessness becomes too real. When I do let my mind wander near those thoughts, I start to panic. Surely this isn’t what you are really calling me to, Lord.

Maybe the truth wasn’t that I didn’t hear God’s voice, but that I didn’t particularly like what He was telling me. It seemed too hard a truth to accept.

My dear child, what I am doing in someone else’s life has nothing to do with what I am doing in yours. Remember, just because they can have children easily does not mean their lives are perfect. Everyone has difficulty. Life is not about you. It never has been.

Ouch. I knew God was right, of course. It can be so easy to allow our hurts and despair to overtake us, making us blind to everything else. My pain and grief were real, but I was focusing on them too much and not enough on God. God needed to be greater in my life, and I needed to be less (John 3:30). I needed to shift my focus, broaden my perspective.

Slowly I began to see how God could bring beauty from the darkness I had been in. He reminded me that I am not forgotten. He sees me. He loves me. I learned how to start surrendering my desire for children. Instead of asking God why He seemed to give other women the things I wanted, I began asking what I had that they needed. How could God use me in the lives of other women?

Above all, I learned that God is enough. Enough for me to feel joy again. Enough for me to find contentment in Him. And ultimately, He is more than enough to guide me through my uncertain future.

He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live to please themselves. Instead, they will live to please Christ, who died and was raised for them.
~ 2 Corinthians 5:15 (NLT)"

Author Website: Portrait Rachel

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Come back soon for my thoughts and reactions to this post.  

 

Hello?

Have I lost all my followers?

What a sad day...

A Few Good Days...

Hey all! 

Been a while again, hasn't it? 

Yeah, sorry about that.  Life's been crazy around here lately...

But it's also been good.

I had a couple of big days this week...

Yesterday I spent most of the day shuttling between doctor's appointments.  My back has still been giving me trouble, and yesterday it dawned on me that it's been almost a YEAR that I've been dealing with this crap.  It was mid August I believe that it started last year, after I tweaked it when we moved into our apartment.  I've been going on and off to a chiropractor, who says I have an "easily movable pelvis" which is rotated and tilted.  We worked on getting it readjusted, which would help for a while, only to have the pain come back worse every time.  So I finally went to my regular MD about it.  She thought it could possibly be arthritis (which she still thinks it is) and put me on a series of several different muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatory pills, pain pills and ice/heat regimens.  Nothing helped ease the pain for more than a day at most.  I finally had enough.  Yesterday she finally agreed with me that the pills were not helping (really?) and gave me a cortisone shot.  In my back.  In my SI (sacroiliac) joint.  One might think that it would have been extremely painful, but surprisingly, it wasn't.  It hurt a little, but not as much as everyone was building it up to be.  I am SO thankful for this shot!  Amazingly, it took hold and started working by late last night.  Today was even better.  So much so that for the first time in nearly a year I was able to be up moving around for more than 5 minutes at a time!!!  You have no idea how big of a deal this is.  My pain had gotten so bad that walking from my front door to the car (all of about 250 feet at the most) would have me doubled over in pain.  Standing for any length of time (to cook dinner, standing in line at a movie, in a checkout line at the store) was sheer misery.  This wasn't just "oh, my back hurts" type of pain.  This was double me over, drop me to my knees, sweating and out of breath, please take the machete out of my lower back type of pain.  I had gotten to the point of nearly being immobile.  But I pushed through each day out of stubborn frustration.  I cried daily because the pain was so bad, because I was tired of feeling like a fat lump of uselessness, because I felt that nothing was ever going to help.  People just don't realize how seriously a person can be affected mentally and emotionally by severe chronic pain.  I've had moments in this past year that I don't even want to admit to.  Moments when I just wanted the pain to stop any way I could get it to.  The biggest frustration for me is that I know that my weight does not in anyway help my back problems.  They're not the entire cause, but they certainly don't help.  I know that I have to lose weight.  I WANT to lose weight.  I want to be active and not just sit at home like a bump on a log every day.  I need to lose weight in order for us to TTC again, because at this weight it is impossible.  I have every intention and desire to get back to an exercise program, but my back pain simply wasn't letting me.  Everyone kept telling me, "Just push through it. Work through the pain."  Well, when it drops you to your knees and takes your breath away, it's pretty impossible to "work through it".  It's a vicious cycle.  I'm in pain partially because of my weight, I need to move to lose weight, moving is nearly impossible because of the pain, but I'm in pain partially because of my weight...  I felt so hopeless.  Useless.  Worthless.  But, as of today I'm doing pretty well.  I was able to go grocery shopping for the first time in months without being in pain by the time I walked into the store.  I was getting sore by the time I was hitting the checkout line, but for me, that's amazing!

I felt so good that I actually went over to our storage shed and went through some of my books and took them to a local used book store!  Yes, ME.  I parted with some of my precious books!  I think I was still high from the shot, if you want to know the truth!  LOL  Nah, these were books that I knew I wasn't going to read again, ever.  They took the majority of them (I had taken 4 reusable shopping bags packed FULL, and I only had 1/2 a bag to take back), and I wound up getting $78 in store credit!!!  WOOHOO!!!  I bought 3 "new to me" books and my husband bought one, and we still have almost $65 credit left.  They have a lot of books my husband was interested in, so he will be going back to pick some out soon.  The only thing that bothered me about the whole thing was the condition of some of these books.  It almost made me cry.  One thing anyone knows about me is how OCD I am about my books.  I take insanely good care of my books.  I always have.  Books are treasures to me.  I don't dog-ear the pages, I am very gentle with them so the covers always stay in good shape, and for the love of Sweet Baby Jesus I cannot fathom breaking the spine!!!  I nearly cried when I saw shelf after shelf after shelf of spines so broken you could barely even tell what the name of the book was anymore.  Such a tragedy.  I know that most people don't treat their books like I do, but it almost seems a bit disrespectful.  I think it comes from the way I was raised.  We never had a lot of money, but books were one thing that my parents always made sure we had.  Reading was a family affair for us.  We used the library a lot, but when we were able to purchase new books, it was a treat.  We (my sister and I) were always well aware that my parents worked hard and sacrificed much to give us the few "extras" they were able to provide for us.  So we learned from an early age to appreciate our belongings.  And the value of hard work.  Which is why I get so frustrated when I see books not taken care of.  Someone worked hard to write that book...what would they think if they saw it all beat up and damaged?  Oy.  I guess you could say I'm a little too emotionally invested in my books, eh?

Matt and I also had a couple of really good discussions these past couple of days.  The kind that afterwards left me with a smile on my face AND in my heart.  But we'll talk about those another day. 

Love,
Rebecca



~"...choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve...as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."    Joshua 24:14-16