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There is no clear place to put this blog post or easy way to talk about. But I feel it is a little talk about subject in Infertility that I really need to share. Through my years of infertility I have struggled with a wide range of emotions, and not all of them are very pretty. While I've had hope and sweet faith and trust that Jesus will heal me, I've also felt a lot of really ugly things as well.
Anger.
Sadness.
Fear.
Anxiety.
Depression.
Bitterness.
Jealousy.
Some of these emotions have been easy to contain and conceal from others. And some of them not so much. Sometimes they are directed towards people under justifiable circumstances when a rude or callous comment has been made. And sometimes I am just so mad I don't care who I am lashing out at.
I've been angry at my husband.
At my family.
At my friends.
At my co-workers.
At people I don't even know on the Internet.
At the irresponsible teenagers who don't think before they procreate.
At the mothers of my students who can't seem to stop having kids, even when they cannot afford and are failing to properly care for or provide for the ten they already have.
At government programs that will send you check after check the more kids you have.
At insurance companies who will pay for weight loss surgeries but not a dime of the pills that could help me to become pregnant.
I share my anger with you not because I want to make anyone feel bad or worry that they've hurt my feelings, and not because I am trying to justify them as rationale or appropriate, but because I want women who have struggled like I have to realize that they are not alone. Anger is one of the strongest felt emotions when dealing with a loss in your life. And weather that loss is the inability to get pregnant or an actual loss of life, both are powerfully painful things to go through. In a Bible study I went through a few years ago on healing, we dedicated a full week to studying the emotion of anger.
Anger is a very powerful emotion. It is one of the strongest of human passions. Anger does not go away on its own. When it arises, it demands a response. Denied, it finds other ways to express itself. Anger that has been denied a response tends to form roots of bitterness. It can also take on the form of sarcasm, cynicism, hostility, or vengeance. Anger expressed without self-control is a destruction response, hurting many who stand in its way.
From A Time to Heal by Linda Cochrane and Susan Ficht, chapter 4
I have not always dealt with my anger in a healthy way. I've lashed out. I've screamed. I've been rude and mean. I've harbored feelings of resentment and bitterness toward people I dearly love. But most painful of all, I've harbored feelings of anger and resentment and bitterness toward God.
Oh, how ugly my words have been to Him on more than one occasion.
Why me?
Why not her?
What did I do wrong?
Why are you punishing me?
Why are your promises not for me?
Why have you turned your back on me?
Why have your denied me the deepest and most desperate longings of my heart?
Why, oh why, did you make me this way?
What is wrong with you that you thought this would be a good plan for my life?
My prayers and journal entries for months were filled with me crying out to God, no longer for a baby, but for Him to answer me and answer me swiftly as to why He had chosen this road for me. Why He had chosen infertility for me. Why He had chosen to take my babies. Why He had chosen to punish me again and again.
And the angrier I grew with the Lord, the further and further I felt from Him until I had no desire at all to have anything to do with Him.
In April of this year, before the second miscarriage but when I was already starting to feel tired and defeated, I wrote this in my journal:
I come to you empty and anxious. I cannot identify why I feel so far from you.
I feel a distance, a chasm, that is unsettling. It is disturbing and lonely. I can't put my finger on it.
I feel a distance, a chasm, that is unsettling. It is disturbing and lonely. I can't put my finger on it.
And I feel sad.
I long to be close to you. To praise you. To come to you with prayers of Thanksgiving and praise.
Why is there a distance?
Why can't I come to you?
What have I done?
You never leave me. I always leave you. How can I return?
Forgive me for my lip service. For praising you with my mouth while feeling dead to you in my heart.
Forgive me. And let me return to you.
My journal is blank after that.
It stayed blank for a really long time.
And when I did decide to return to the Lord, I started a new journal.
A fresh start.
Because while I never stopped believing in the Lord, I really honestly stopped caring about His guidance and His plan for my life.
If this is God's desire for me, He can have it. I want nothing to do with it.
I wanted nothing to do with Him, but He wanted everything to do with me.He knew I was hurt. He knows I'm still hurt.
But His patience with me has been unending.
He refuses to let me go even when I'm kicking and screaming and spitting in His face.
He hangs onto me for dear life, knowing I'll return to Him, and waiting until I quiet down the temper-tantrum in my heart so that I can collapse in exhaustion into his waiting and open arms.
For a long time I thought that God not healing me and not giving me a baby was a sign that He didn't love me. Didn't care for me. Didn't long to give me the desires of my heart.
Oh, how wrong I was.
God loves me.
He adores me.
He longs to have me draw near to Him.
Most of all, He longs to see the greatest desires of my heart fulfilled.
You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing.
The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
he also hears their cry and saves them.
Psalm 145: 16-19
As I wrestled with my anger and feelings of bitterness, I would meditate on that verse.
See!
Your word promises you want me to have the desires of my heart.
So why aren't you fulfilling them?!
But slowly, ever so slowly, I began to see this verse in a different light.
I began to have my eyes opened to what God truly wants.
What He truly wants to fulfill in me.
Somewhere around mid-summer I came to this conclusion:
God does want to fulfill the greatest wordly desires of my heart.
God wants the greatest desires of my heart to be is Him.
What had I been longing after? Not God.
What had I been fighting for? Not God.
What had I elevated above all else? Not God.
What was I constantly meditating on, thinking it would make me happy above all else? Not God.
What had become my idol? Not God.
Sure, I had never stopped being an active participant in church, attending Bible Studies and mom's groups and working with kids on Sundays and during summer programs. But what had my focus been even in those interactions with Christ? What had my desire been in those meetings? Years and years of prayer and journaling had been devoted to asking for the one thing I truly desired: a baby. I would praise him for giving women of the Bible babies. I would thank Him for healing women around me and giving them babies. I would ask for forgiveness when all I could think about was babies.
Babies.
Babies.
Babies.
All I wanted... all I thought I needed... was a baby.
In my journal on July 9th, I wrote this:
Sometimes God's greatest grace is removing that idol from our lives
to show how much we desperately need Him.
And on that day in July, I broke.
I wept hot ugly tears as I decided to truly let go.
And I stopped.
I stopped being angry all the time.
I stopped praying non-stop for a baby.
I stopped charting and testing and avoiding foods I loved.
I stopped devoting my life and my finances and my time to the one thing that had consumed me for years and years.
And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:19
And I decided to instead by consumed by Him.
For He is the only thing I truly need.
{please join me tomorrow for part five.}
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