Category: Hope

Safe to Dream

Leave a comment

forsythiaThe following reflection was written by Forsythia. 

April 2013: My husband and I had been through a plethora of tests and doctor-visits that hadn’t brought us any closer to answering the question that burned in our hearts: can we have children? 

At last, we were on the brink of something that was going to give us definitive information–it would, it must, how could it not? We were going in for a biopsy. On the one hand, we were eager for the procedure and the answers it would give. On the other, we knew that it could be bad news as much as good news.

As the date approached, I felt I must prepare for the worst. We had so many dreams about our children–what they would look like, who they would take after, what we would name them. These dreams felt dangerous to hold onto. I decided that I would do something symbolic and purposeful to help myself let them go–something I’d been thinking about for a while. The idea was “better to let go of my own volition than have these desires ripped from me in our doctor’s office.”

I planned it all out. I would walk a local prayer labyrinth, giving myself time to meditate and grieve as I walked slowly to the center. Once there, I would light candles to represent those dreams that were hanging by a thread: the names of our wished-for children; the vision of us as parents…And when I was ready, I would snuff them out, walking the labyrinth out with my heart prepared for “come what may.”

The story of what took place that night can be found on my blog Leavingteaching.wordpress.com. In vague language–I was not open about our infertility at the time it was written–the voice of my 2013 self shares about wild hope. It does my heart good to revisit that narrative, to be reminded of the unexpected gift I was given in a moment of great need.

My purpose for the labyrinth that night was reversed on me. I felt clearly in my spirit that I was not meant to snuff out my dreams–that it was not my job to determine which desires for my life would come to fruition or when or how they would happen. Instead of blowing out candles as I let dreams go, I found myself lighting candles as I dreamed. Each time I blew the flames out, it was to light more. I dreamed and dreamed on into the night, with exuberance and gratitude. I lit a candle for each of the children we wanted, and those we never imagined; for the places we would live and things we would do; for our marriage.

It became clear to me that cool April night that it was safe for me to dream. I had meant to let go of these things because they felt dangerous to my heart–what if they didn’t come true? But an understanding was given to me through this experience: that dreams are only dangerous if I rest the weight of my soul on them. The same is true of anything finite in this world–fame, money, power, even relationships, love. If I chose instead to entrust my heart and my life to the unchangeable, powerful God of the Universe who loves me like a daughter, then nothing was lethal to me–not the death of a dream, not even death itself.

Looking back–my 2016 self reflecting on my 2013 self–I see that God has been faithful to the revelation that he gifted me that night. That even in my darkest moments, even when I couldn’t believe in hope, my dreams, my very heart, was safe in his care.

Letting Go

Leave a comment
Red-camellia-flower-leaf-macro-2560X1600-915x515

Photograph credit: http://www.wallpapers13.com/

The following reflection was written by Camellia.

It was our second pregnancy. My husband and I went to our first ultrasound to find I was 8 weeks along, and I was hopeful since our first pregnancy had ended abruptly at 6 weeks a few months prior. The nurse showed us our tiny child, still just a dot on the screen, its little heart already beating. Amazing. Then she frowned and went to get a doctor. “The baby’s heartbeat is 70 beats per minute, but that’s not always a problem,” the doctor said. “Check back next week.”

I held it together until I got into the car by myself to drive to work. A flood of tears poured down hot and fast. My baby is in danger. Do I mourn the loss before it has died? Can I act like it is “viable” (the frustratingly unfeeling term used in the medical world) and not worry about its tiny heart?

A week later, there was only one heartbeat in my body: our second child had been taken from us. Many tears were shed for many months after. My husband was certainly mourning, but even he couldn’t fathom the depths of my grief, and my longing for the child that would never be. I wasn’t sure who to talk to about it. I remember attending a women’s night that happened the week after our loss where three women announced their pregnancies. The leader jokingly said “Anyone else want to tell me they’re pregnant?!” I nearly ran out of the room to cry in the bathroom.

Even 3 months after the loss, I found myself writing the following:

To say the words “I had a miscarriage” are the hardest words to say, to this day. To even think the words. I think ever so matter of factly of “my miscarriage,” as I would think of “my tonsillectomy” or “my broken wrist.” To say “I had a miscarriage” is to take a medical situation into a personal realm. “I lost a baby.” “I suffered sorrow.” “I had a baby and now it is gone.” And to utter these words out loud is admitting the deepest trauma of my heart.

There was much grief and pain. But somehow, I had no anger or confusion during that time, only peace. Peace because I knew that there is an Author of Life that is always good all the time, and if He wanted my children to be with Him rather than on Earth, then I trusted the wisdom of that choice with all my heart. I thought of the lyrics: “My dead heart now is beating. My deepest stains now clean. Your breath fills up my lungs. Now I’m free!”

However, there was no peace with the next phase. We decided not to do the medical procedure to “clean me out,” but rather to let my body expel the embryo on its own. It was so disheartening to wait day after day for my own body to realize it was using hormones and energy to support an un-living embryo. It seemed like an eternity although it was only 10 days. I was drinking lots of parsley tea and taking vitamin C tablets–things the internet said would start a “natural abortion”–and still my body would not let me move on.

It took up all my energy and thought until I realized: I was able to trust the Lord with my child’s life, which I knew I could not control if I wanted to. Yet, I was clinging to these remedies to make my body cooperate–as If that was something I could control. How contradictory! The night that I became aware of this attitude was the night I surrendered my control over what I thought I could do myself. That same night, my miscarriage finally started.

What came out of this period of grief and despair was a confidence in the sovereignty of my God, compassion for others in a similar situation, and so much gratitude, even in light of that still, un-beating heart.

It was 5 months later that we got pregnant with our dear, sweet boy. It dawned on me the other day that if that second baby had survived, it’s possible that my son with his particular personality would have never been born. It gives that miscarriage experience a little more clarity to see the special child gained from such a painful loss, and I am grateful that the God of the universe, who sees everything, is the one in control of my family and my life.

A New Perspective

Leave a comment
18534680208_ac2151762f_b

Photo credit: Alan Johnston, Flickr

The following reflection was written by Linden. 

I entered the teaching profession at age 27 with no formal training or certification. But I loved it, and still do after recently finishing my second year! I get to teach high schoolers Spanish, and that involves a lot of Enrique Iglesias and Shakira. My husband works as a campus minister. He has a calling to mentor and encourage college students. (He also has a calling to rub my feet every once in awhile).

Four years into marriage, we felt ready to start trying to have kids. After the first few months, I began to wonder why it wasn’t working. It seemed so easy for everyone else. I had always been healthy. And on some level, I thought: “I’m a good person. I’m an upstanding citizen. Doesn’t God think I deserve to be a mom?”

Before we knew it, we had reached the year mark without success and made an appointment to talk with a doctor. I remember walking into the office on a bright but chilly January day. Gripping my husband’s hand, I said to him through tears, “I can’t believe we are this couple. I can’t believe we are having to do this.”

A year into working with this doctor, we made some discoveries about our situation. I was attending the weekly worship service at the college ministry where my husband works, and during that time, I felt God reveal something new to me. It wasn’t audible, but it was a fresh thought about infertility that I knew hadn’t come from myself. I had prayed, journaled, discussed with my counselor, and talked openly with friends and strangers alike about our journey through infertility, but that night, I was given a new perspective. One that gave me hope.

It wasn’t an idea that was easy to swallow. It didn’t make everything magically better. But it was hope in the most difficult season of my life. My husband and I had both taken the long route to finally getting jobs we loved. These jobs were personally fulfilling and making a difference in the world. We’d been placed in positions to influence and care for young people. For the first time ever, I was able to see that if we never had a child, we would always have these “children” in our lives. For me, my high school students. For my husband, his college students.

I had never thought about it in this way before. In the moment of realization, I felt simultaneously the pain of infertility and the comfort of knowing that we would be O.K. if we only ever had these children in our lives. That thought provided me with a hope I hadn’t felt yet about our infertility and renewed energy to press forward as we sought to grow our family.

Into a Great Fire and Out Again

Leave a comment
7364769258_0dac362d0e_b

Photo credit: Matt Green, Flickr

The following reflection was written by Tiger Lily. 

I always know what I want. It takes me 20 minutes tops to find an outfit I like and get out of a store. I usually know where I’m going. I have a good sense of direction, and can visually remember the way to almost anywhere after having been there once. I know what I want to do. I’ve wanted to make films and write since I was 8 years old.

I don’t wrestle with decisions much, because I usually know exactly what I want and what I hope for. So as you can imagine, when my husband and I got married and eagerly anticipated having children, I already had names picked out, bedrooms designed, and dreams imagined for those children.

My husband is quite a bit older than me, but it’s never been a stumbling block. If anything, it has been a source of strength. He has been through a lot of hardships in his life and though he always dreamed of having a family, he never thought it would actually happen for him. He met me, we married, and suddenly that dream once again sparked in the darkness and grew into a little flame. I desperately wanted to fan that flame, ready to become a mother at any moment. I wanted so much to give him everything he never had.
Our first year of marriage was wonderful. We couldn’t get enough of spending time together and looked forward to the future with a fluttering anticipation. I was taking pregnancy tests every month, waiting to see those plus signs. They never came.

After that first year life got hard… really hard. Our jobs were draining us dry in every way imaginable, our finances tumbled into a pit with seemingly no way out, my anxiety went through the roof, and his depression weighed him down like an anchor. The second and third years of marriage passed in this tumultuous storm. Still no children. Still no relief from our circumstances. I have always believed that my husband’s calling in life is fatherhood. He is a quiet and gentle soul towards whom both children and animals gravitate. He is a natural in nurturing, teaching, and caring for people and things. He never made me feel guilty, but I certainly made myself feel guilty about our failure to conceive. I felt that I was failing at providing him with children, and the faces of the children we dreamed of started to fade. We had called them each by name, but those names faded too.

At the crux of this pain and devastation, I started watching Game of Thrones. (You don’t need to have seen it to understand the point I’m making). Something happens in the story that really left an impression on me and changed my perspective on our situation. I really connected with Daenerys Targaryen (the character with the fabulous white hair). She was forced to marry a barbarian warrior, but over time they grew to truly love each other. By the middle of the first season/book, she was pregnant and there was much anticipation for the birth of their child.

In a tragic turn of events, her husband is killed and her baby stillborn. She loses everything. She was given three dragon eggs as a wedding gift, and while everyone else believes they are dormant, she dreams that if she carries them into a great fire, they will hatch. As an act of faith, she does this very thing, and when the smoke clears and the fires burn out, she rises completely unharmed with three dragons in her arms. This is how she becomes “The Mother of Dragons.”

This particular moment has stayed with me. In the wake of devastation, she takes a leap of faith and is rewarded for her belief. It didn’t bring back her husband, their son, or the life she had before. Nothing could undo the pain of her loss, but it was redeemed with a new future, a new hope.

God spoke to me through this story, as a metaphor for my own life. When I look back now, I can see that it was for our own good we did not have children. Our burdens were already so hard to bear–to add a child to that hardship might have been too much. I am grateful we weren’t parents during that time of struggle because we probably couldn’t have been available to them as much as they would have needed or deserved. It’s always hard to see clearly in the anguish of the moment, but the Lord held us firmly in His Hand through those years, and our pain was ultimately for our good.

The symbol of fire has been important in my life. It also reminds me of a story from one of my favorite books in the Bible (Daniel), in which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego encounter the fiery furnace. They are being executed, thrown in the furnace for not bowing down to the false gods of their king, Nebuchadnezzar:

“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.'”

Even if God did not bring them to safety in the end, even if he did not fulfill their desire to live and escape such a death, they would not waver in their faithfulness to Him. “But if not” is the most powerful part of that passage to me. Even if God does not help us, we will not serve your gods. He doesn’t always give us what we want, but He always provides what we need to fulfill our calling as His children.

Like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daenerys, I went into a great fire, a trial, and came back out again. Though covered in the ashes of loss, a new dream was born. I am not saying I’m giving up, or that we will never have children. I still hope we can some day, with all my heart! But even if we do not, I know our lives and our marriage are not devoid of purpose and passion. We have now been married over 4 years and I feel a new contentment in our relationship. Having one another truly is enough. Children could add to our lives, but having them is not the end-game of our union.

There is always hope. I still hope that I can see a child of our own in my husband’s arms, laughing in our home, playing in our yard, and resting their head upon my chest. Whether they are biological or adopted, I hope for them. Right now, I cannot see any open doors for this to happen, but it is always possible with God (lest we forget Abraham and Sarah). In the present, I have my own dragons to nurture–they are the stories I intend to tell the world through film, television, and other writing.

It wasn’t until years later that I could look back and see purpose in the pain we’ve endured so far. One day, I may be looking back upon this day in the very same light. Perhaps even with that dream child in my arms.

July Focus: Hope

Leave a comment

Although it is easy to focus on the hard stuff, the infertile experience is not without moments of clarity, growth, and hope. It goes without saying that these are as varied and specific as the losses, discouragements, and pains of the journey. Hope has a way of audaciously reaching into impossible moments to soften hardened hearts, open closed eyes, and empower the weary soul.

It is important and powerful, but hope is also a tricky thing to share with someone going through infertility. Although the storyteller’s goal is to uplift the listener, it can often have the opposite effect. Stories of pain, loss, and loneliness lead to connection and understanding, but hope is different–it challenges. It asks us to dare to believe there could be something beyond the mire in which we trudge; that there could be something good, and that it could be for us. One slogs rather than travels through infertility; the length and shape of the road is different for everyone. Sharing moments of hope can be a reminder that light exists out there, somewhere, but often, we must have our own experiences with hope if we are to be changed by it. 

This month, we are focusing on hope at Re-Storied. These stories are personal reflections about times when light broke into darkness, if only for a brief moment. Perhaps these stories will serve as a reminder to you of the unending cycle of death and new life (the daily rising of the sun, the turn of the seasons) that is present in us as it is in the rest of the natural world. Our hope for you is that you will be encouraged by these stories–that they will refresh your memory of past hopeful experiences, or bolster your spirit until your own moment in the light arrives.

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
Anne Lamott