Tag: God

A Child’s Palm

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The following reflection was written by Forsythia. 

She walks to a table in the center of the cafe, son at her heels. They sit, facing one another, his knees tucked under him. He leans on his elbows across the polished surface, eyes following every movement as she carefully unwraps the pastry from its cellophane protection. He bounces on his knees once or twice as the moment approaches, excitement welling up in his joints. She tears away a chunk and, trailing crumbs, places it in his little palm, stretched out in anticipation and openness and certainty. He knows that she will put there something that is delicious, something that is good, because he knows that he is loved, that he is safe. He trusts her.

But that is not always so. There is only so much this little mind can comprehend. And often what is good will look bad; what is safe will seem restrictive; what is loving will be perceived as hatred.

This is not an unfamiliar metaphor to the Christian. In Jesus’ famous words, found in Luke 11 and Matthew 7:

“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

I am reminded of this verse as I watch this little boy with his mother. I see the outstretched hand, the way it returns again and again to the center of the table full of expectation and without hesitation, and I cannot help but be transported back in time to dark nights in bed, face wet with tears, chest constricted by sobs. Here was I holding my palms out until they burned with the effort, begging God in prayer to fill me with something good: to place in the aching emptiness of my womb a throbbing, vibrant life.

You could not tell me in those moments that God gives good gifts to his children. That he is a faithful, constant, loving parent. You could not tell me such things as I watched the world spinning in unbroken motion, life marching on in expected sequence for those around me while I was cast out of orbit to float untethered in uninhabited space. No, my heart would reject the notion of a loving God as though it were poison—my heart did reject it, for years.

I rejected it not because it was a lie, but because it was the wrong remedy for the wounds life was inflicting on me.

There are many such things that, though they are true, are utterly unhelpful in the darkest moments of infertility. If you have never experienced miscarriage or infertility, in order to love well the someone in your life who has or is, you must understand this.

Other truths that were hurtful to me in the middle of my grief were “God has a plan for you” (Jeremiah 29:11) and “All things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). These things were said to me in order to bring comfort, but they served to harden my heart.

Not all methods of healing are appropriate for every wound, and only certain kinds of medication can help certain ailments. These truths—good, rich, helpful truths—were the wrong medication for me at the time. They were meaty, rich, decadent foods that my starving body could not digest. I needed simpler nourishment, nutrition that my weakened self could absorb.

So easily, we overlook that the Word of God is not all optimism and rejoicing and victory—that hope for the Christian begins with a suffering servant who, in his moment of deepest despair, cried out to God a question that was answered with silence (Matthew 27:46). Often, this is what infertility feels like: beating our breasts, crying out to God, and hearing nothing in return. That level of brokenness cannot be mended by words, however true they may be. And in fact, these words may be added pressure that further splinters the bone.

This was my reality and, I think, reality for many who experience infertility or child loss. So, what is one to do?

To the person trying to love an infertile friend: listen exhaustively, speak rarely. Empathetic phrases like “that’s sucks” and “I’m so sorry” go a long way. This person you love will need you to believe truth and pray bold prayers for them because they will probably not be able to do it for themselves. It may not feel like it, but even in silence, you are essential. Listening leads to vulnerability and trust, and out of that deep knowing, the right words will come.

To the person going through infertility or miscarriage: relationship is messy. People will say stupid things—they will be well meaning and extremely hurtful. I am so sorry for that. But you need to find community. Isolation kills. Have grace for those that are trying to love you well. Over-communicate, even though vulnerability is so very hard. Be honest when things hurt you. Tell people what you need. Don’t do this alone.

I believe that God is a good father. I believe that he holds all things in his hands, and knows all things. I believe that he sees the path of my life in its entirety and is a wise, faithful, and trustworthy steward of that story. I believe these things, and yet I do not always believe them. Thank God for community in which to bear each others’ burdens, and for grace, which is daily needed in the messy business of loving one another.

 

This Great Mystery

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forsythiaThe following reflection was written by Forsythia. 

 

I am an adoptive parent.

I wish I could say that adoption was something I’ve always been passionate about; that I’ve always wanted to adopt and that my heart is full of concern for children without parents.

It is important to me that adoption not be seen as “the answer to infertility,” because there are many ways that this perspective is unhealthy to the family and unfair to the adopted. I do not believe that adoption is only for infertile families. I want to be the noble, sacrificial self that people assume of adoptive parents.

And yet…and yet.

I did not come to the option of adoption by compassion or self-sacrifice or passion or choice. I came to it because of my life circumstances.

It was a long journey from attempting natural conception to infertility testing to adoption; a long road littered with grief and loss and confusion and shame. It is an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

And yet…and yet.

Our messy and unconventional story opened our minds first and then our hearts to a child that isn’t biologically ours.

My life experiences leading up to our infertility gave me no context for anything other than a traditional family and biological children. I could not imagine loving or bonding with a child with whom I didn’t share a biological connection. I was too afraid of the risks of adoption to move beyond them. I had spent years—my whole life, really—constructing a dream that did not include adoption; all my expectations and hopes had taken a different route. When infertility set fire to this life map, I found myself utterly directionless.

Infertility was the cause of my confusion and disorientation. It was the cause of my loss and the death of certain beautiful dreams.

And yet…and yet.

It was also the compass that redirected me. It was the sign pointing me in a new direction: because I knew the places I could not travel, I also knew the places where my feet could move forward. Adoption was new territory that I had not considered, would not have considered, without infertility’s presence in my life.

It feels very risky to say this out loud, but I know it to be true in my life: I am thankful for our infertility.

Over the six years that I screamed and kicked and wailed at infertility, wishing it a horrifying end as if it were an embodied thing, I never once considered that I might say those words…that I might actually associate gratitude with infertility. But I say it now with whole and pure conviction.

I thought I was being denied a child that was the product of our marital love; my adopted son is absolutely a product of our love. I thought I would feel disconnected from a person who did not share my features, my DNA, my blood; my adopted son is as close to my body as my own breath. He is the child that I dreamed of. And yet, I didn’t dream him up. He is a gift that I did not truly ask for or expect.

I am grateful that God saw my whole story and was faithful to see it done. Did he make us infertile so that we would consider adoption? Do both pain and joy come from his hand? Or does he simply work joy out of the pain that the world gives us? I don’t understand these mysteries. I love this little boy with my entire being. He is a gift I did not imagine or deserve. The process of adoption, living in an open adoption, being his mother…these things are doing something in me that is full of beauty and power, that is making me a more open minded, honest, tender, compassionate woman.

I don’t understand these mysteries. But I see my story becoming so much bigger, so much more exquisite, than the one I had in mind. I am grateful for the agents that helped to shape it. Yes, including Infertility.

One Who Understands

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pic_windswept_hawthorn1The following reflection was written by Hawthorne. 

We couldn’t have children. That’s what the doctor said. Technically, we couldn’t have children without major medical intervention. We had done that for years already, and I was so, so tired. We had done everything–fertility drugs, multiple I.U.I.’s, two rounds of IVF. My emotions were worn raw and my relationship to them, and to my body, so tenuous. I hadn’t been able to trust my emotions in years: The hormones coursing through my body from the injections I took in an attempt to regulate my body’s broken reproductive signals made me doubt everything I felt and thought. I was done. Three years of trying was enough for me. My heart couldn’t take it anymore.

We quit trying to have kids in November of 2016. It was one of the hardest moments of my life, and for a long time I could do nothing each day but wake up and remember that I was not alone and God was with me. I had no hope in a future that held joy, and everything, even breathing, took effort. Then, slowly, my husband and I started to heal. We had sweet time together. We had great conversations about why we had wanted kids in the first place. We decided to adopt. My heart for adoption grew even bigger as we learned more about the process, although there was definitely fear in that as well. We went through the process and were put on the waitlist for a baby.

And then I got pregnant.

Out of the blue, without intention, without warning. And I couldn’t believe it. My initial reaction was disbelief, followed by anger and grief. I couldn’t talk to hardly anyone about how I felt because my emotions didn’t make sense to anyone I knew–including my husband, although he tried to understand. I didn’t know how to explain to him that I had moved on. My heart had closed to this desire, and to get pregnant after all that just made me feel like the whole infertility experience was a total, meaningless waste. It reminded me again of all the pain of constant disappointment, the constant fighting to not feel rejected by God, and the grief of my early miscarriage.

I think somewhere in my mind I had become a new person after infertility. A person who couldn’t have babies…a person who had been shaped and built by grief. A person who could understood people’s pain and could empathize with others. Honestly, pregnancy made me feel like God had hit the restart button on my life. It felt like he was saying “Oops, my bad, that’s not how it was supposed to go for you! Hang on a sec!” It felt like all the truth and beauty I had found after healing from infertility was a lie. It felt like God had just played with my emotions for four years. It felt like my pregnancy meant my infertility was a giant mistake, honestly, as opposed to some harrowing and horrible journey I had gone on that had ended somewhere good. In my mind, it negated the whole experience.

It took me a long long time to be able to verbalize any of this. No one I knew could help me figure out what I was feeling, and honestly, most people in my life were just super confused about my attitude toward being pregnant. They were overjoyed for us, and so was my husband, but for me it took almost my entire pregnancy before I could believe and feel pregnant. Even then, I dreaded anything stereotypical, from baby showers, to people touching my belly, to getting attention from people. It all made me feel so, so sad and I didn’t know how to communicate to anyone how I was feeling. I felt guilty about the whole thing. Honestly, it was perhaps the loneliest part of my journey toward becoming a parent.

My son was born recently, and parenthood has been so sweet. I am so in love with this tiny person. His birth and being his mom has validated how sweet and real and normal a desire it is to be a parent and has validated how real a loss infertility is for people.

I wish that I could put my experiences in a neat package and give them a purpose. I wish I could say why God made us go through all of that pain if it was going to end the way it did. It was, honestly, meaningless in many ways. But pain often is. Not all darkness leads to discovery and not all tragedy is part of some beautiful story. I wish it were, but I think to do so would be a disservice not only to myself but to everyone who has gone through infertility.

God is not necessarily teaching you something, building you into a better person, or going to give you something “better,” although that may end up being a result of your experiences. He is not preparing you to be a better parent or teaching you a lesson for some past sin. If you do get pregnant, it is not because you did something to earn it or because he has decided after all to “bless” you. This may rub people the wrong way, but listen to what I do believe:

God is with us through it all. He is not toying with us; he is grieving with us. He is our constant companion in a broken, sin-riddled, and painful world. He is showing up and holding our hearts when everything is just too hard. No matter how our stories end, He has promised to be there with us and to hold us as we heal. He is not the grand manipulator teaching us lessons as he jerks our puppet strings. He is our friend, our suffering Savior, and he is the only one who can truly understand our hearts.

 

E for Epiphany

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forsythia

The following reflection was written by Forsythia. 

This story contains spoilers for the film and/or graphic novel V for Vendetta.

I am a Christian. At the heart of my chosen doctrine is the foundational belief in a sovereign God who is crazy in love with me, to the point of great personal sacrifice—his beloved son Jesus. This belief undergirds all other aspects of being a Christian, and so when it is in question, all things are in question.

How can a good, a loving God withhold from me something as natural and beautiful as motherhood? It wasn’t long into trying to get pregnant that this question sprouted in my mind. Years later, its roots were firmly about my worldview. This question—an unresolved doubt about my God and his character—became spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually paralyzing. I found myself either struggling to believe what the Bible said about God’s goodness, or what it said about his power. For how could suffering exist of both of these things were true? It was causing me to abandon the thing that most gave my life purpose, hope, and meaning, at a time when I needed those things the most.

About 5 years into infertility, I was just starting to read the Bible again, and found myself stuck on a chapter in Galatians that spoke about the gift of suffering. I happened to be wrestling with this idea in a lull at work, texting with my best friend as I tried to reason it out, to understand, to make sense of my suffering.

“Is it possible that what feels like torture could actually be love?” I processed with her.  

And then in the room next door, a professor started up a film his class had begun earlier: V for Vendetta. I am so familiar with the film that I could picture its exact images as I listened to the dialogue, sound effects, score. It’s one of my favorites, but I hadn’t thought of it in a while.

There’s a part in the film when the principal character is in prison being tortured for information. She endures this for days, though she has nothing to offer them, until finally, she is told she will be executed. But what happens next is that her cell is left open and unguarded. She ventures out of the prison to discover it was not a prison after all. It was a charade, designed by a man named V.

“You tortured me? Why!” She screams. “Leave me alone! I hate you!”

V explains that it was the only way to free her from the fear that enslaved her—to subject her to what she most feared so that she could face and overcome it. “I wish there was another way,” he says.

Disbelief, rage, grief, betrayal, relief, and pain converge and she begins to hyperventilate. V takes her to the roof. There, she stands in the rain, breathing in the fresh air and feeling it all as though for the first time. She realizes that V has actually accomplished what he set out to do. The absence of fear has made her world big and vibrant, full of possibility and beauty. Fear was being used to take her life from her. Overcoming it allowed her to reclaim it.

It’s difficult to express how much this moment in my life—exposure to this scene as I was grappling with the question of suffering—impacted my relationship with God, and how much it shifted my attitude towards my circumstances and renewed hope in my heart. Not only did it open my mind to a new way of seeing my story, but it represented my pain, disbelief, confusion and heartache in a cathartic way. The scene in that film gave real emotional teeth to a concept that I was just barely able to consider intellectually at the time: that it could be possible for the hardest thing in my life to be the only way for me to reach a place in life that I was meant to reach.

This new perspective was life-altering. It helped me to see beauty and possibility in my story where before I had only seen punishment, anguish, pain, and meaninglessness. And it showed me anew the possibility of the God of the Bible that I had so fallen in love with: personal, loving, powerful.

I can’t claim to fully understand the mystery of suffering and God’s place in that reality. It’s not a new question, and one that has no easy answer (perhaps not even an answer the human mind will ever be able to comprehend). But I do know for my husband and I that if we had not been made to die to our dream of biological children, we would not have opened our hearts to adoption. My adopted son is not just a child. He is a specific, unique human being. I cannot comprehend a world without him in it. Yet, he was not what I yearned after for so many years–not the face I pictured, not the reality I prayed for. I couldn’t see the future , didn’t know to wish for this special little one who would become my little one. But I believe in a divine Someone who sees past, present and future at once. He witnessed our every grief and loss, and he also knew the unspeakable joy that this exact child would bring into our hurting hearts.

Was the suffering of infertility the only way we could have received this incomprehensibly precious gift? It’s hard to hear. It’s hard to explain. It’s hard to comprehend. But I believe the answer is yes. 

 

The Lost Sheep

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sunflower-02The following reflection was written by Sunflower. 

The following thoughts have been stirring over and over lately in my head, my heart, and in my talks with my husband. Many of my conversations with him are about the community of believers, how they have or have not handled our particular journey well, and what we will or will not do if we are faced with a couple going through something that reflects our path.

Honestly, as I stare at the computer screen, I am still not sure how to say what is deep in my heart, causing me so much pain and frustration. I do know that I have been extremely hurt by the “audience” of believers that God has placed in my life. I use the term audience because that is what they are: they look, watch, judge, and predict. They cheer and clap when they think I have done something good, and boo and yell when they think I have made a wrong move. They are an audience because their involvement in my healing has been minimal.

They feel safer from a distance. They wait for me to enter their territory so that they can really “meet me where I am” and offer “healing words, and spiritual food.” They stand at the door, yelling for their lost sheep (me), and if yelling doesn’t work they try a whistle, or maybe a bell, or maybe silence, or maybe a treat…when nothing proves to work, they drop their head in disappointment that their lost sheep has wondered off the wrong path, close the door, and continue on. They may stop and think about me for a moment, but the thought is brief because they have too many sheep they are trying to keep track of and they are responsive while I am the sheep that is not, so it is best just to “move on” to those who will respond.

I do hear their calls, the whistle, the bell, and actually think the treat sounds quite good, but I am caught in a bush, its thistles and vines wrapped so tightly around my legs and I cannot move. I try yelling, but they are too distracted or impatient to hear my weak and quiet voice; I try responding, but it is not the response they expected so they miss it. I am tired. I am tired of trying, of fighting, and so I lie down and wait.

Christ comes. He slowly and precisely cuts each branch, vine, and thistle that has wrapped around my aching body and broken heart. He knows I am disappointed, that I have been left alone, and he keeps telling me how sorry he is. He gently lifts my broken body from the bush and starts to tend to my wounds, only the way a healer and a maker can. He sings gentle songs in my ears and whispers his love and promises to my heart. As I continue to heal, as he continues the healing, our hearts start beating as one. He stands me up and places his hands on my shoulder and looks into my eyes.

“Daughter, you have been disappointed; I know, I am disappointed too. I will never leave you and I will always come and find you, but now you have to make a choice. Are you going to be one of the many people in the audience of others’ lives, or are you going to be a participant? I don’t need another person to fill a seat and watch; I need someone who will be in the play. I know you are hurt, and it is your choice…but I will always come and find you.”

 

Safe to Dream

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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

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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

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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.