New friend and a flashback

I had an awesome lunch a few weeks ago with a sweet gal who lives in Greendale and had found my blog and contacted me to see if she could get more information about the RESOLVE group I had posted about.  As we sat down to lunch and started talking it was if we had known each other forever.  There is just something about sharing in each others pain that really draws us close to each other.  I knew just what she was feeling and I was touched that she had reached out to me and was so thankful that my blog led her to this other group of amazing ladies that would be able to walk along side her, too. 

 

Well, that same gal happened to do IVF last week and is in the painstaking 2ww (2 week wait for you fertiles:))  Please keep her in your prayers - that the 2 little babies the transferred would implant and grow, grow, grow and that she would enjoy each day of this pregnancy - PUPO, right?!

 

Today she reached out to the group that she was looking for some encouragement.  I emailed her some thoughts and decided to forward her on some of the notes from our infertilty bible studies from back in 2009 when Rachel and I led a group of ladies. 

 

I stumbled across this little gem I wrote and read to the ladies at our introductory meeting.  It's my "story" of God working in me and through me and how He brought me closer to Him.  Keep in mind that when I wrote this, it was April, 2009 - I had miscarried in March, 2009 and we had not yet gotten matched with our Texas Fan Club's embryos. 

 

Enjoy!

I started going to church when I was a little kid, so I’ve always known who Jesus was – but its in the past 7 years that I’ve really gotten to know Him.  Growing up, I think I always had this works-based faith - - that God wanted me to do all the right things, be a good person, go to church and if I did XY & Z, He would let me into the pearly gates when I died.  So that’s what I did – I went to church, prayed when I needed something and tried to be a better person than the gal next to me. In the back of my mind, I always felt like I was missing something – but I was never really sure what.  I just knew that whenever times were tough, I’d go to church and I’d get really choked up and I’d feel so alone.  I couldn’t really explain it, but I kept going to church to try to figure out why I felt this way & what I might be missing. 

It was shortly after I met my husband that this whole idea of works-based faith was challenged and I began to really seek God.  In my mind & my idea of God, everything was in my control – if I worked hard, if I went to church, if I was a good person, He would love me.  As I started to read the bible and learn more about who Jesus really was, I began to see that this whole gospel thing wasn’t about me at all.  If I could do it all on my own just by being a good person, why did Jesus have to die on the cross?  Why would He endure the suffering of such a painful death?  I see now that what I had been missing in my faith was the idea of grace. Grace is the free unmerited love & favor of God.  Its FREE – there is nothing we need to do but believe in Him.  Accept His death on the cross as punishment for our sin.  There are no amounts of good works I can do to earn His love.  He loves me no matter what.  What He wanted from me was a relationship – He didn’t want me to be good to please Him.  He didn’t want me to come to church in empty worship out of obligation.  He didn’t want me to pray to Him only when I needed something.  He wanted me.  He wanted a relationship with me.  He wanted me to come to Him everyday – to read His Word and get to know Him intimately.  He wanted all of Me. 

Now, this new faith in God was all fine and good and pretty easy until my first real test of my faith came – Infertility.  While in my mind I had accepted that yes, Jesus died on the cross for me and I believed and accepted this gift of       grace and claimed to have surrendered my life to Him, I wanted a baby more than anything.  I got mad at God when it wasn’t happening.  Then I felt bad for being mad and I reverted back to my works based faith.  I thought that maybe if I just prayed a whole bunch and joined a bunch of bible study groups and volunteered at church, God would be happy with me and give us a baby.  He didn’t.  I got mad again.  Everyone else around me got pregnant.  My sister, who was done having kids, got pregnant “accidentally” when her youngest was only 6 months old.  I was mad.  I was jealous.  And then I felt guilty for being mad and jealous – it was my turn.  I’d start comparing myself to everyone else who conceived so easily.  I’d try to convince God that I was a better person, that I deserved a baby.  I think after awhile, I even stopped praying for one.  I gave up on God.  But thankfully, He never gave up on me.  I came across this poem by Russell Kelfer that I think sums up pretty well what brought me back to God and out of the darkest pit I had ever been in….

 

Wait

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried;
Quietly, patiently, lovingly, God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate . . .
And the Master so gently said, "Wait."

"Wait? you say wait?" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By faith I have asked, and I'm claiming your Word.

"My future and all to which I relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to wait?
I'm needing a 'yes', a go-ahead sign,
Or even a 'no' to which I can resign.

"You promised, dear Lord, that if we believe,
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord I've been asking, and this is my cry:
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply."

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate,
As my Master replied again, "Wait."
So I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut,
And grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting for what?"

He seemed then to kneel, and His eyes met with mine . . .
and He tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead and cause mountains to run.

"I could give all you seek and pleased you would be.
You'd have what you want, but you wouldn't know Me.
You'd not know the depth of my love for each saint.
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint.

"You'd not learn to see through clouds of despair;
You'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there.
You'd not know the joy of resting in Me
When darkness and silence are all you can see.

"You'd never experience the fullness of love
When the peace of My spirit descends like a dove.
You would know that I give, and I save, for a start,
But you'd not know the depth of the beat of My heart.

"The glow of my comfort late into the night,
The faith that I give when you walk without sight.
The depth that's beyond getting just what you ask
From an infinite God who makes what you have last.

"You'd never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that My grace is sufficient for thee.
Yes, your dearest dreams overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss, if you missed what I'm doing in you.

"So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
That the greatest of gifts is to truly know me.
And though oft My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still . . . Wait."

I took solace in this poem – that God was working in me and through me in this – and that He was faithful and wouldn’t ever leave me alone in this struggle.  So of course, now that I had this all figured out, in the back of my mind, I think I still thought he would give me a baby as a reward for all my hard work – Ok, I get it, Lord – it’s taken 3 years & now I’ve really gotten to know you and so now we can get pregnant, right?  You’ve done what you needed to do in me.  Wrong.  That’s when I got my diagnosis – I had a 1-2% chance of ever getting pregnant.  Ouch.  Luckily the things I had learned in my journey thus far had helped prepare me to get through the hardest news I would (hopefully) ever have to handle.  I’ll be honest – I was still angry with God, I still didn’t understand why, but for the first time, I began to really trust in Him- to trust that He was in control, that He could bring good out of any situation.  I began to understand what living your life for Him really meant.  And this time, in my anger, rather than running from Him and hiding from Him, I ran to Him, and I yelled at Him.  I got down on my knees and cried out to Him.  I sobbed for hours and really truly felt like He was there to comfort me, letting me know that as long as I belonged to Him, he would never forsake me.  That He will always satisfy me, no matter what my circumstances are. 

This past March, my faith was once again tested as we went through our frozen embryo transfer with the 3 beautiful embryos He brought into our lives from a family in Montana through embryo adoption.  The two embryos that survived the thaw looked amazing and the transfer went off without a hitch.  For the first time in a while, I actually let down my guard and got really excited – I really thought this was going to be it.  My prayers would be answered.  The night before our frozen embryo transfer, I was surrounded by 18 close friends and family members that came over to our house to bathe us in prayer and ask God for His blessings.  As we sat around in that circle and presented our requests to God, I saw Him working in our lives – I looked around and saw all these people that He had brought into our lives, all the support He had provided and I thanked God for all He had been doing in us and through us during this journey. 

            I’m not going to lie to you, when we received news that I was miscarrying shortly after the embryo transfer, I was shocked. I thought for sure God would answer our prayers.  I didn’t understand why He would let this happen.  I had so many questions and not enough answers.  Even now, I can’t say I am healed and I don’t struggle with this.  The one thing I can say is that my faith that has gotten me through this – somehow I know that He hasn’t left me, that He still loves me and He will get me through this.

            The one promise God makes to us over and over in the bible is that He will not forsake us – He will never leave us.  As I look back at the last almost 4 years of infertility, I look at all the people He’s brought into my life – through the church we helped start in downtown Milwaukee 3 years ago, through RESOLVE – so many people that have been so supportive – I feel like He is showing Himself to me through these people. 

The first person I turned to when I found out I had miscarried was Rachel – we had met through RESOLVE just a few short months ago, but I truly felt like God had brought her into my life to show Himself to me – to comfort me in my times of trouble.  In 2 Corinthians 1: 3-7, Paul writes “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”  I truly feel like in these past few months, Rachel has been that comfort to me – she has shared in my sufferings just as all of you have. 

            My goal for this bible study is that each of you would know the love of Christ.   There is so much to learn about Him in the bible – so much He wants to share with us & my hope is that in this bible study each of us gets to know Him and the promises He makes. My goal is that we would find comfort amongst each other, that our sufferings would not be wasted, but that they would be used by God in each of our lives to draw us closer to Him and to work in each others lives.  My goal is that you would be so sure that the end of the story, whether we end up with kids someday or not, is heaven and that you will have a hope each day because of that.  I’ve heard Joy defined as the quiet confident assurance of God’s love.  Most days, I can honestly say I am at peace resting in Him and His plans for us, even if they are not the path I would have chosen.  Choosing to follow Him doesn’t mean there are no problems in life, or that you’ll never be mad at God, but what it means is that you know he is there for you, that He is in control & that as bad as life can be, that you’ll spend eternity in paradise with Him.  So while He does not guarantee us a baby, He doesn’t promise that if we come to Him, he’ll speed up our wait, I hope that each of you can find joy and you can experience the peace of knowing God loves you & He is in control.    I pray that God is working in each of your lives – that He is using this crappy situation to bring you closer to Him  - that you, too, would be comforted by Him & know the Joy of resting in Him.