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.
