Understanding Infertility, Post 4

Key Points from Lesson 1, Concluded

 

You need to change your focus.

I saved this point for last for two reasons: first, it’s the most critical point to achieving success, and, second, well, because it’s going to be a tough pill to swallow. At the risk of bristling those little hairs on the back of your neck, I’m just going to say it: you’ve got to stop focusing on yourself and your situation. When you walk through anything so personally tragic as infertility and miscarriage, it is the natural reaction to turn all eyes inward; to become self-focused; to become—dare I say it—obsessed with your misfortune. It’s not intentional by any means. It just comes naturally to our flesh. And it’s terribly, terribly destructive—not only to yourself, but to your marriage and all your other relationships.
                Infertility is not your identity. Let me say it again.
                 Infertility is not your identity.
The sooner you grasp hold of that, the better. It is true that you are experiencing a season in your life that is difficult to walk through. I will not deny you that, but it does not have to define who you are. We will delve deeper into this in a later lesson, but for now, mull over that thought, and take a good, introspective look at how infertility has changed you.

“For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.” Colossians 3:3

 

This is the last post from Lesson1, Understanding Infertility. Next week, I'll begin Lesson 2, Changing Focus. It's all about how to shift our focus from our circumstances and infertility to our God.

"The Blesseds": The Meek

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5

We tend to think of meekness as a negative trait. We equate it with someone who is cast down or trodden on. At best we may use it to describe someone who is unusually quiet or shy. But, meekness to God is not a weak, down-trodden individual, but rather someone who, by their own strength of will has chosen to devote themselves to God's plan. In this "blessed", Jesus is emphasizing the importance of a humble, contrite spirit that acknowledges its dependence on God, and chooses not to assert its own control. He is advocating an attitude of quiet reflection towards our Creator-- waiting on Him to speak and not being quick to demand from Him.

But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.Psalm 37:11

Jesus was probably quoting from this Psalm when he made His declaration to the meek.
God promises that those with a meek spirit will inherit the earth. Most likely, He is referring to the "new earth", the coming kingdom of God. The Psalmist is also promising much to the meek. In addition to the land or "earth", those with a quiet spirit will enjoy the peace that comes from acknowledging God's control, and the prosperity of His will actively at work in their lives.

On that day you, Jerusalem, will not be put to shame for all the wrongs you have done to me, because I will remove from you your arrogant boasters. Never again will you be haughty on my holy hill. But I will leave within you the meek and humble.The remnant of Israel will trust in the name of the Lord.Zephaniah 3:11-12

This passage from Zephaniah emphasizes God's favor of the meek and his detestation of the proud. He promises to remove all those who would boast in their own strength, their own power, their own self-made righteousness and leave only those who are humble and contrite in heart-- those who acknowledge their need for God and His power in their lives; those who realize that, apart from Him, they can do no good; and those who are waiting on the fulfillment of His promises.

Are you meekly walking through infertility? Is your spirit quietly waiting or does it rage and pound at the door of your heart, demanding an answer for its disappointments? Develop an attitude of meekness before God and He has promised you the peace and prosperity that you really desire. 

Understanding Infertility, Post 3

Key Points from Lesson 1, Continued

 

You are not alone in this.

 Not only has the Creator promised to never leave you or forsake you, you are here now with a group of women who are traveling the same road you are. Infertility and miscarriage are very isolating conditions. They can make you feel as though you are fundamentally flawed, utterly different than other women, and leave you feeling completely alone. The truth is you are not. Just look back at the statistic on the first page of this section. 7.3 million other women are feeling exactly what you are now. One of the fundamental purposes of this study is to get women like you linked up to a support system of others who can empathize, not just sympathize, with you. There may be times when you don’t feel like being linked, when you just want to curl up into a ball and hide yourself from everyone. I know, I was there; but those are the times when you need it the most.

“Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

As you learn to heal and overcome the inner turmoil you feel right now, you will hopefully make yourself available to others who are just beginning their journey.

 

Your situation is not hopeless.

 

Even if you are dealing with a complete loss of fertility, that burning desire within you to hold a child of your own is not a lost cause. That longing for a child was placed inside you by your Creator Himself, and it was not a cruel trick (as I sometimes accused Him of). As we discussed earlier, He had a plan the moment He placed it inside of you, you just have to discover it. Believe it or not, some women have no desire to be a mother, and I believe that was no mistake. In a later lesson, we will discuss other ways to fulfill the longing of your heart, and you may be surprised to learn that you can do so without having to spend a dime!

Our God is the author of hope, and without Him, we are left to despair. The Scriptures tell us repeatedly to put our hope in Him, and that is exactly what we will learn to do. We will not put our hope in doctors or medical procedures which are fallible, but in the one, true, infallible God.

“Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.” Psalm 62:5

“But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint”. Isaiah 40:31

"The Blesseds": Those Who Mourn

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4

In this passage, the word mourning can refer to two things: first, a deep sorrow over sin, both personal and corporate-- the mourning over the depravity of man and its hopeless end; second, to grieve over a loss. Strong's concordance gives one definition for the Greek word used (penthountes)as "to grieve over a personal hope that dies".

Infertility is such a grief as this word defines. It is mourning the loss of a dream; it is greiving the idea that our heart may never realize its fondest hope.

Despite our mourning, God promises comfort. This comfort can come in many ways. God sent us comfort in the person and work of Jesus and the life that He provided for us. He also sent the Holy Spirit to speak comfort to our heart through the gentle reminders of God's promises. He also sends us other believers who can speak words of encouragement into our lives and share our burdens with us.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.   Isaiah 61:1-3

Isaiah says that God has provided freedom for the captives (to sin) and release from darkness. Infertility may have held you captive in its grasp, threatening to destroy you and all you love. Maybe it's more than just infertility-- maybe it's depression, anxiety, a failing marriage... whatever it is, these works of darkness are no match for the power of our loving, delivering God. He promises to comfort all who mourn, provide for all who grieve, and crown them with "His loving kindness and mercy" (Psalm 103:4) He promises them the oil of joy, Jesus-- the "balm of Gilead"-- who soothes and binds up our wounded souls, replacing our despair with a garment of unceasing praise for His goodness and mercy.

Then, those who once could only mourn will become a radiant display of the splendor and beauty of God as they bask in His joy and peace.

Understanding Infertility, Post 2

The Lord remembers us and will bless us.
Psalm 115:4

I knew enough of my God to know that He would never leave me nor forsake me. But sometimes, connecting this thought from the head to the heart can prove difficult. Slowly I began to realize that in asking if He had forgotten me, what I was really bringing in to question was the very goodness of God.

Was it God’s ultimate plan for me to be barren? No. He created women to bring forth life. He promised the children of Israel that if they would follow Him and keep His commands that none of them would be barren or miscarry. No barren woman in the Bible who cried out to Him was ever denied. It was clear from Scripture that God’s desire is for every woman to bring forth life.

Life is, after all, the very hallmark of God.

When sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, death came along with it. Where once there was only life and joy, now mankind, through its own sinful nature, must endure heartache and death. Infertility is a result of man’s choice to reject the perfect law of the Creator, and follow his own will.

Infertility is not a part of God’s plan for His people.

Jesus said: “I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).  God is the author and giver of life. He breathed into each of us the breath of life at the moment of our conception. It is He alone that creates and brings forth life, and it is to Him alone that we should turn in our time of need.

Some Key Points from Lesson 1:

God loves you.

This is the first and most important point. God does love YOU. I will be the first to admit that when you are walking through infertility and miscarriage, it doesn’t really seem like He even knows you exist, much less loves you, but despite our personal feelings, the fact remains that He does indeed love you.

                “And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”                                                                         Ephesians 3:17-19                                                                          

God has a plan for your life.

And it isn’t for you to spend the rest of your life in hopeless longing for a child. In the midst of a broken heart, it is difficult to recognize that God saw every day of your life before you were even conceived.
               
                “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” Psalms 139:16

That is both a comforting and sometimes conflicting thought. It is easy to conclude that if God knew everything that was going to happen to you, then He planned for us to have these heartaches. But the very nature of God tells us that isn’t the case. 

                                “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen.’”  Jeremiah 29:11

God’s plan for our life is one only of good. It is a plan of hope. What changed? We did. We all sin. It is, unfortunately, in our nature from birth. When we chose to live apart from the perfect ways of God, we also chose to live apart from His perfect plan.

The point is that God’s plan for our life is one of two options we can choose from. The other is to follow our own path, apart from Him, and try to make some good on our own. There are hundreds of examples in the Bible that show us just how well this works out for people. Turn again to Sarah. She grew weary and tired of waiting, so she deviated from the path and made her own. This detour resulted in generations of violence and strife that are still being played out to this day.

When we surrender to God and seek after Him, we open the door for His perfect will to be done in our life.

 

"The Blesseds": The Poor in Spirit

I was digging though my Bible reading journal and found notes I had made on the Sermon on the Mount, specifically, each of the "Blesseds". I thought, in between FF posts, we could take some extra time to look at these elements each week. This passage is found in Matthew 5:3-10. We'll start with the first Blessed, the Poor in Spirit.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3

The word "poor" here is not referring to a financial state. To be "poor in spirit" means to be humble, hungry for God, dependent on His goodness and mercy instead of relying on our own sufficiency. Such a person will inherit all God has to offer. The "kingdom of God" can also refer to Jesus' work of salvation.

So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Luke 7:22

In the passage above, Jesus reports to John on His work and mentions that the "poor have the Good News preached to them". Again, I don't believe poor here refers to the financially desperate, but to those who are hungry, seeking, and those who have been spiritually bankrupted by the futility of earthly things. The good news was that there was a cure for the emptiness, the futility, and the hopelessness of life they felt. Jesus was enough to meet their every need.
There is a similar, prophetic passage in Isaiah:

Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord; the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 29:19

Do you feel poor in your spirit? Do you feel like you have been stripped of all you once possessed and are left destitute by the ravages of the world? The Greek word used for poor in these verses is ptōchoi, which means "to crouch or cower like a beggar". Do you feel sometimes like you are cowering from your circumstances, like you are begging for something good while the world is passing you by? God is here to meet your every need and provide a life of joy and abundance in Him. He will never pass you by or leave you destitute.

Understanding Infertility: Post 1

Here we go, into the wild blog yonder. (Sorry)
 
This is the official opening blog for the Fundamentally Flawed book. Each Monday, I will post a new blog that follows the lesson topics discussed in FF. Most of the blog posts will be excerpts from the book, with a few extras thrown in, for good measure. Each month will focus on one Lesson-- convenient, since there are 12 of them. I love it when things work out!
 
For November, I'll be discussing Lesson 1, entitled Understanding Infertility. This is the first post in that series. Lesson 1, post 1... yeah, you get it. First off, a fact:

 7.3 Million US women have an impaired ability to get pregnant.

My Story...

Like most couples, when my husband and I were first married, we excitedly made plans for our future together. Among those plans, inevitably, was when we would start our family. It was important to us even at our young age (I was 20 when we were married) that I be able to stay home and take care of the children rather than place them in daycare. We also knew that we wanted a few years to cultivate our own relationship before we added the dynamic of children. At that point, everything seemed so cut and dry—we would give it about five years, then we would have three children about two years apart. That was our perfect, fail-proof plan.

 Five years came and went, and at last we determined we were financially and emotionally ready to become parents. I remember the first month we decided we were going to try to get pregnant. It was exciting.  I kept thinking of what it would be like to tell my husband I was going to give him a child, to tell our parents they were going to be grandparents; I began to think about how I would decorate the nursery, what hospital I would use, which pediatrician the baby would see… all the typical things a couple starting a family think about.

I knew that first month that the chances of conceiving right away were slim. I had resigned myself to the fact that it would probably take three or four months. But as three months turned into six, then nine, then a year, I began to feel the first twinges of despair.

During our second year of trying to conceive, I began to see an OBGYN for infertility treatment. She began with the determination that I had PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) and immediately prescribed medication. I had a renewed sense of hope when I left her office that day. I thought we had found the solution and that I would soon become pregnant.

About six months passed, and I still had not conceived. The next step was to undergo an HSG (Hysterosalpingogram), a procedure in which dye is injected into the reproductive system, and then an X-ray machine is used to look for any blockages or abnormalities in the fallopian tubes and ovaries. The test revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Everything appeared to be functioning properly. Though this news should have been a relief, it was honestly frustrating. In my mind, if a problem had been found, perhaps it could have been corrected and I could get pregnant. To not be able to conceive when everything appears to be normal seemed to me to be the worst prognosis. There was no specific cause to my infertility, I just WAS.

About this time, I really began to search the Scriptures for answers to my infertility. I had always trusted Him, but I felt as though He was letting me down somehow. My biggest question was:

 “Why did He give me this powerful desire to have a child, but deny me the ability?”

 

I wrestled with this question constantly, as I was sure many had before me. I thought about Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. She was 90 years old before she finally held a newborn in her arms. Sarah was probably married to Abraham when she was about 13 years of age. That means she waited 77 years—past all hope—for the fulfillment of her deepest longing. Surely, she understood the inner turmoil I was feeling. Surely she too had asked over and over the same questions I had. Surely she too had felt at some point during those long 77 years that God had forgotten about her.

                Had He forgotten me?

 

Introduction to Fundamentally Flawed

Women dealing with infertility and miscarriage find themselves on a lonely road riddled with emotions like anger, emptiness, worthlessness, and depression. It is a subject not often addressed in our churches and Bible studies. There seem to be support groups for everyone else now days, but there are few—if any—support groups for these women who so desperately need it. It is difficult for those who have never experienced the feelings of failure that come from being unable to conceive, or the heartbreak of a failed pregnancy to understand the inner turmoil that these women—and their husbands—walk through every month. As a result, most only receive a sympathetic hug and an “I’m so sorry” or a well-meaning “You’ll get pregnant someday” instead of the help they really need.

My own experiences with both infertility and miscarriage took me through a range of debilitating emotions. I was angry at myself for being so “flawed”, angry at God for giving me a desire to mother, but not the ability, and even angry at other women who were able to conceive.  There was the monthly cycle of hope and heartbreak; the feelings of utter worthlessness and failure as a woman for not being able to create and bring forth life; the sense of isolation and loneliness; and there was the constant, nagging emptiness and longing – the stabbing pain when a friend became pregnant, or the ache when I passed a newborn in the grocery store. As months soon became years, this gamut of unchecked emotions that had been running rampant began to become a destructive force that affected my emotional health, my marriage, and my relationships with others.

It was only after the devastation and chaos that resulted from a particularly bad miscarriage that I, very slowly, began to explore the deepest parts of my heart and discover the truth behind the years of despair, frustration, and bitterness I had come from. It is my hope that this study will help those women like me to find hope and peace by understanding and sharing the emotions they are experiencing and learning how to overcome them, by finding a network of support from women just like them, and, most importantly, by discovering God’s role and feelings on their situation, and cultivating a relationship with Him that transcends all else.

The Post that launched a thousand...books

At least, one can only hope.
So, I've been writing since I was a child. Whether I'm any good, or not, remains to be seen. This, however is my first blog. I've never been a big performer on the social media stage... for many reasons, but one being that I never thought what I have to say would be interesting to anyone. When the publishing company told me I'd have to change all that, inwardly, I groaned. (As I did when they told me I'd have to provide a photo of myself.)

When I got the email that Fundamentally Flawed had printed and was ready to ship, I knew it was time for me to stop groaning and start socializing. Even as I write this now, I feel the proverbial butterflies in my stomach, and I realize that's its not so much the issue that no one will be interested in what I have to say as it is that people will be critical of it. It's hard to open up yourself, your life, your experiences, your opinions-- everything that makes you the person you are to the censure of others. It's a frightening prospect, and one I have to wonder if I'm prepared for.

But I guess the question I really have to ask myself is, do I believe in this work? The answer is, without a doubt, unequivocally, unflinchingly, YES! It took me four months, start to finish to write this book, and throughout it all, I felt God's guiding and leading so strongly and undeniably that to doubt it was His words I wrote, and His ideas that flowed would be insanity. After all, I'm not THAT clever... just ask my husband!!

If I believe that this book is God's work, then what do I have to fear? The critical naysayers will come-- they must-- but, if Fundamentally Flawed is able to deliver just one woman whose infertility makes her life feel hopelessly bleak and unbearable, as mine once did, then I will count it among the greatest successes of my life. So to the naysayers, I will only say, as Paul did in Romans 8:31, "What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?"

So, here I go, out into the deep, endless, and turbulent waters of society, confident in one thing: my God is always with me, and He will never let me fall.