On Infertility and the Church

Just last year a friend asked me if it was alright for her to talk about her pregnancy. My youngest was about a year and a half at the time. Presumably the pain of infertility is enough in the past that I should be able to have these conversations without holding myself back.

I appreciated the question.

Was it time? Could I do it?

Or would it, like so many conversations that happened during our years of infertility, throw me into emotional chaos?

It only took a few seconds for me to take stock and realize I was ready. This was a friend who had prayed for me, cared for me, loved me, who was now on her third pregnancy and hadn't really felt free to talk about the first two with me because we were still waiting and hoping and experiencing the pain of loss over and over and over again. And she knew it was too much.

It's funny, you know. Looking back on the years of that struggle, there are a few very stark memories that define it for me.

Sitting in a pew at church while pregnant woman after pregnant woman walked by, bellies right at my eye level, and fighting ever so hard to be happy for them, to pray for their unborn children and, honestly, fighting hard not to flee down the aisle and sob in the car.

I didn't always win that fight.

Listening to sermon after sermon wherein the person shared a similar struggle and how God eventually "blessed" him or her with that long-awaited biological child.  Because (a) they finally stopped asking or (b) they let God teach them something they were stubbornly unwilling to learn and so God answered them or (c) they prayed without doubt or (d) they prayed in tongues or (e) they chose holiness in their life and so God rewarded them. It really goes on and on. And not one time did I hear a sermon in which God didn't answer that prayer in exactly the way the person wanted. And yet I know couple after couple for whom a biological child was not "the answer."

Being told that to "be fruitful and multiply" was still God's mandate for how I should family plan. Just trust him, if children are indeed a blessing, then you will have more.

There was no language for what we were going through. There were only stories of victory. Hang in there, I know someone who waited 10 years! Oh, well, you are going to adopt? You know the second you do, you'll get pregnant. That's how God works. Stop asking. Once you don't want it, he'll give it to you.

Friends, come on.

Really?

Can we not do better for one another, here? Can we stop misrepresenting God as a capricious, malicious being who only gives kids to those who pray the right way? Are we really going to tell people there is a way to earn kids? What is that?

I realize that there is no comfortable way for us to talk about infertility. It DOESN'T make sense. In our case, the medical community called it "unexplained." There was no biological reason for it. There was nothing we could "fix." Maybe that's why all the spiritual fixes felt even more unhelpful. Even though we knew we disagreed with the theology of so many of them, we would latch onto the hope they offered. Ok, maybe I am NOT praying hard enough. OK, maybe I AM really being disobedient in some way. What can I change? What can I do so God will stop punishing me?

Maybe it's my fault. I caused it, I perpetuate it, I am guilty, somehow.

Rather than sitting with each other, lamenting the losses, the miscarriages, the unwanted periods...we struggle to find an explanation. And inadvertently heap guilt on one another when we do.

Look, I don't have any answers here. I don't know why it happens. I don't know exactly what God is up to in anyone's journey of infertility. I know the literature says that it can be as emotionally painful as a cancer diagnosis and I know that felt true. It was literally debilitating at times. And it sure as heck was isolating.

And I know the church, where babies are celebrated, longed for, baptized, dedicated and cherished can be the hardest place in the world for an infertile woman to thrive. Sometimes the way motherhood is communicated, the way pregnancy is communicated, can even threaten the very woman-ness of someone going through this. She feels less than. Like who she was created to be cannot fully be.

Can I be honest?

This is nonsense. Utter, damaging nonsense.

I was created to be a daughter of a loving God. That's it. Whether I can produce a baby or not doesn't change who I am or my status before God. Let's cut this out now. 

It's Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.

What if we talked about that IN THE CHURCH?

What if we started to have a language for women to understand that it isn't about their spiritual effort?

What if we mourned with those who mourn in this particular area?

What if we shared stories from the pulpit that DIDN'T result in a biological child?

What if we talked about adoption not just as the "solution to abortion" in our churches but as a complex and traumatic choice and not the simplistic, unicorns and rainbows, way that we currently do?

What if we didn't talk about adoption as the "backup" plan?

What if we could truly be the church and embrace those couples who feel alienated from a culture that equates blessing with family size?

What if, like Jesus did, we could just sit with a woman in pain and offer her love?

Man, that would be a beautiful thing.

Friend, if you are going through this silent pain, please know that I'm safe. I would be happy to listen, to cry, to lament, to yell.

And I promise not to offer you any solutions. Just love.

Moment of Grace

I was sitting on the deck stairs, the early evening autumn light trickling across the backyard through the neighbors' trees. The baby was in my arms, watching his brothers laugh and play with their father alongside them. And I felt a sudden quickening of my heart, an inexplicable intake of breath.

It was a moment of grace.

One moment in a constant day of feeding and changing and discipline and hurry.

But in that moment, that light coming through the trees was like a shaft of light to my heart.

"You made it. Look around you. Smiles, laughter, health, bounty. You made it."

Sometimes you are in something painful or challenging or dark for so long that you almost don't notice when the darkness shifts. And it might only shift by millimeters, but it starts to recede. Little by little, moment by moment. And then that light streaks in and you can see. See what God has done, see the scars and the hope, see the good even in the midst of the everyday challenges.

A moment of grace.

I will always be marked by our miscarriage. Our years of infertility have left their scars. The ups and downs of waiting on our boys changed who I am. This past year of tantrums and battles and fatigue and the completely overwhelming nature of being a mom to two children under two has challenged me to love deeper and more unconditionally than I thought possible.

And in that moment of grace, I could see.

See my laughing toddler and realize with a shock that he hadn't had any meltdowns that day. Not one. See my eight-year-old who went from being an only child in a calm, quiet house to the oldest of three boys in nonstop chaos in just a year and a half's time. And to see him loving it, embracing it. To see it changing him for good. To see this baby who is emerging from the newborn phase laughing and sleeping and staring us down when we eat in front of him and remembering that we didn't even know about him five months ago. To see this man with whom I've chosen to walk life, a true partner, encourager, the hardest-working and most generous man I know, who loves his family with unwavering fierceness.

A moment of grace.

To drink it in, give thanks, take stock and look forward in hope to what our family is becoming. To know these moments will come and go, that some days will still be long and hard, but that God is faithful. That he gives grace and strength. That he gifts us with these moments where we can suddenly see and know that He is good.

This morning, as I reflect on that moment I am reminded of the words of one of my favorite songs:

"Let hope rise and darkness tremble
In your Holy light
That every eye will see
Jesus, Our God
Great and mighty to be praised "  (From "With Everything" by Hillsong United )

Even sitting among the dirty dishes and the long lists for the day ahead, I am asking hope to continue to rise. To see the darkness continue to fade. To move boldly forward in ways that draw myself and others to know God better.

To see more moments of grace and light and make them as much a part of who I am as the scars have been. I don't need the scars to fade - but they are so much more beautiful in the light.

The Silent Loss

They call it the Silent Loss. The Invisible Death. You can go through it without a single person besides yourself having any idea it's happening. And no one can possibly warn you about how hard it will be until you experience it. Possibly we think it will be an easier loss because we've bought into the lies of our culture that tell us it's "just a fetus." That dehumanize what from the instant of conception is unequivocally life, and beautiful life at that. For many people, the minute the little stick turns pink, that child is a baby, a little life on the way, with cribs to plan for and maternity clothes to buy.

Perhaps since I've been so honest on this blog about our own story of miscarriage and infertility, I find myself often aware of people who have gone or are currently going through the loss of miscarriage. Just in this last month, my heart has been broken three times alongside friends who have shared this news. And you know what people say? It happens all the time. It's common. Which unintentionally, or possibly intentionally, communicates that we should recover quickly from it. Get on with our lives. But you know what I say? There is nothing common about death. Every loss is unique, every baby has the right to be mourned. There is no such thing as "getting on with" something when you've lost a child. That loss will always be a part of your story.

I daresay the stats would support that if you are reading this you fall in one or both of two categories: someone who has experienced miscarriage for yourself or someone who knows someone who has. And let me be frank: if you don't think you know someone, you do. That's where the whole invisible thing comes in. Someone in your life has been through this. And after 4 years of processing, reading, ranting, praying, talking, listening and hoping, I've come to some conclusions about this silent loss. I share them today to stand in grief with my friends who are currently going through this. I love you, God loves you and I wish with all my heart you didn't have to go through this.

(1) You are never ready for how hard it is going to be.  There is no other way to say it. It's death, it's not expected and it hurts a ton. It doesn't matter how "early on" you were nor should you let people tell you it should hurt less if you were "only" a certain number of weeks along. It's real and painful loss.

(2) You and your spouse will likely grieve it in very different ways and wanting said spouse to grieve the same way you do will only add conflict and pain to your grief. Let him or her grieve their way and try to move towards each other as best you can even if you can't understand the other's process.

(3) Don't try to "get over it." Accept that this loss. Just like if you have children who have lived, this little one will always be a part of your family's story. Ignoring it in the vain hope that I'd eventually stop being sad didn't work for me and I doubt it works for many people.

(4) Don't try to replace that baby. Sometimes when we lose a child we rush back into the "trying" phase again under the false expectation that another pregnancy will heal that pain or fill that void. That is a unique child you lost - no other child can or will ever replace him and you are setting yourself up for even more pain and confusion if you expect a pregnancy to solve your problems.

(5) Expect the due date to be a hard day. You may have lost your baby at 5, 12 or 20 weeks. No matter how early it was, that loss is valid and that due date will feel like a sucker punch.

(6) Know that social media will be a minefield. Seriously, you can't swing a cat on facebook without hitting a pregnancy announcement or a photo album of a wrinkly, red newborn. Some days it won't affect you and you may even be able to rejoice with your friends, other days you will feel like someone is dancing on your heart and shouting "look what we have that you don't!" Try not to take it personally, shut down the computer and go for a run. Or sing 80's music at the top of your lungs. You know, whatever works. 

(7) God's sovereignty is tricky and people who try to comfort you with it maybe don't have it right. People might say "she is in a better place" or "God must be causing this to teach you something." Um, yeah, that's not helpful. None of it. Do I believe that anyone who is already in eternity is categorically in a better place - sure, God's a pretty awesome being to be around. Is that a comfort when I want my baby in my arms? Not really for me. Maybe for some people, though I can't say. Is it true that God caused this to teach me a lesson? Nope. Is it true that God caused this to teach me a lesson? Nuh-uh. Is it true that God caused this to teach me a lesson? No freakin' way! Can you tell this was a particularly hard lesson for me to learn?  My God is not vindictive or manipulative. He is love, he is good, he is life abundant.

(8) Church is hard. It just is. Most churches seem like baby factories, pastors talk about being fruitful and multiplying (can we PLEASE talk about context with that one!) or quote passages about God closing or opening wombs and everyone on the playground asks intrusive questions about how many kids you have. And nobody talks about miscarriage in public. Ever. We church people don't know what to do with it when our whole lives we were told that babies are blessings and God wants to trust tons of them to us to raise. But what do we do when we don't have them- what does that do to our understanding of blessing and God's role in fertility? Boom. Yes, that was the sound of my head exploding. There are no quick answers here. Sovereignty is tricky and since about a bajillion books have been written about how it works, many of which differ in their conclusions, I will not attempt to write the final word on it here.

(9) You are not being punished. This didn't happen because you parented a first child wrong or because you didn't learn some lesson God wanted you to learn. God is good. Satan is not. God hates death. Satan loves it. Bottom line.

(10) Life's not fair. You can't expect to only go through a miscarriage once - it could happen again or it could be followed, like us, with years of unexplained infertility. And it's fruitless and petty to keep score with other people on who has had this whole thing the hardest or easiest. If you could, I'd be mad at every woman I saw in Target who had 4 kids trailing her. It is my firm belief that Satan is having a field day when it comes to the fertility question. Miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, abortion, SIDS. None of those are from God. Not one. But trying to ask for fairness in the world is futile. We live in a broken world and no one, NOT ONE OF US, is guaranteed justice, fairness or freedom from pain while on this earth.  That is only reserved for eternity.

(11) Remember it. Some people get tattoos. Some have memorial services. I got a necklace with our daughter's would-be birthstone and wear it almost every day.  On the 4th anniversary of the miscarriage I named her because I could no longer bear to call her an 'it.' Not everyone needs to do this the same way- but if you choose to remember, you won't try to replace her. And if you don't try to replace her, you might actually find yourself starting to heal.

I could probably go on and on. If I'm totally honest here, I wish I hadn't learned these lessons or that I had learned them through research rather than through experience. I wish we hadn't gone through it. I'm certain that God has remained present and taught me amazing things as I have clung to him but I will never be, nor do I have to be to remain a God-honoring believer, thankful that it happened.

What I am thankful for is that I didn't stay silent. Oh, I did at first as many of you know. I hid it, I ignored it, I insulted my friends by not trusting them to love me in it. But eventually, I let people into it. Some of them didn't say the right things. Most of them did. We can't expect those around us to respond perfectly all the time. But we can risk letting them (maybe one person, maybe ten) know that we will not suffer our loss silently or, perhaps more importantly, alone.

The Naming

It's been over four years since we lost our second child. That first year was full of pain and secrets and transitions. The second year was full of questions and anger and the first stirrings of healing.The third year was full of hope and waiting. This fourth year has seemed to roll all three years into one huge, emotionally chaotic experience. One constant, though, through these four years has been the namelessness of that little one. Calling he or she an "it" or a "baby" but never being able to refer to that child with a name. It's kept that baby distant from me. Nameless, far, removed. 

When I first began to share what had happened, that loss, people always asked me how far along I had been. And each time I was asked that I was reminded again that our culture, including myself, thought of the pain as less real, as that child as somehow less human, the earlier its death had occurred. So with each asking of that question and each increasingly timid response of mine, I felt that my pain should be somehow less than it was. This wasn't really a baby, it seemed. Just a positive pregnancy test. Just a blip on a screen. Nothing that should have had a hold on me.

But it did. SHE did.

I've written recently about the time I spent at a retreat center. During that time, God was very present. And though I hadn't spoken to Him about our miscarriage in a very long time, I felt the freedom to bring it up again. To bring the loss back into the light. To ask some hard questions. And all the while, I grew tired of saying "it." I began to wonder, for the first time, if it would be alright for me to name this child. This faceless little one that I never met. And the moment I asked the question, I already knew the answer. Why not? God already knew this little one, had already given her a name, knew her intimately. Why shouldn't I? And as I sat there, just listening, just being quiet, I knew two things. I knew she was a girl and I knew her name was Amara.

How do I know that? No idea. Does God regularly speak audibly to me? No. But there was just this absolute quiet and a sudden knowing. And I have never been more sure of anything in my life.

That night I got home and looked up the meaning of the name Amara. I've actually never met anyone with that name. I hadn't chosen it in the short time we had to plan for her birth. And as I looked it up, I was astounded to see that it means "eternal beauty." After all, this is the only kind of beauty that I will ever get to see of her. The beauty of getting to carry her little body for a short time and the beauty I will see in her when I one day pass on and finally meet her. Eternal. Not earthly. Not here and now. But someday. And forever.

Recently I stumbled onto an e-book titled "Naming the Child." In this book, the author, Jenny Shroedel, describes infant death as "the forbidden room." It's a place no one wants to go, an off-limits place full of painful memories, secrets, images. A place no one wants to engage or deal with its stirred-up questions.

But it's a place all too frequented by so many of us. Because we don't want to speak of it or burden others by the silent deaths, we keep them silenced. We don't name these little ones. And for some people, I recognize, the naming will only be too painful. It's not what they need. But for me? This has been a long-awaited step of healing. Naming this child, naming this daughter has once and for all helped me to unashamedly declare that she IS. She is not a positive pregnancy test, she was not just a blip on a screen, she should have and still does have a hold on me. She always should.

For three of these years I have worn a sapphire necklace just about every day, the birthstone of the month she should have been born. Sapphires, a symbol of truth, sincerity and faithfulness. And the day I named Amara, I stumbled upon the following scripture:

"For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, 
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, 
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you. 
O afflicted one, stormed tossed and not comforted, 
behold, I will set your stones in antimony and lay your foundations with sapphires."  Isaiah 54

I would never have asked for these four years. I would never have wanted to lose our daughter. I would never say those trite words that "this is for a reason," like some have said to me, but I do know one thing. Amara is a gift. And the years I've experienced after her death have been years that have changed me in different ways than maybe her birth would have. I'll never really know. I cannot. But since I cannot change the fact that I will never know her this side of heaven, I can continue to hope. I can be reminded that God's steadfast love has not departed from me during this time. I can, every time I glance down at my sapphire, be reminded of a precious baby girl who is a part of this family and is treasured.

Amara. Of Eternal Beauty. You have been named. You are no longer an "it."

You never were.

Five Little Words

"How far along were you?" You get this question a lot when you have a miscarriage. It's usually the first thing someone will ask and I don't think it's asked with any hurtful intentions. But last January, when I was going through a long and drawn out miscarriage, with ups and downs, positive days where hope prevailed interspersed with blood tests and ultrasounds, mood swings and private pain that ultimately ended in the death of our unborn child, those five little words ended up changing the course of my life. You see, for some reason, I interpreted that question to mean that if I wasn't "far enough along" in someone's eyes, then my pain shouldn't be as real. That the shorter the pregnancy, the less I should have felt its loss. In the grand scheme of how long a pregnancy is, we weren't very far along. We hadn't really told anyone. But here was this little life inside me, with a potential birthday looming and all the preparations and joys of expecting and waiting for him or her were already very prevalent in my mind. And that life was cut short. I never got to meet my second child. And for some reason, I felt like I wasn't allowed to dwell on it, that I needed to just put my chin up and keep going. So that's what I tried to do.

18 months have gone by since that final blood test that confirmed that everything was finished. Every day I think about those words that different people spoke to me, I know, out of care for me, just wanting to know my story. But even now, I still feel angry with myself when I experience pain over this. Even now, I still don't feel like I ever let myself grieve, like I never had the right to really be upset about it. I'm still waiting to experience a whole day where thoughts about that child don't enter my mind. And each month that goes by where there's not that promise of another child is just one more painful reminder of that loss and the fact that I never really dealt with it.

I've never been the most open person, never particularly great at letting people love me. This blog has been one big lesson for me in openness, in taking risks relationally, albeit through the written word. Since the first day I started blogging, I've wondered if I'd ever feel freed up enough to post a blog on this topic. It's felt way too risky, felt like something I wasn't allowed to share, something I should be "over." But the bottom line is, I'm not. I didn't grieve well when I should have and so all these months later, I'm still unsure how I feel about the whole thing. I still don't have closure. I barely even shared the experience with people I knew loved me and probably would've let me cry had I let them love me.

The bigger question that I've been pondering, though, is why I interpreted that one question so destructively. Why I took gentle questioning for accusatory denial. "Get over this quick, you weren't far along! It's not a big deal!" No one actually said those things to me and yet that was what my mind heard. It heard not love and care for me but scarcity, disdain and impatience. Maybe that's what I feel for myself when I experience something I'd put in the category of "drama." I've always been vastly impatient with the dramatic, which is one reason I can't watch even 30 seconds of reality tv before becoming either overwhelmingly angry or having the almost irresistible urge to live somewhere where television doesn't exist. I disdain it, I get frustrated with it, I revere rationality and even-headedness. I don't want to get worked up about much, to dwell on pain or anger, to really feel much of anything if you really get down to it.

So what do I do? Where do you go when you were supposed to talk through something almost two years ago but that still feels like fresh pain? And how do you do it when the last thing you want to do is actually do it? When you still feel like you shouldn't be feeling what you're feeling.

I have no answers tonight, just questions. Five little words that have left me with gaping holes in how I understand healing. One question that has come back to me each and every day for months on end. The only thing that has been sure as I've continually returned to this is that I am not alone. There were times in this last year where I wondered where God really was, why things like this happen and why I was so unprepared to deal with it. The only answer I've really gotten in the midst of it all is that He is with me. No deeply theological and profoundly comforting statements on suffering, no answers to the why. Just a very gentle reminder that I am loved deeply by Him.

For now, I will have to let that be enough.