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.

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.

Big Bellies, Beautiful Babies and My Easter

I woke up this morning in full expectation of a glorious Easter. It's practically summer already in NC, which means I've had my hands deep in rich, dark earth on a daily basis, I'm back to running and we haven't had the heat turned on in weeks. So, this morning, I dressed in a somewhat Eastery dress, packed up the family and headed to church. The first thing I saw upon exiting my car was a very pregnant woman and, much to my chagrin, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. After that, it seemed like every woman who walked down the aisle had a big old pregnant belly right at my eye level and everyone surrounding me had a newborn baby, cute as could be in a ridiculously frilly summer dress and clamoring for attention. Suddenly, I was in the land of envy, longing for something over which I have no control.

The last two months I've been on a fast. Some might have deduced what said fast was about by reading through the lines of posts, but basically I vowed that for two months I would not think, plan or pray about a second child. I handed the praying over to trusted friends and said that anytime the thought, the longing came into my path, I'd divert my prayers and focus elsewhere. Sometimes this worked well and I found myself really engaged in prayer or planning in something else and other times it was just a fight to keep the baby thoughts out of my head. There were moments I was at peace with never having another child and other moments that the desire was so strong I thought I'd stop breathing for how much I wanted one. Bottom line, though, was that I thought I was making progress. I thought God was really teaching me how to not focus on this biggest of desires, how to seek Him in the moments of being overwhelmed and to, somehow, lessen that desire.

So, this morning, when my Easter ended up consumed by jealousy, distracted by big bellies and beautiful babies, I was angry. Angry at what I felt like was a waste of two months of my life. The first day that I'm off this fast and already I end up jealous and discouraged? What were the last two months for? And to not be able to truly engage with the message this morning, with the beautiful music? Easter only comes around once a year and I essentially missed it.

I think I came off this fast thinking I'd be a lot better at denying myself, but this is why fasting is so hard and why I think we often shy away from it or end up discouraged. It doesn't necessarily work an instant miracle- it was a chance for me to experience God in a fresh way for two months, to deny myself thinking about my most wanted desire in favor of other things and to have a chance to enter into some hard areas for me to process and pray that had nothing at all to do with my fertility. It most assuredly worked change in me that I can't even yet see, but it certainly didn't make my will perfect. It's not meant to, but oh how I wish it would! Oh how I wish that when I saw that beautiful woman in the parking lot, my first thought was one of selfless rejoicing for her gift and not of pitiable self-focus on my own lack thereof.

Nonetheless, in a way, I'm almost thankful that I had such a bad morning. It reminded me that I didn't "do" anything these past two months. God did. And He continues to work in me in ways that I cannot feel and cannot know. Yet. I am confident that as He and I continue to work this junk out that there will be times when I can be selfless and rejoice for people who have that one thing that I so long for. I am also confident that in those moments when I fail, when I give into my selfishness, that He will stick by me, forgive me, pick me up out of that sin and keep me moving forward into new life.

Maybe, just maybe, I didn't totally miss out on Easter after all.