Discontent Despite the Blessings?

Today is one of those days where I've been feeling overwhelmed. I have found myself spending much of my time today wishing for things - anything from thinking back over past experiences and wishing they had been better to worrying about things far in the future. 

If I were asked to describe my life right now, I would have wonderful things to say about it.

Charm Bracelet Giveaway!

On Monday I posted this post about how important I feel it is for me to remember the past several years and the experience my husband and I had with infertility. While I know that we are incredibly blessed to have our little girl, I don't want to forget what it was like to wait and wonder and hope and pray day after day and month after month. Infertility has changed me. It is part of my story now, part of the way I view my family, and part of they way I view my future.

One of the blessings I have experienced over the past several years is the women I have met along the way. I have been fortunate to have a great support group of ladies, many of whom I met online. Today's giveaway is a result of those connections.

Advent - The Season of Waiting

Our test results have all been in for over a week now and yet we still don't really know where we stand. Very short emails with phrases like "normal to fair" just don't mean very much to me. I have no idea how to interpret that in terms of our options. I called the office to schedule a follow-up appointment and scheduled a half-hour phone consultation to go over the results with the doctor. But the appointment is not until next Wednesday. This month is a  very busy time at work and it was hard for me to schedule this phone call because of all my work commitments. And obviously this is not something I want to discuss with my supervisor, so it has been a frustrating past few weeks.  

Advent is truly turning into a season of waiting this year in more ways than one.

I am very, very tired of waiting. I just want to know what the deal is already. And I feel as though my fear is coming true. It seems like no one thing is very wrong; like we might just be dealing with a lot of little things. That is so much harder to wrap my mind around and deal with than one clear-cut problem would be. I feel like I already know what the recommendation is going to be - IUI. But Jonathan and I still have no idea what we are going to do or what we want to do, or more importantly, what we should do. As we get closer and closer to making very important decisions about what courses of action we are willing to pursue, we have been doing some reading, some thinking, and some praying.

I have been reading a book by Richard Eyer called Holy People, Holy Lives: Law and Gospel in Bioethics.  The author is actually a Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University Wisconsin, where Jonathan and I attended undergrad. The book explores the moral and ethical considerations that must be made when dealing with issues like fertility treatments (although it also discusses other bioethics issues). I have not actually read any books on infertility written by couples who have gone through this journey yet. I like Eyer's book because he so clearly has not gone through this himself and so the issues are dealt with apart from emotional sentiment. Of course, that is also somewhat frustrating, but I feel like the straightforward, unapologetic truth is what we really need to hear sometimes.

Jonathan has not read the book yet, so we will probably discuss it at more length after he has read it. For now, though, I will just quote one passage that struck me especially strongly during this season of Advent.

"No human being, especially our children, should have to bear all the burden of meeting our needs. Our deepest needs can only be met by God and the only human being to whom we can turn in our desperation is the God-become-Man, Jesus Christ. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can transform the desires of a childless couple for fulfillment-through-a-child into the desire for one Child born in Bethlehem. He alone can give meaning and fulfillment to our lives." (Eyer, 127)

It is a very confusing thing spiritually when you feel that the thing you are called so strongly to do is something that is not going to happen. I feel that I would love to serve God through raising children, and all of my desires long to be able to do that. I do not know what else God is calling me to do, but I feel sure that it must be something else, because God couldn't be calling me to sit around and wait and do nothing. But I have no passion like my passion to have a child, so I have no idea where to turn while I wait.

I do not always know how to do this, but this quote from Eyer's book just reminded me to focus on Jesus and what He has done for us all. Even though I am waiting to hear about and figure out what the future has in store for Jonathan and I, I need to focus much more strongly on Christ and remembering how much God does love me, that He sent His very own son into this world for me so that I could have hope. I cannot imagine what my life would look like now without that hope in Christ. I cannot imagine what going through infertility would do to me if I did not have the promise of God's love to cling to. More often than not the Bible is confusing, and I have no idea what God is doing in my life. But at least I am 100% confident that He is doing something, even if I haven't the faintest idea what it is.

Today I will just close with the first verse of one of my favorite Advent hymns.

Hark the glad sound! The Savior comes,

The Savior promised long.

Let every heart prepare a throne,

And every voice a song.

Daydreaming

I used to daydream all the time about babies. I would start at the beginning, planning out just how I would tell my husband when the wonderful, long awaited, positive pregnancy test came along. I would then look forward to all our conversations planning for the future, telling our families, picking out names, setting up a nursery... every detail until the moment we brought that beautiful baby home. And then I would daydream some more. About teaching Baby colors, shapes, words, and all the wonderful "firsts." I can't wait for all these experiences and for the incredible joy, honor and opportunity of raising a child and watching them grow.

The past couple months I have been more successful than I thought possible in shutting the daydreaming down. I thought that "getting my hopes up" every month lead me to be more devastated in the end. And it probably did. So I stopped hoping and I stopped daydreaming and I stopped planning. Of course we kept trying,  but I worked hard to convince myself that there was no real hope because a) I believed that, and b) it was too painful being continually let down.

But the past week or so the daydreaming has slowly crept back into my thinking, and I've let it. I think I'm finding that I far prefer the daydreams and hopes to the bitterness of having no hope. Sure, it may not be likely, and sure, I may be disappointed. But I love the idea of having kids, and I am thrilled and beyond excited about it. And one way or another, this IS going to happen. Maybe not how I think it should, and clearly not in my timing. But it will happen. If it never happens naturally, we've already decided that we will adopt some day. So I WILL be a parent some day. And I am going to look forward to that day with excitement. Sure, I might spend a few days of each month devastated. But I think I'll be happier overall than being just moderately miserable all the time.

I don't want to give up hope. I want to learn to trust God to guide my path. I want to rely on His promises that He loves me and He has a plan for me. It is hard, but I think allowing myself to daydream could actually be one small step toward living out that trust.

And daydreaming is fun! I can't wait to have a baby!

As Anne Shirley says, "I can't help flying up on the wings of anticipation. It's as glorious as soaring through a sunset... almost pays for the thud."