Testimony

I recently gave my testimony in church, and the response I received afterwards was incredible. It was recorded, so I will share here for anyone interested. Church is a place unlike most other in modern society. In this interview I wear my heart, and my faith on my sleeve. After I shared all this, there was no judgement, no shying away. Instead people thanked me for my bravery and honesty, and told me how listening to my story helped them or they told me their own stories. It was a fantastic experience, one I hope to have the chance to repeat some day- perhaps with a happier ending.

My interview begins at 14 minutes in, but I would encourage you to listen from the beginning, as the vicar's introduction and discussion of psalm 116 provides some context to what I say.

Testimony

He's got this.

The more I read my bible, the more I want to read it. I have a new study bible and I love it- it really opens up God's word and helps it make sense to me.  But let me back pedal a little.

My mood when I woke this morning was terrible.  I was all set to write about how negative I was feeling regarding our upcoming embryo transfer next week. When I should be feeling excited and hopeful, all I could think about what how dreadful I was going to feel when it failed. This is out last go before Christmas, so a lot is riding on it. I don't feel it is going to work. Somehow I can't summon any enhusiasm for it at all. I guess that now I just associate trying to conceive and assisted reproduction with failure, disappointment, and loss. It's tough to find that balance between cautious optimism and guarding your heart.

So, whilst not at all feeling like it, I read my morning devotional out of habit/duty, inwardly feeling cross at God for my lot in life. I was directed to 1 Peter 2:13-25. 1 Peter is a good book for sufferers by the way. But this morning, it wasn't the bible text so much that hit me, but the explanatory note for v 24:

"Our goal should be to face suffering as Christ did- with patience, calmness and confidence that God is in control of the future."

That one reminder totally changed my mood. I still don't feel too hopeful, but my mindset has shifted back away from utter despondency and sadness and blaming God for my situation, to thanking Him for all He has done and will continue to do in my life, which is a much better place to be.

No matter what happens, He's got this.

And now you are(n't) four

September 18th. Your fourth birthday. It's 8am, I've slept horribly and already shed a tear. But, I don't feel so very sad as I have before, in previous years. And that's ok. I miss you, I miss you terribly, horribly, fiercely, beautifully. I love you even more than that. But I am now able to hold all those feelings and treasure them and treasure you and cope with the cocktail of emotions and stay upright. That's time. That's progress. That's healing, in a way.  It isn't moving on, or getting over, or forgetting.

It is loving myself as I continue to love you. It is being the parent I want to show you I could have been.

I am wondering what you are up to. What you look like now. That's tough, the not knowing. The looking at four year old boys and wondering.... That brings a tear as I type it. Are you four? Are you growing up in Heaven? Or are you still a tiny baby? I think you must be four. That makes more sense to me. But then I don't know.  I know you have your perfect body, you are not hurting or broken or damaged.  You were always perfect to me here on Earth, of course, but now I know you are truly perfect. No pain, no loss, no sorrow, no tears. How wonderful! Some days, I just can't wait to join you there.   But differently. Before, it was because I didn't want to live this life without you. Now, it is simply because I can't wait to hold you again and be perfect too. There is a difference.

Do you run and play? Will you laugh and dance as I light a candle for you tonight? Are you glad that we came back to Italy for these days? Strange how it helps me to be here. Memories of our perfect holiday with you, dreams of the future and buying your life album. Of course it was finished far too soon, but now it's a treasure we keep of you, for you. Opened less often now but there all the same.  Instead we make new memories with you, the years passing without you here physically but moments, memories, inclusions of you, whispers at your forever bed, making the sun shine and the chimes chime, saying hi mum and dad, I love you both.

Will you catch the kiss I blow to you from the shores of lake Como? Will you show me a sign you are here? Yes, I do believe you will.

I love you. That is all.

Your grace is sufficient

during my meditation and prayer this evening, this verse just came so clearly to my mind from 2 Corinthians 12:9

"Your grace is sufficient for me, for Your power is made perfect in my weakness".

Bam. I can give it all to God. I can let go.

Lord, all that I cling to, I lay at Your feet. Your grace is sufficient for me. Martin J Nystrom

I am stronger than I believe (apparantly)

Staring at a blank screen, wondering where to begin. There's a lot in my head.  Church today. I wasn't going to go. It's been a really tough week and I just didn't feel up to it. But as is so often the way, I was nudged to go and felt challenged when I got there.

It was a difficult start. The vicar's wife has recently given birth to their third child. As he stood proudly with his baby daughter at the front of church and everyone applauded, I sat with tears brimming and tried not to make a scene. Why do we do that? Why do we applaud a new baby? It's like we're saying, well done, you made a human! Isn't that an amazing achievement! What kind of message does that send to the couple who have been unable to "achieve" a family. The same at weddings, the same when we wax lyrical about the many "blessings" God has given us. What then is the person who has not been "blessed" with the things you have to feel? Doesn't God feel they are deserving of these blessings too?  It is hard enough not to compare ourselves to others who have the things we so desperately long for, harder still when as a congregation or society we cheer/approve/celebrate/applaud these things in each other. It can leave the person who does not do, or have, or achieve the same things, (but wants to), feeling inadequate, undeserving or sidelined.

I didn't applaud. Not because I'm not happy for them, not even because I am jealous. Because I was hurting for myself and because it was all I could do not to walk out the door right there and then.

I am glad I didn't. We were looking at Judges 6, in which Gideon is asked by an angel of the Lord to "go in your might and deliver Isreal from the hand of Midian".  When Gideon questions how he can do that, saying he is the lowest of the low in his clan, he is told "I (God) will be with you and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them".  Today's speaker interpreted this to mean that God is always with us, and with God we are stronger than we believe. She encouraged us not to focus on our problems and anxieties, but to focus on God. Stop telling God how big our problems are, and start telling our problems how big our God is.

Wow. I felt the words were ones God wanted me to hear this week. It's been a week of severe pain and anxiety, after finding out our second IVF transfer attempt failed.  I've been feeling pretty hopeless, to be honest.  And very anxiuos over our next step. We have two more embryos, and I am incredibly torn over whether to transfer both together for our next go.  On the one hand, I don't believe either of them are going to produce a viable pregnancy- afterall we started with five "high quality" embryos, and so far have lost three of them.  On the other hand, transferring two does carry the risk of twins, which with my history of premature birth is very scary.  This, mixed with the feelings of sadness, pain, fear of never being a mummy.....the feeling that life is on hold for us whilst everyone else moves forward, getting pregnant, delivering healthy babies, celebrating birthdays as those children grow up.....it's been a hot mess of fear and pain and over-thinking and tears. Lots of tears.

We are approaching our fourth anniversary of Bertie's birth and death, and we still are no closer to bringing home a baby brother or sister. The pain is not lessening, the fear is growing. Its a lonely road and it's awful. The strain on our marriage is huge. When I stop and reflect on what we have faced as a couple...we have buried a child and now faced years of infertility. Either one of those blows is enough to break many marriages apart, and we have faced both...continue to face both. It's incredible that we are not only still standing, but standing firm together.

I heard God's words today, and I will try to heed them, but, this problem is so huge, all consuming really and it has been going on for so very long now.....it isn't easy.  I don't know that I am as strong as God believes me to be. But I will continue on, with gratefulness for my husband and the tiny grain of hope that remains that we will be able to parent a living child, one day. One day WILL arrive.  Won't it? 

Please.

Finding trust

This morning's service was very apt and challenging for me.  It was a Palm Sunday service, and the speaker reminded us how the same crowd who laid palm leaves and shouted "hosanna" as  Jesus approached Jerusalem just a few days later shouted "crucify him". Isn't it easy for us to look back at that time, that crowd and shake our heads at their fickle behavior.  They saw Jesus as their savior and when He didn't appear to save them in the way they wanted, they turned on him in anger. As today's speaker pointed out, well, aren't we exactly the same? Don't we stand in church on a Sunday and worship God, only to turn from Him in anger when we face pain and suffering?

I know I am guilty of this- as my last post will attest to.  The greatest challenge for me as a Christian over the past few years has been trust. When people try to help me in my pain by talking about God's plan, it is very hard to hear, harder still to be comforted by.  In the darkest depths of grief, disappointment and despair, the simple answer is "I don't like this plan, why would God plan this for me?" But faith is trusting in what is not seen, in what is yet to come.  It is hard, so hard when the yet to come takes a great deal lomger to arrive than we would choose. But, I am working on reaching that place of trust, that my faithful God will keep His promises to me.

The letter of James is a small book tucked away towards the end of the new testament.  It is a great book with loads of practical advice on how to live as a Chrisitan. But, it does challenge us too.  It opens with a call to consider suffering as joy, and goes on to admonish us not to be "double minded" or to doubt. I am slowly coming to understand verses such as James 1:2-8.  Of course the suffering itself will not produce "joy" but I can indeed trust that God is using it to aid my growth to spiritual maturity.  I still say, and I expect I will say to my dying breath, that I wish He had chosen another way to teach me, that my son's life was too high a price to pay, but, I will also continue until my dying breath to endeavor to find trust.

When faith is no longer a comfort

This morning I uttered the words "I wish I wasn't a Christian, then I would find this easier to deal with." I was referring to our recently failed first attempt at IVF.   My husband would nominally call himself a Christian, but he is not practicing and is primarily a scientist. He looked at the situation of our embryo transfer as a 50:50 chance that a ball of cells would attach itself to my womb. If it didn't, we could try again and it would be another coin toss. He didn't get his hopes up too high and is therefore taking this pretty well comparatively.  For me, I have had weeks, months really of answered prayer to get to the point of trying the transfer.  People across the world were praying for us on the build up to the transfer, and on the day itself. I prayed the whole way there that I would not cough on the table as I had a horrible cough/cold.  I didn't cough and the transfer went perfectly. I felt so calm all the first week, I was off work, relaxed, meditated, prayed, did gentle yoga and watched funny movies. I was so sure the answer was finally yes.

It wasn't.

And that is so hard to accept. Despite all that prayer, despite it all going perfectly, despite the years we have waited and all we have been through in our quest to be parents, it was still, inexplicably, a no.  And that hurts, so much more than the thought that the coin toss didn't land in our favour.  To me, that was not a ball of cells. It was our embryo, created with God's hand guiding science.  Why tell us yes to having IVF, why allow us to go this far, just to say no at the final hurdle? So similar to my question three years ago- "why allow us to conceive Bertie, just for him to die?"

You read a lot about people comparing infertility to grief, a recurring grief. Right now, that's how I feel. A lot of my thoughts and feelings remind me of how I felt after Bertie died. Obviously on a much lesser scale, but none the less, it does feel like another grief.  Not the loss of a baby, but the ending of hope.   I am having the classic reactions: Denial (a weekend of repeated peeing on
pregnancy tests, just in case the last one, two, three....were wrong/faulty/taken too early). Anger (at God, at life, at the unfairness of it all). Depression (withdrawal, lack of concentration, lack of motivation).  Acceptance (I'm still waiting to get there).

I'm noticing similar reactions in others to after Bertie died too.  Nobody has the words. Nobody knows what to say. Everyone knows what an enormous blow this is, the ripping off of a plaster, a recurrent gaping wound. A difference, two camps: those who have wordlessly held me and let me cry, and those who have avoided me.

I have spent today with this blog formulating and whirling in my mind, and God knew that. He worked to remind me that He is there and is working in other people to prove it. I came home to a bunch of flowers and a card on my doorstep, from some Christian friends. The flowes include
daffodils. After I cried this morning over another approaching Mothers' day with no daffodils for me,
what a strangely sweet comfort. Did Bertie nudge them? The card contains the expected encouraging bible verse. It grates a little in the midst of grief, these promises feel so empty in the face of repeated disappointment, however I appreciate the thought and the effort. And hey, at least it wasn't Romans 8:28 again.

As the months have turned into years, and the people who had babies when I didn't start to have second babies, I start to wonder if our turn will ever come?  It is so hard to keep finding that positivity, to keep trusting in God's plan, to give it all to Him. Do I really, truly mean it when I pray "your will father, not mine?" No, I don't. And nor, I am sure, would most women in my shoes. My will is to be a mother to a living, biological child. And I do not understand why I am not being allowed that joy. I am a good person, and I don't think I deserve this. Yes, I believe that there will be no more tears in Heaven, but, Lord, why can't I have my heart's longing here on Earth first? If You are not punishing me, then why am I facing this punishing grief, over and over again?