Infertility | Discovering the Definition of Hope (Part One)
“Don’t lose hope.”
Those words are exasperating, sickening, when you’re experiencing infertility. Our efforts to start a family were coming up short, and the raw helplessness I felt was overwhelming. Each time the monthly reminder arrived, it was like an obnoxious neon sign flashing, “Failure! Failure!” in my face.
Another month of dashed hopes. Another month of loss. Another month of grieving.
The months strung together into a year. Then two years. And although there were many wonderful things to be grateful for in my life, IT was always there. IT touched everything. Darkened everything. Sometimes with just a faint shadow, other times, with the pitch-blackness of a tunnel underground.
Two years and initial fertility testing passed by. Then another year. I would read passages in the Bible, like “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19) and my responses vacillated between extremes. One day a verse like that would warm my heart and give me courage. The next day I would want to throw my Bible across the room and scream. I have no idea how many times I cried to God. “I GIVE UP!” I begged him to take away the infertility… or to take away the desire for a baby, but all I got was silence.
Or so I thought.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but at some point on this path of infertility, I realized two things that forever changed me.
First, I realized that my opposition, the thing that affected everything, that darkened everything else in my life, was not what I thought it was. I thought it was infertility. Turns out, the enemy was my primitive desire for complete control. I wanted a baby because I wanted a baby. And I wanted it right now. After all, it’s my own life. Wasn’t I entitled to make my life look the way I wanted it to? But no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t make it happen. That raw helplessness was the result of my psyche coming to reality: I am not the all-powerful controller of my own destiny like I naively assumed, like the world tells me I am.
My desire for a child was not bad, not even remotely. It’s a good thing to want children; they are a reward and a blessing (Psalm 127:3). But when I was unable to materialize my greatest desire, I stood face to face with my limitedness, especially in contrast to God’s limitlessness. At this reaching-the-end-of-myself, I could resent God, hate the idea of hope, and wallow in my fear, or I could rise to remember truth:
Even though my husband and I were incapable of forcing our agenda, God is capable of carrying out whatever he wants.
“The Lord does whatever pleases him, in the heavens and on the earth” (Psalm 135:6).
Even though in the moment it didn’t feel like kindness for the Lord to withhold the fulfillment of my desires, I could choose to trust that he upholds me and will raise me up.
“The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed” (Psalm 145:13-14).
Even though I was tired of hoping, tired of praying, and tired of not understanding God’s ways, I could choose to trust that his love for me never wavers.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” -Lamentations 3:22
Identifying that my struggle was not with infertility but with wanting to control God’s decisions for my life felt like a dead end, but it was actually just a sharp curve on the path. It cornered me into a decision: will I stubbornly reach for something unattainable (complete control) and never be happy, or will I choose to believe what the Bible says about God and surrender?
Gradually, I realized that the journey wasn’t over.
To read more of my story, check out part two.
We must accept
finite disappointment
without losing
infinite hope.
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.