Ten years ago this month, Billy and I moved into our very first house.
We brought our pound puppy, Lucy home.
And we officially went off birth control.
We were so excited to start our family.
All I ever wanted of my life was to be married and pregnant.
Our one year anniversary came and went in May and with it, my period.
Then the next month.
And the next...
And the next.
Suddenly I knew.
I just knew.
So we began to see fertility doctors.
Many of them.
And 18 months of fertility tests and treatments came and went.
We made the decision to become foster/adoptive parents, but I always held out at what the last fertility doctor's nurse told me, "there does not seem to be anything wrong. You could just up and get pregnant at any time."
I said to myself, in the next ten years I will conceive and give birth.
It was going to happen for me.
But it never did.
In a way I always knew it wouldn't.
When my reproductive system took a dive in 2012, and the option to have surgery and thereby end any hope of conceiving a child came...I knew I had to do it.
I needed to just be healthy.
It was time to say goodbye to the journey that had brought with it so many ups and downs.
I knew that making that decision would carry its own pain.
And it did.
Deep grief and loss for about a year.
Barrenness has become the burden God has called me to carry throughout my life. It has kept me humble. It has been a story that has brought hope and healing to others. For that I am thankful.
Healing has come in so many ways, namely my children.
Yet, it is amusing to me how infertility still finds
its way to creep up in the most unexpected times.
Like today, I went with Isaac on his third grade field trip.
It was at a wild life ranch. I saw the kangaroos with the little joeys in their pouches. SO cute.
I didn't think about pregnancy at all as we petted the little baby.
We went by the lemurs and were told that one of them might be pregnant. Ok. Good for them.
What got me came next.
It was the one week old Zebra baby.
Just look at that adorableness.
I was mesmorized by how the baby followed its mother around, trying to nurse. And how it would skip and leap in excitement but always staying right by mom. Precious.
So, the tour guide asked if we had questions and I asked if the other females had babies too.
He said they hoped all of them would get pregnant.
One had only been pregnant once.
The zebra had been stillborn.
Oh.
Ouch.
And suddenly I found myself irrationally asking questions in my head that I would have never asked a teenage tour guide in front of 60 third graders.
Questions like, "what would become of the zebra who never had a baby? Would she just trot around the other mothers knowing she never conceived? Would she feel normal or sad? Would it always carry with her for her whole life that all the other zebras had babies and she didn't?"
I really wanted to ask if the animal keepers would give the infertile zebra a different baby. You know like a donkey foul or something to mother. What about that pot bellied pig over there. He looked like he could use a mom.
This is where my mind goes people!!
I was amused that I had this flood of questions about the possibility of a barren zebra. Good night.
Later, as I looked through the pictures I had taken, I found this one:
Waaaaa.
A sad lonely zebra with no babies.
(she actually just wanted us to feed her more pellets).
You can see where my thoughts take me.
Sheer lunacy.
So ten years have come.
Here we are.
I always thought I might have conceived by now.
But what I knew to be true was that I would certainly be a mother 10 years down the road.
Of five...no one could have predicted.
In November, I flew to Maryland to speak at a Women's Retreat for Adoptive Mothers. I spoke on the subject of Infertility and Older Child Adoption on two different days. In my first talk, I shared this:
I have spent
the last 10 years with this thought running through
my mind: “I will never get over being barren.”
My
biggest fear was that I would take my infertility grief with me
to my grave.
In the past
year it has occurred to me (through the Holy Spirit, no
doubt) that….”So what
if I do?”
In 2
Corinthians, Paul asked God three times to take away the
thorn in his flesh. Many
have speculated on what the thorn was,
but what most agree God said NO. The
purpose: to keep Paul
humble so that he would not trust in himself. So that God
would
get the glory for ALL that Paul’s life achievements would be. And
we know
they were great. Paul is held as one of the founders of
the Church and yet he
suffered greatly until the day he was
martyred.
So this understanding
begs the question: If a hero of the faith like
Paul can be called to this kind
of suffering, why can’t we?
And if we
are…why not view it as Good for the sake of the gospel.
Why not view it as a
small price to pay for the sacrifice made on
our behalf on the cross?
If our story of pain and hope can bring others
to the place of
making hard decisions…decisions like stopping the rollercoaster
of
infertility treatments to pursue bringing an orphan home.
Or bringing
hope to an unwed mother who has made the
heartbreaking decision to choose a
family for her baby.
Or laying
down our own dreams of a newborn baby to welcome
home an older child from
foster care who has always dreamed of
having his own bedroom to sleep in, and a
mother to tuck him in
at night.
Maybe
we can begin to view our grief as less of a
punishment and more of a promise. A
promise that God IS there in
our tears. He IS very present in our pain. And He
is doing a Good
work in our life that He will see to fruition.
Then we must
ask ourselves this: “Is our pain and suffering worth it? Can we lay down our
desires for someone else’s benefit? Can we be willing to be changed in the
process?”
I was so glad to be able to share at that retreat and I told them there is healing in sharing your story.
10 years of infertility and roughly 6 of blogging about it has brought me to a really good place.
I encourage you if you are here and the sight of zebra babies brings the thoughts that it brought to my mind....
Just go write about it.
You will feel so much better.
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