Testimony part 2

This process spanned a period of five and a half years and whilst the physical aspects were difficult at times, the real difficulty has been both the emotional and spiritual challenges.

Infertility feels like a kind of grief that only grows stronger as time passes, for someone you haven’t even met yet, and may never get to meet.  Many of the things we have learned over this time has been through going to God in pain and desperately seeking him for answers about our situation.  They were not discoveries made easily but every one of them has proved to be true and has been tested in what has been for us the most difficult time of our lives. We have attempted to summarise some of the things God has taught us below:

God is better than…

·         It is easy to feel like a failure without children, feeling like your life is on hold or that there is a lack of purpose but that assumes that children are the thing that gives your life meaning. Over time it was reinforced to us that God is the One who gives our life meaning. God is the goal of our lives, not children or anything else. In Genesis 15, when Abraham is concerned about not having a son, one of the things God tells him is: “I am your reward”. By His grace, we get God. He is the reward and is a far better reward than anything else we could want.

·         God reminded us repeatedly over the last 5 and half years that His plan is better than ours. When God’s plan doesn’t match up with what we had planned for ourselves (which is often the case) we need to remember that His plan is better! God is good, He only gives good gifts. We might not view certain things as “good” at the time, but that is only because we don’t have all the information. From God’s eternal perspective, He is working for His glory and our good, all the time. He is more committed to what is good for us than we are!

·         We know that God is able to do all things, but even if he doesn’t, He is still worthy of worship. This is a difficult lesson to learn because it is relatively easy to worship God when things are going well. God could have allowed us to conceive a child at any time over the last few years, but he didn’t. Would we still worship Him? The key issue is understanding that we are worshipping God because he is worthy of our worship, not because of what He can do for us. In Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are about to be thrown into the fiery furnace and they say that God is able to save them, but even if he doesn’t, they will still not bow down and worship idols. This idea of God being able to change things, but He is worthy of our worship “even if he doesn’t”, became a powerful lesson that we learned during this period.

Why is God allowing this?

At many points during our period of infertility, we would find ourselves wondering why God was allowing it to happen. Again, God used this to teach us about himself.

·         God reminded us that He is in control. God opens and closes the womb. God can do whatever he wants. We felt out of control but in reality, it just showed us that we are all always out of control. Any control we think we have in our lives is an illusion. We are totally dependant on Him.

·         It is easy to start thinking that God is punishing us for something by withholding children. We had to repeatedly remember the cross – that God doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve (Romans 5:8) and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). God is not punishing me because Jesus has taken the punishment I deserve.

·         God’s plan for us is that we become more like Jesus. Everything is working towards that goal. Romans 8:29 says that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son. Everything God is doing is to make us more like Jesus. In John 11 we read that Jesus delayed going to Lazarus and Lazarus died. Jesus says that Lazarus’ death happened so that they/we would believe in Jesus. God sometimes delays out of love because the best thing for us is seeing more of God.

·         In 2 Corinthians 15 Paul pleads with God to take away his ‘thorn in the flesh’ but instead of taking it away God says that "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  Gods plan for us as Christians is far bigger than comfort. His plan is that we would become more like Jesus and God uses all of the circumstances of our lives to that end.

·         It is hard not knowing if God will ever answer your prayers. You know that you are supposed to have faith but I don’t think you can really know if you have faith until it is tested. Until you have to lean your whole weight on God

Community

Our lives do not take place in isolation; they take place in the context of relationships. Experiencing infertility in community was another area that God used to teach us valuable lessons.

• Watching others experience the blessing that you are desperate for is difficult but God showed us that it is pride that creates most of that difficulty. God taught us humility is rejoicing with others when they are blessed just as much as you would if it was you.  Infertility is very common but because of the sensitive nature of it and the ongoing sense of vulnerability few people choose to share what is going on and, as a result, few people are really aware of the challenges and emotions faced by people suffering with infertility.  This means that people can often be insensitive without meaning to be and this has been another area in which God has tried to cultivate humility in us.

·         We decided early on that if someone were to ask us about this we would tell the truth and try to be open, so those of you who have ever asked us about children know that to be true. We did this not because it was easier to do it, because it wasn’t, but because we believe that is part of what it means to walk in the light.  We have had a number of people who have walked this whole journey with us, who have been praying for us like they were praying for themselves and more.  We have seen a greater glimpse of what true Christian community looks like in this than we ever would have otherwise.  Being open with people has meant that we have closer relationships than we would have otherwise.  Letting others in is hard because it means being vulnerable but we know that this is what the bible means when it tells us to carry one another’s burdens.

In summary we just want to say that God is the purpose of your life. He is the reward. He is the source of satisfaction. He is in control. He can be trusted and He is always working for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. We are grateful that he counted us worthy (because of Jesus) to show himself to us in this. There is no doubt that He carried us through.  When you face difficulties please don’t simply pray that God will change your circumstances, but show you more of himself in them and make you more like Jesus through them.  If you get the thing you want but you miss God then you have missed everything.  Fortunately, God loves us too much to do that.

Now that God has given us the gift of children, please don’t think this is simply a testimony about God answering prayer, though it is certainly not less than that!  We are not simply saying these things now because we finally have what we asked for.  These things are true all the time. They were still true before God answered and they would still be true if he never answered.  We have to trust God just as much now as we did before.  Life with Jesus is dynamic and he is constantly at work, we want to encourage you to press in to him whatever your circumstance and discover that He is your very great reward.

Our testimony

This is an outline of our journey through infertility over the past five and a half years.  We are sharing it for a number of reasons; that others would understand a little more about infertility and be able to support those they know going through it, or take comfort themselves knowing that someone understands, but more than anything else we hope that as we share our experiences of God in the midst of our suffering that you might come to realise as we did the goodness of God in all things and that He, and nothing less than Him, is our very great reward.  The goal of life is God, the gospel, is that you get God, there is no greater gift than the gift of Himself.  We want God to get the glory.

The situation

After a general period of a few years considering it and around four months praying seriously about it, we then began trying .  We had been married for 3 years at this point.  Our main concern was that our children would know God and the confirmation he gave was clear from the bible, again and again that our children would know Him.

We were not ignorant about infertility as I had members of my family who had faced this issue, not least my mam who was told she couldn’t have children (my brother and I are testimony that God hears and answers prayer).  As part of our pre-marital counselling we had been asked how we would respond to it and had considered it then, but if we are honest we didn’t expect it to be an issue we’d have to face.

Most people knew we had intended to start a family at around 3 years of marriage so we made a decision that, while we wouldn’t actively tell people, if they asked we’d tell them the truth.  After a few months of trying and one month where we had really got our hopes up only to be let down, we realised how tough it was already becoming and we shared with a few people so that they could be praying for us.  We knew it could take up to a year even for a perfectly healthy couple to conceive so we kept going.

After a year couples are advised to see a GP which we did and we were referred straight away to the ‘assisted reproduction unit’ at the hospital.  The initial appointments were terrible, not least because pregnancy and infertility were in the same area and waiting times were well over an hour!  However, the doctor was lovely and he referred us for various tests.  My husband had the easy part of this whilst I faced some nasty testing.  All of the tests came back and everything was not only fine but very good.  It is estimated that as many as one in four couples will face a period of infertility of over one year. We were diagnosed with ‘unexplained infertility’ which accounts for around 20% of all infertility cases.  While on one hand it was great to know we had no obvious problems it also meant that they still didn’t know the problem and likely never would, therefore it couldn’t be treated.  We were set 3 months worth of a fertility drug known as Chlomid designed to boost fertility.

The drugs made me feel fairly nauseous at times and I lost a lot of appetite, struggling to eat at times and so lost some weight.  The drugs didn’t help so we were given a new appointment with the consultant at the hospital.  The consultant had now changed and a new assisted reproduction unit at the hospital had been opened.  We were aware of the IVF (in-Vitro fertilisation) procedure and at this point we had ruled it out on ethical grounds as well as on grounds of the emotional investment it would require.  The doctors suggested we try a procedure called IUI (intra-uterine insemination) so we went away to pray about it before we decided for definite, it would also involve taking more Chlomid, scans and a self administered injection.

We decided to go ahead with the IUI and ended up having four rounds in total, the doctor also added us to the IVF waiting list (which was a year long at the time) in case we changed our mind.  Each IUI cycle failed and each one was harder with more side-effects.  The last planned IUI was early 2009, we had now been struggling with infertility for over 3 years.

We were advised to consider IVF as we had less than a 5% chance of conceiving by this point so we spent time seriously praying about it.  We started with the ethical issues we had initially had based on the fact that embryo’s are often discarded during the process.  As Christians we don’t want to discard a life precious to God, though for many the definition of life comes at different points, for us we considered life to be from the moment of conception.  Our mind was quickly put at ease by the embryologist who agreed to store any unused embryos for us regardless of their quality.  Our remaining issue was with the emotional investment involved and we prayed for around a year about this before feeling happy to go ahead.

Our first attempt was over before it started due to hormone levels.  Our second attempt was changed to an ‘antagonist protocol’ (which I was very pleased about since it was much shorter and had fewer side effects) it was abandoned just before surgery due to a poor response.  We prayed about trying again and went ahead with another round just after Easter 2010.  We went through the whole procedure but sadly the embryos didn’t survive, nor did the embryos we had stored, 6 in total.  Another attempt at the end of the year was also abandoned the day before surgery due to poor response.  The IVF surgery was very painful and I was very apprehensive about going through it again.  After a lot more prayer we felt happy to go ahead with another round which we did just before Easter 2011.

Part 2 tomorrow...

Wahoo!

Its a bit late but...

I just came across this post on Russ Moore's blog, I read his book a few months ago Addopted for life and found it to be the most helpful, more importantly gospel centred, book on issues relating to infertility that I have read.  I really appreciate that someone in a prominent position is speaking about these issues in a sensitive and gospel centred way.  The post is about mothers day, follow the link to read it, remember the infertile on mothers day.


I hope that I can continue to support others who are in the situation we have walked through with Jesus as Russel has.