It Brought Me To You

I lost count of the pregnancy tests when the count exceeded my age... that was around the time that the anxious anticipation which buoyed my first years of hoping turned into desperation and masochism. I knew the outcome, but a plastic stick offered irrefutable evidence. 

Infertility is divisive. Infertility poisoned the relationship between my mind and body. The feeling of distrust still lingers at times. While my womb seems unwilling to hold a baby, poisonous lies seem to eagerly occupy the emptiness. 

Infertility is lonely. "...She just doesn't get it because she's not a mom. How old are your little ones?" I was babysitting, and I took the kids to Chick-fil-a when a friendly young mom struck up a conversation with me in the indoor play place. While my honest response made us both uncomfortable, I much preferred these unintentional provocations to the intentional isolation I experienced from a few individuals I considered friends. As time wore on, and my womb remained empty, I was sympathetically excluded from a handful of baby showers. While I know that the intentions were pure, the poisonous lies became all the more voracious as I bought baby gifts to be given without any occasion for exchange-- she knows you are just one pair of delicately wrapped baby booties away from falling apart. She knows you are nothing more than this grief, and the world is capable of greater joy when no one has to tiptoe around you and your sterile egg shells.

Infertility is humiliating. It's fluorescent lights, prescription hormones, and a thousand indignities sheathed by an ill-fitting hospital gown. It is frightening how quickly indecencies are normalized when longing becomes desperation... yet, I paid for it over and over again. Thousands of dollars paid to defile what I once held as sacred. Any romanticized notions of life's conception were shed with the undergarments that I neatly folded and hid beneath my purse. I paid to be medically violated by nearly a dozen doctors and physician's assistants on a routine basis, but hiding my undergarments felt important every single time. During one appointment, the doctor walked into the room as I was still undressing. As soon as he politely excused himself, I cried in my humiliation. It feels silly and shameful admitting how much I grieved the loss of that final sense of dignity. I suppose when I couldn't hold my dreams, my grasp on other things, including my sense of dignity, tightened.

Infertility is deceptive. You are required to control everything while in reality lacking control of what matters most. It's carefully planning every detail from diet to weekly appointments, daily prescriptions, and controlled cycles. It's being told that you must wait on hold for the next available operator, but you cannot engage in any other endeavors while you are on hold because the operator could pick up at any moment, and if you're not ready with paper and pen, you will have to enter the queue, yet again. Inevitably, you get disconnected a half dozen times. You can't jump the line, and you may or may not actually connect with a live person eventually. It could be days, months, years, or never, but if it's never, you get to call in six more times for a reduced rate.

And Yet, as impossible as it felt, infertility is where I found my faith again.

Jesus is restorative. He is working to heal the broken trust between my body and mind because He knows me intimately, and He sees what I cannot fathom-- that I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

Jesus is near. He does not find my grief burdensome. He meets me and stays by my side even when I elect to cover myself in darkness (Psalm 139:11-12). 

Jesus is restorative. He dignifies me through grace. He lost His dignity to buy back mine. He knows what it is to be humiliated, and yet He endured so that His grasp on me could become secure and eternal.

Jesus is faithful. He used infertility and grief to create a way to fulfill His promise through adoption. He knew where the journey was leading. He saw our daughter, and He formed her with us in mind. He knew every detail and delivered her in His perfect timing (Psalm 139:16). 

I am grateful for my infertility because it brought me to you.