Blessings through Infertility

Percy Warner Park

What are you passionate about? The photo to the left encapsulates several of my passions: my awesome husband, exploring new places, being outside in nature, running and hiking.

Over the past few years, I've felt my passion for running, traveling, singing, doing my job, and living life to the fullest slipping away.

My mom died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2013. I questioned God's kindness and became very depressed. I believed in God and believed that he loved me enough to save my soul, but I didn't think God could possibly be interested in the details of my life. Those details might be a huge deal to me, but God had infinitely larger and more important things to concern himself with. Who am I that he would look upon my life? Why should he interfere or care? He is God. He is all knowing. He is all powerful, and He owes me nothing.

My beautiful mom with my brothers and I

I've never felt a strong desire to have children. I thought maybe God left the mom gene out of me. Luke and I have said many times that God may not want us to have children. There are all kinds of things God may have in store for us that would be easier to do without kids. Three years ago I spent quite a bit of time in prayer and searching about whether God wanted us to have kids. We felt God leading in two ways: 1) he wanted us to do foster care. 2) he wanted us to try to have children. So, in our own wisdom (ha!) Luke and I decided it really made the most sense to try to have our own children first, and then we would do foster care at some point in the future. Two years later it was pretty clear we weren't going to have biological children and fortunately we came to our senses and became obedient in becoming foster parents.

I struggled with God to make sense of why he would lead me in the direction of trying to have children and then break my heart when it didn't happen. I felt a very clear word from him that he wanted us to conceive. Did I make a mistake in hearing from him? Why would I go from not even having that desire, to crying every month when it didn't happen? I couldn't make sense of it. Was he just mean?

Through the disappointment of my circumstances God has been teaching me that he is in charge and I'm not always going to understand why specific things happen or the timing of certain events. Lauren Daigle sings this idea beautifully in her song, Trust in You. God sees the bigger picture and there is a reason he doesn't move every mountain out of our way. God has asked me to die to myself and I am challenged by the first words of the song, "Letting go of every single dream, I lay each one down at your feet." Click here to listen. This was an important lesson to learn, and this song reminded me to trust in God.
But it wasn't the whole picture.

God didn't just want me to trust him because He is God, he also wanted me to know that he loves me. I mean, really loves and cares for me. He has completely baffled me. He took me on a journey through trying to have children and taught me that he cares very much about the details of my life. He cares about my health, my body, my dreams, my thoughts. I'm immediately humbled to think that I even doubted.

Riley and Olive enjoy the ocean

After my surgery in August, I was in Pawley's Island listening to the waves crash. I was happy to be recovering from surgery (especially at the beach) but I was still in pain and wrestling with God. When I went off birth control pills a desire to get pregnant began to grow in me. I just assumed it would happen immediately. I began making plans. Looking back those plans make me feel like an idiot and are another reminder to give up control. Not because I am forced to turn over control to God, but because he is worth trusting with my entire life, every single detail.

If God had not sparked in me that desire of getting pregnant, I would have stayed on birth control pills and had endometriosis building up inside me without even feeling it. It would have caused much more harm over time and I wouldn't have known it was there. It took going off the pills and then feeling all the pain that came with it, to find out there was something really wrong. Feeling that pain led me to get the help I needed, and for that, I am so thankful.

I now see how absolutely loving God is to care enough about my physical body, to lead me down this road so I could get help. It actually amazes me. God has strange ways, but he is so loving towards us. It is so shameful that we doubt him and think he is mean or doesn't care. Hopefully this will stick with me and I won't easily forget, that in those moments when I have no idea what he is doing, he is loving me and I can trust him.

Why does God care that I love to run? Why does he care about my job? Why does he care about me singing? Zephaniah 3:17 speaks of God's love towards us. A mighty warrior who takes great delight in us. He cares about these things because he loves us. 

Zephaniah 3:17