Choose Hope

When Life meets Reality:

Choose Hope

You may remember in a previous post that I talked about how my emotional status seems to be cloudy with a forecast for more cloudiness. This chain of thought was brought to fruition because of a series my church was doing called Climate Change. Well don't you know, three weeks later, the last message was just for me. I'd really encourage you to listen to the message. I think it speaks to EVERYONE, but it really, really speaks to most infertiles. And the good news is you don't have to be religious, or know where you stand on the Bible: it's just a great message about what to do and how to handle life when your expectations aren't met.

The message discusses a kind of chain of events. Let me diagram this for you:

Expectations

I

I

V

Suffering

I

I

V

Perseverance

I

I

V

Character

I

I

V

Hope

The idea here is that no matter how happy or optimistic, no matter how bubbly your personality is, there will be seasons of your life where your expectations are not met as to how your life should go, and in those seasons, our natural inclination is for our emotional climate to look like a bunch of storm clouds. I don't know about you, but I'm in a season of unmet expectations right not. The way I thought my storybook life would unfold is just not reading quite right. We seem to be stuck on page six, and I want to get to "and they lived happily ever after". As I said before, my emotional state is pretty much cloudy all the time. Sure the sun breaks through, but in the quiet of the day, I'm not radiant, I'm not filled with hope, I'm sad, I'm wishing for more. 

Jeff, the speaker, says that when life happens, and expectations aren't met, the storm clouds roll in over your heart and push hope out. Our heart gets sick, an unhealthy emotional climate is created, and we become Debbie Downer. I don't know about you, but I'm often Debbie Downer. I think it's partially just my nature, partially that I'm just sad, and partially that I'm in a place in my live where good things aren't happening. I'm in a place where my millions of prayers aren't being answered. I'm in a place where I feel like it's probably better if I don't pray for others, because they are more likely to be healed, fixed, forgiven if I don't add my two cents. Debbie Downer, right?

So what's the solution? What do we do when our expectations aren't met? When life knocks us down? Apparently, it's several steps, but in the midst of our suffering, we persevere. I think infertiles have MASTERED this step. I don't know if I've ever met another group of people who get knocked down as often or as frequently, and yet CD1, while a crushing blow, is also another chance, and we pull ourselves up, haul ourselves to the pharmacy, or doctor, or acupuncturist, and start all over again… that's perseverance. 

I'm currently under the "suffering" category. An incredibly interesting point that Jeff brought up is that we don't like to think God is forcing us to walk though suffering because we don't see suffering as a blessing. Ohhhhh, this is so me. I keep asking God to get me out of here and I don't want to think that maybe it's God who is making me walk this journey. But maybe, just maybe, He's trying to build His character in me, and give me hope. Maybe He's asking me to trust His ways and walk through the suffering to the other side. 

The message explains that the leap from perseverance to character is a "then God" moment. These are the places that God shows up. I love the idea that through this I might gain more of His character, that I might look more like Him on the other side. But man oh man, am I far, far away from having any character in this, let alone His. I pray I learn fast because otherwise, I might be here for awhile. And having hope, real true hope, even in the darkest moments? Yea, I'm a long way from that.

I mentioned before that I'm wishing one of the many doctors I will be seeing starting this week can give me some hope. And I still feel that way. After three failed IUI's, I've become disillusioned with the medical world and their ability to solve our problems. My doctor never gave us odds for the success of the IUI procedure, but I felt like my OBGYN in Augusta and the RE in Atlanta felt like that would work for us. They have always talked like our infertility was minimal, like our problem was so small. It made me feel that despite reading hundreds of blogs and thousands of message boards where IUI failed, despite only knowing one success story when we started, I felt like it would work for us. We would be the lucky ones. Never once has my RE voiced any reason to suspect that there might be more going on, that we might not be "easy", that IUI might not work. My first appointment in this marathon of appointments is with my RE this Thursday. I'm 99% sure that I know what she'll say: there is no explanation for why IUI didn't work for us, but she would recommend moving onto IVF. But I want answers. I need more than "standard procedures". I want someone, whether it be my doctor or one of the other two we are seeing to offer some hope to make me believe that they have a plan, and a reason for that plan. 

But after listening to this message (for the third time), I'm thinking that maybe it's not the doctor's words that will give me hope, maybe it's walking through this wilderness, spending my forty days out here, maybe it's the journey that leads to real hope. I think the scariest part is knowing that my hope isn't supposed to be placed in eventually having a baby, but instead my hope is in the One who loves me and cares for me, whether that brings me a child or not.