Finding God in this journey

This frustrating and painfully long 8-year journey has certainly led me somewhere good – to God. Yes, I have cursed at him and expressed my confusion at his choices of whom to impregnate with great regularity. But over the past 6 months I have felt a great calling. And I am beginning to trust in the fact that God has a plan for us.

In this current era, we are taught that we are responsible for the life we live. That we can choose to work hard, and study hard and be good people in order to control the outcome of our lives. If we study hard, we will get good grades. If we work hard we will move up in our careers and feel accomplished and recognised. Similarly, when we embrace the ‘job’ of trying to conceive, we believe that we must do all the research and find the best doctors and all the techniques that might possibly help us to conceive. So we research not just traditional medicine but also holistic alternative medicine. We explore acupuncture and chiropractors and massage therapy and herbal therapy and we search out the best IVF clinics and do research on all the best IVF techniques – assisted hatching, ICSI, co-culture. We bombard our doctors with our research, being assertive and demanding to know why the latest cutting-edge technologies are not being use to help us conceive that precious baby.

We feel we must be as proactive as possible because if we do not we will fail and we will not conceive at all. Just like we must be proactive in the rest of our lives - seeking to take charge of our lives and ensure the best possible outcomes. And while it is important to be assertive and do our best in life, it is possible that we have confused this with the idea that if we do not do our very best then we will fail. But the truth is that there is a higher power.

And as tough as it is, I must learn to accept that God has a plan for our lives. And that He loves me more than I could possibly imagine and wants for me the absolute and complete best things which will bring me closer to him. He could not possibly love me less than I love my as-yet unborn children. Thus He will do what is best for me. Thus, His plan is better than mines. As hard as that is to accept, I am learning to slowly leave it up to Him. To slowly accept that even though it does not feel like it, right now the best thing for me and my dear husband is not to be pregnant. It pains me even to write that, which tells me just how far I am from accepting God’s Will for us.

But my reason tells me that I am exactly where I am meant to be if salvation is to be mines – for that is God’s ultimate desire and gift for me. And somehow I must relinquish my deep desire to control everything and my deep need to take charge and allow God to be in charge of my life. To begin to understand that I am exactly where God wants me to be for my own good. And that I will not be pregnant one second before it becomes the best moment for me to be pregnant.

So I will keep doing my best to get pregnant and doing my research and I will do my IVF but I will try more and more to accept that God is the one who will determine when and how and He will make that decision based on what is best for me, my dear husband and our precious baby.

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Adoption?

I am so conflicted when it comes to adoption. Will my family be able to love a baby that is biologically not ours? Will my husband? Will I? Will be be able to get a baby? We can’t handle adopting an older child. We simply dont have the psychological skill. But the process here is so time consuming – it takes almost 2 years here. And by then the baby selected for us is 2 years old and has spent that time in an orphanage. There are a few other options here. There is no open adoption adn there are no adoption agencies. Adoption is not a socially accepted thing in this society. It is done quietly and almost shamefully. The only way to get a baby quickly here is to find a pregnant woman who wants to give up her baby and have her give it to you and then you file for the child to be formally adopted. But that is so fraught with danger – mostly that she will change her mind after you have bonded with the baby.

sometimes it seems so unfair that in order to adopt we have to be scrutinised and have complete strangers determine if we are worthy to be parents. But any 12 year old drug addicted child is allowed to get pregnant and become a parent – no homestudy required! sigh. I am just so frustrated some days.

Some days I feel a sense of peace at the idea of giving up the pursuit of this desire to be a mommy. And some days I firmly believe that God has some really great plan for us and we will turn up the parents of triplets or something amazing like that. I want to believe that the IVF will be wildly successful and we will end up with enough grade A embryos to freeze for our next pregnancy. And that we will end up with twins this go around. That somehow God will validate our suffering and make it all worthwhile in some obvious display of fecundity and patronage. What makes me believe this when so far it has not happened is beyond me. Where does this unending well-spring of hope come from? I don’t know. I guess I just believe that God is good and that He would not let us suffer like this for no reason and without some papable reward. I have to believe this if I am to go on.

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