Starting the shots...

Well, I thought I'd let you know that I'm now sticking needles in my stomach. =) After all that frustration and anxiety, I finally get to start trying again. After my fast day, David and I decided that God wasn't telling us not to do the shots, since we'd had too many encouraging signs from Him before the setback. The next day, I started cramping. Go figure. I've now been taking a shot in my stomach each night for three nights. Praise the Lord, I haven't had any side effects or mood swings so far. I'm even getting used to the procedure, and it doesn't seem so bad. So now I'm calling all prayer warriors! Please pray specifically that I would ovulate on this drug. That is not a given, though most women do ovulate on it. Also, please pray that I would not have any negative side effects. Pray also, and this is very important, that I won't have more than 3 mature eggs on this drug. We have decided that, ethically and morally speaking, we cannot proceed if we have more than that. The survival rate and the rate of complications with quadruplets is more than we feel like God has called us to risk, and that would be a possibility with more than 3 mature eggs. Hopefully, I should know whether or not these prayers are answered by around March 11. Nothing is certain with these treatments, but this is what they're telling me now. It could all change, but please be praying during this time. After that, it'll be a waiting game for a pregnancy test. I appreciate any and all prayers for us. Pray that we would have faith for our own healing right now. That is sometimes tough, especially considering what has gone before, but we want to exercise that kind of faith. We haven't been told to move on yet; we've been called to do treatments, so we want to pray with faith for what we're called to do today. I hope that makes some sense.

Birthdays with Chuck E.

This is the birthday bunch! David and I teach a Sunday School class, and just about everybody in it is in this picture. On the far left, we have Chris and Libby, and their oldest son, Martin. Robert is to my left, and David and Zimmer are on the other side of Chuck E. Cheese. David and I started out teaching "young adults" at Bluff Park, but when our current youth minister left about a year ago, we expanded our repertoire to teaching youth, specifically, two, now 18-year-old boys. Having them in our class has been a really wonderful experience. David and I don't consider ourselves natural "youth people," but Robert and Zimmer make teaching youth easy. They are genuinely interested in learning the truths in God's word. We don't change the lessons for them, and they greatly add to the class discussion. Over the past months, these guys have become "my boys." When we found out that all of us, me, Zimmer, and Robert, were all having birthdays in February, we decided that ChuckECheese was the place for our joint birthday party. Ok, David and I decided it, but the boys were good sports about it. We had cake and pizza, and the birthday kids got special cups and cotton candy, and ChuckE came out to dance with our group. And we got a ton of tokens, so that made everybody happy. Each person brought a gag gift for the others. I got Zimmer a garden gnome complete with red pointy hat, and I got Robert a Muppets puzzle. Of course, David and Zimmer had to crawl through the kids only maze, and everybody wanted to beat me at the car racing game. They did, by the way. Libby got way too excited about the basketball shooting game. All in all, good clean fun was had by everyone mature enough not to get embarrassed by all this kid's stuff. I hope that our time at ChuckECheese teaches some lesson. You are never too old to make fun of yourself. Christians don't need alchohol or drugs to have a ton of fun. They just need the ability to find excitement in everyday places. They need to have the guts to redefine "cool" to something that honors God and the ability to laugh that He gave us. If you're reading this, Fred and Oscar, I hope you remember that. We love you.

Carnage at Walmart...

Today I thought I'd write about my struggle for joy in the Lord lately. Hopefully somebody out there can learn from my experience. This is a little harder for me to share, but I feel led to, so I hope that's because somebody needs to hear it.

The past several days have been hard for me. The temporary setback in our treatments has led to questions about whether or not we were hearing correctly from God to proceed with them, general confusion, and lots of anger, frustration, and disappointment on my part, as well as sad realizations about this flesh that I inhabit.

David and I decided to pray, and I decided to fast to hear from God about the direction He might want us to take, and to try to hear if He wanted us to change course. So on Monday, I fasted until dinner. Now, I don't fast often, so I'm not good at it. I'm bad at it actually. Monday I had to do a lot of errands, and just about the time that I was getting the most hungry, I had to go to Walmart. Being hungry makes me weepy, and in the mood I was in, on Monday it led to self-pity.

Monday in the early afternoon is also the time that all the pregnant women in Birmingham decide to go shopping at Walmart. So here I was, hungry, cranky, weepy, and angry, trying to do my grocery shopping. If my glance could kill, there would've been pregnant women down all over Walmart. No survivors. These women were not women with their own stories and struggles to me at that moment. They were faceless beneficiaries of the gift that I'd been denied. So naturally, they were going down. (NOTE: I do not despise my pregnant friends. Yes, sometimes its hard to look at you, but give me a minute to compose myself, and I'm fine and happy to chat. I do want to know about your life and your pregnancy, and I don't want to miss out on that because I'm having a hard time.)

So, the evil and envy in my heart came out full blast, and I was humbled by my own sinfulness. The end of the day came, and the main thing I'd learned from my fast was not what we should do about our treatments. It was that sin in me is strong, and that almost three years of struggling against it in this area haven't seemed to yield me much in the way of victory. This was very humbling to me, and those of you who've known me long know that I don't like to be humbled. Despite reading the right books and singing the right praise music and trying to pray the right prayers, I am apparently incapable of not throwing a hissy fit when I don't get what I want when I want it.

It was so easy to feel like I had it together spiritually when my life was going along pretty smoothly. It went that way throughout my life, from cradle through early marriage. Until infertility hit, I'd never experienced the shattering of a major life dream. My childhood was idyllic. I was sheltered, and I was blessed. It was pretty easy to love God. It was easy to desire God.

I do not think that I didn't love God then. I do think that I often confused loving God with loving His gifts. God and His gifts were very intertwined in my understanding; I think they are for most of us. But what do we do when the gifts are taken away? What do we do when we feel that we are left with just God? I know what I've done.

I've desired the gift more than the Giver. I've said, "You know, God, thanks for sticking by me, but if you don't mind, if I have to choose, I feel like taking the thing I want over you right now." It's hard to admit, but its true. Getting to the place where I can admit this is good. And I've had to admit it a lot lately. But admitting it leads to humility. It leads me to an understanding, once again for the millionth time, that I cannot be good on my own. I try, and I fail. Miserably. "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want... Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord."- Romans 7:19-20, 25.

I have to count on Christ to make me desire Him instead of stuff. And He promised that He has begun a good work in me, and He will be faithful to complete it. He will do it; I just have to keep asking Him to keep doing what I cannot do on my own. If I am frustrated by my inability to wholeheartedly obey His calling, I am not alone. The apostle Paul experienced it before me, and God didn't give up on Him. He won't give up on me, either.

I guess I'm thankful for the chance to learn that I'm not as great as I thought I was when life was basically going my way. And I want to learn now, instead of later, how to desire God first in my life, in front of all the gifts. I want to be the person who can be happy with Him and nothing else. After all, when I get to the end of this earthly journey, there will be nothing else but Him. My flesh gets in the way of my desire for Him now, but I'm thankful that it won't be that way forever.

P.S. I am starting a book called "When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy," by John Piper. I recommend it.

God can handle your anger...

This morning I thought I'd share one of the things I've been learning about God lately and over the past couple of years. The past few days have been really tough for me. When I think about the reasons why, it seems silly that one more setback in my fertility treatment would bother me this much. Maybe its because our treatments have seemed like a long series of setbacks, and I am being stretched to the breaking point. We were supposed to start injectable ovulation drugs this week, but unfortunately, the progesterone pills that I take to induce a period are not working like they usually do. The days keep passing, and nothing happens, and my anger and frustration build and build. And since God could've done something about this if He wanted to, naturally I'm mad at Him. =) Earlier in this journey, I usually responded to my anger toward God in one way. I repressed it. I prayed prayers of thanksgiving when I felt anything but thankful. I got angry at people because I was really angry at God, but I was afraid to show Him that. Finally, it got so bad that I just admitted to Him how angry I really was. I told Him that I was hurt and afraid, and I didn't think I was cut out for what He'd handed me. I told Him I was really mad at Him for allowing this pain in my life. When I was completely broken before Him, He did something amazing. He showed up, and I had peace in the middle of a storm that I can't explain. All the "good girl" piety I was trying hadn't gotten me closer to my Master. Honesty had. Since I discovered this, I have noticed this principle show up more and more in the Bible and in Christian writings. In When Your Rope Breaks, the author writes, "If you are angry and hurt, don't tell God that you love Him. He knows you are lying. Don't tell Him that you know He is doing whatever He is doing in your life for a good reason. He knows you don't believe that for a moment. Tell him the truth. He is maybe the only Person in the world who can absorb everything you hand out, understand why you do it, and still love you." I have found this to be true. Jesus experienced pain and frustration that I can't imagine. He has been there, and He knows. He knows what its like to cry out to your Father and beg Him to take this suffering away from you and get a big, fat "No."Before infertility, I'm sure that I had pushed my family and friends pretty far with my complaining about various things, but I did not know then what it felt like when you realize that the people that love you probably couldn't handle it if they knew how you felt inside sometimes. It has been so freeing to know that God can handle it. I have been using the Psalms as a Biblical model for crying out to the Lord. Some of them were written while David was running for his life from King Saul. He doesn't make any bones about the fact that he's really hurting and in trouble. He says in Psalm 6:6-12, "I am weary with sighing; every night I make my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears. My eye has wasted away with grief; It has become old because of my adversaries..." but he ends up with confidence in the Lord. "The Lord has heard my supplication. The Lord receives my prayer." This is just one of many Psalms like this. When I pray, I try to do what David did. If I'm really angry and hurt, who am I kidding if I act like I'm not? God knows everything anyway. So I tell Him how mad I am at Him, and then I ask Him to help me not to be so angry. I know that this idea may be uncomfortable to some of you. Many of our modern preachers teach us that we should think positive thoughts and remember our blessings when we're upset, but that's the most advice they're willing to give the brokenhearted about relating to God. I've done this, and I think its a good idea, and that it often works. I don't think that Christians should enjoy large chunks of time spend in Angryland. But I've also learned that when your rope has broken, and when counting your blessings is like dust in your mouth, honesty about that before God can lead to great relief and refreshment and new thankfulness. You can truly discover that God really does know the worst of you and loves you anyway.

My funny Valentine...

This is my own funny Valentine, David. I thought this would be a good time to give him the honor on this blog that he has earned over and over again. He's posing here with this picture that I think is Sam Houston. I can't be completely sure who it is, but I think this captures some of David's personality. David loves to goof around; he's a person who isn't afraid to express the kid still locked inside of him. Sometimes I think he has split personalities. When its time to be serious and give a client good advice on something like electronic discovery of documents, he's all lawyer. When its time to hang out with our Friday Fun Night kids, he wants to go down the 80 1b. limit water slide with the other kids and race a 10-year-old on the slip n' slide. And then there's another side to him- a kind, gentle, strong husband for a wife who considers him her rock and her knight in shining armor. David was born to his loving parents in in April, 1977. I'm certainly glad that he was. His parents raised him to be a hard worker with a servant's heart. They also taught him to love Jesus. I'm so thankful for the good job they did raising him, because I know I reap the benefits of it every day. When we were newlyweds, I would talk about how wonderful marriage was with stars in my eyes. Older married couples would sometimes dismiss me, and they'd say things like, "Yeah, well, you haven't been married very long," or "Just wait 'til you have kids. That changes things." Well, I've been married almost 5 years now, and not having kids has stresses for us that I've seen seriously damage some marriages, so I think its now safe for me to comment on marriage with a little bit of authority. It's still wonderful, and in fact, its more wonderful than it was when we were first married. All that has to do with the man I married. David has always, without fail, been there for me when I've needed him. He's there on a daily basis, helping me out. He does dishes, he cleans, and he picks up around the house. If something needs to be done, he's a team player. Sometimes he's the team captain. =) I don't have to ask him multiple times to help out. If I ask him to vaccuum, I'll find him cleaning the bathroom afterward because he knows it needs to be done. I have learned through talking to married girlfriends that this behavior is not so typical. David consistently puts me and our marriage first in his life. When he was in law school, he was encouraged to apply for a Supreme Court clerkship, but he decided that our marriage was too new, and he didn't want to stress it with those kind of hours so early on. People thought he was crazy, and I wasn't too keen on him giving up this dream for me. He stood firm, and he was sure about it, and I can see now what a difference this time together has made. David works hard at his job. He usually works a 10-12 hour day. I could understand if he wanted to spend his off hours relaxing with the guys. But he has said that he knows that he has a pretty limited amount of time off, and he wants to spend it with me. Our marriage comes first to him, and I feel secure and loved knowing that. Since our battle with infertility started, I have been a nut. I am riding high one minute, and I am in the depths of despair the next minute. Infertility is harder for the average woman than it is for the average guy, and we're no exception. Sometimes the sadness is so great that he can't do anything to make me feel better. This is really hard on him, but he just keeps trying to help. He patiently listens to my tirades for hours, continues to ask questions that he knows the answers to already because we're covering this ground for the millionth time, and gently points me to the Only One that loves me more than He does. David compliments me continually, and he writes me heartfelt notes and letters. He tells me that he thinks I'm a great wife. Well, if I am, its not because I'm naturally inclined to be one. It's easy to be a good wife when you have a husband like him. David, I'm so thankful for you. You are by far the greatest gift that God has even given me. I have been blessed so greatly by our marrriage. If it was the only blessing I'd received from His hand, it would be far more than I deserve. I love you.

Some thoughts on Valentine's

I really like rainy mornings sometimes, especially when I don't have to go anywhere as soon as I get up. In winter, they're especially nice. I can wake up and hear the raindrops outside my winter. It makes it feel warm and cozy, and I get up and put on my comfiest clothes and go to the computer to check my email. Ok, well, the first thing I do is go to the fridge to get my morning addictive beverage of choice, Dr. Pepper, but then I come into the office and sit down at the computer. Rainy days seem to put me in the mood to write for some reason, so I thought I'd write all of you.

Yesterday, I had a Valentine card making party. I know you're all going, "What is that?" because that's what most of my guests said when I invited them. I got the idea out of Better Homes and Gardens. You just get together a bunch of friends and a bunch of crafts supplies and make Valentines for all your friends and family. So that's what I did. I bought construction paper at the parent teacher store, and I diecut hearts out of it at work. I borrowed cool scissors from friends that scrapbook. I made a cake and some heart shaped sugar cookies and some strawberry lemonade, nothing too fancy. And I put Frank Sinatra's favorite love songs on the stereo. My guests really got into it, and I hope they enjoy getting to send homemade Valentines this year.

Valentine's Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. I think its partly because its a week before my birthday, so I usually clean up in February. =) It's also because I'm a hopeless romantic, and I want everybody to know how much I love them. This really took off for me in high school. I started making Valentines for everybody- parents, brother, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends. I figured that Valentine's Day shouldn't just be for people who were dating or married. Everybody needs to know how much they're loved and appreciated, especially those that aren't dating or married. After all, Love himself never dated or married. He never experienced romantic love, but He gave a love that was greater and stronger and more wonderful than the most perfect expression of that. That's hard for me to imagine sometimes. My own love is so puny and selfish in comparison.

I'd like to thank my daddy for being my first Valentine. He was the first man to make me feel special and appreciated on this day. I always got candy and a Valentine from him. My box wasn't as big as Mom's, but that's to be expected, I guess. =) I was secure in Dad's love, and he taught me what a good, honorable, and loving man looks like. Daddy, you're a big part of the reason that I now have such a wonderful Valentine to give me the big box each year. Thank you.

Well, I'd better run. I have a moutain of laundry to do, I've gotta do the weekly shopping, and I have to start making a study guide on British Evangelicals today. If you're having a rainy day where you are, enjoy it.

Encouragement

Well, I thought I'd write today about the Lord's encouragement during a rough time. In order to do that, though, I have to write about discouragement first. A lot of days, it seems like I fight discouragement. The reason for that is that I am infertile. It's a tough thing for me to just write those words. I've wondered how I would share this with all of you. Many of you know about it already. It just isn't easy to describe the way that infertility changes, scars, and defines you. David and I started trying to get pregnant 3 years ago this April. During these three years, many of our family and friends have had one child, and then sometimes, two children. During that time, we have watched our hopes dashed month after month after month. For the past eight months, I have endured the emotional and physical trauma of treatment with an infertility clinic. This has involved numerous ultrasounds, bloodwork, fertility drugs, interuterine insemination, testing on David, testing on me, and once again, and even harder this time, the heartbreak of failure. A lot of people don't understand how infertility feels to a woman who always thought that her most important role would be the role of mom. For a woman, infertility doesn't just affect her body, it affects her view of herself as a woman. It involves the shattering of deeply held dreams and assumptions about the future. My relationship with God, my understanding of God, and my faith have been tested over and over again. I have screamed at the sky, and I have screamed at people. I have been filled with rage, and I have had times of intense Godgiven peace in the midst of the storm. I have become numb and cold because the pain was too hard to bear. I have felt incredibly alone in a world of happy families. Depression has gripped me, and I have wished that I could just stop living because living is too painful. I suppose that this might sound melodramatic, but it is all too real. I wish it wasn't. If you are reading this, and you are infertile, you will know some of what I'm talking about, even though I am sure that your experience is different than mine in many ways. After six months of treatment, this November, I finally got pregnant. I believed that this hard time of testing and trying my faith was over. I had hope, and so did David. I lost the baby at 6 1/2 weeks. Miscarriage broke my heart more than anything that had gone before. For a few days, I honestly wanted to die so that I could go to heaven and hold my baby. I am still heartbroken, but God is binding up my broken heart. David and I feel that the Lord may have given us this baby for a short time so that we would not give up. We feel sure that He doesn't want us to, but we were close to doing just that before I got pregnant. We are starting new injectable drugs very soon.

Why am I telling you all this? I am not telling you because I want you to feel sorry for me. For almost a year, I didn't tell a lot of people about this because I really didn't want anybody to pity me. I am telling you so that you'll know the reality of infertility for so many women, women who may be unable to tell you because they are hurting so badly. I also want to tell you so that you will glorify God for the amazing things that God has done for us in the midst of the deepest tragedy we have ever known. Maybe you can be amazed with me at the wonders He has done and the ways He's been right there guiding us all along.

Today the Lord gave me a huge boost of encouragement right when He knew that I needed it. My husband teaches a Bible study at his workplace, and a week ago, everything went wrong with it. They were supposed to watch a DVD, and they couldn't find a DVD player. Then the DVD player wouldn't hook up correctly. Finally, with their lunch hour rapidly dwindling, he decided that they could share prayer requests instead. David is not as open about our struggle as I have been. It is not characteristic of him to share about it, especially when there are new people in the group like there were that day. But he felt a peace about sharing that day, and when he did, one of the new secretaries spoke up. Her name is Melanie, and she had done the injectable drugs and gotten pregnant on them. David told me that he was really encouraged by her story, and he wanted me to meet her for lunch to ask her questions and get info about these drugs. I don't know many people who've taken them. So today I met her for lunch. We went to a nearby food court and talked for over an hour. During the course of that talk, we discovered uncanny similarities about our infertility. She had exactly the same condition that I have now down to the letter. She had little eggs that simply weren't getting the message from her brain that they needed to grow, so she could not ovulate on her own. People take these drugs for many reasons, but I hadn't met anybody with this exact diagnosis before besides me. She didn't ovulate on the typical fertility drug, Clomid. I didn't either. She asked how old I was, and I told her I'd be 27 this month. She said that was how old she was when she got pregnant with her daughter. She asked how long we'd been married. I said 5 years, and she said that was how long they'd been married when they got pregnant. Maybe this doesn't seem definitive to all of you, but I've talked to a lot of infertile women in this journey, and I have never met anybody who's experience tracked mine this closely. Many of the women I've met were a little older or had been married longer, and most do not have my diagnosis. We both noticed how strange it was. Melanie got pregnant the first month that she used the injectable drugs. I hope that that part of her story becomes identical to mine, too, but I don't know if that'll happen. All I know is that God sent me encouragement today, and He sent it in big way. I have faith, and with all that has happened in the past, the fact that I still have that is nothing but God being huge in my life. I am really thankful that I saw God's hand today. He's saying, "Don't give up, honey. I love you. See? I sent you this so that you won't give up. Keep trying for now. I'll let you know if its time to move on."