Surprising feelings...

This is a blog that's been percolating for awhile in my conscious and subconscious. I think it's probably time to talk about how I felt in the first couple of weeks after I found out that I was pregnant with this baby. Enough time has passed that it isn't so raw or bewildering anymore. See, I'd been dreaming and hoping and wishing for the day that I'd find out I was pregnant. This had been going on for three years, so long that I was really afraid to wish or hope or dream much anymore, even though that dream still took up a corner in my heart. I knew what it was like to feel like my most precious dream had come true, rejoice in it with abandon, and then have it dashed because of miscarriage. But I still had the dream there somewhere, and I had this vision of how life would be, and how I would feel if I could just get pregnant. I think somewhere in there, though I'm not sure I admitted it consciously, I thought that if this nightmare would just end, then everything in my world would go back to the way it was before infertility began. I would feel the same way about God that I did before; I would have the same view of the world. Imagine my shock when that didn't happen. Because of the faith that David had against all human reason (see earlier posts for this) that we'd be pregnant in May, I wasn't really all that worried that we'd lose this baby. I don't think that really entered into my feelings a lot at that point. So I was truly surprised when one of the first feelings that I had after shock and surprise was... anger. That's right. I was angry. I was expecting that I'd be very relieved and that I'd be singing songs of joy and thanksgiving to God and thanking Him for this great blessing in my life. I was sure that was how I'd feel. But I didn't feel that way. Instead, I was mad at Him. I thought, "Ok, we're pregnant. I didn't think that was the plan, but it is. So... WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?!!! You put me through this nightmare for what?" The past three years of pain were on my mind, not the joy I was fully expecting to experience. I felt like a little girl who'd been to the dentist. He'd been drilling on her teeth for hours, and when he was done, he smiled at her, and he handed her a fluffy teddy bear. Did the little girl smile at him? Was she grateful for the bear? No, she took the bear, but he didn't get the big smile he was looking for because she was remembering all the painful hours she'd just spent in the dentist's chair. The gift was nice, but she wasn't too thrilled with the person giving it to her at the moment. All of a sudden, I was having to deal with the fact that God had put me through a lot of pain, not to change the end result, but to delay it for reasons I wasn't finding too compelling at the moment. In my cost/benefit analysis, the costs definitely outweighed the benefits. The experience was still too raw for me to be excited about all the spiritual maturity that I'd hopefully gained through this fiery trial. Nope, I just didn't seem worth it at the time. I think it may take a lot of time and distance for me to see the full worth in it, though that's not the point, since it was worth it to God for some reason. But more than that, I was angry because I wanted to go back to my childhood way of viewing my relationship with God. I think that was really the focal point of my anger. I think many of us who grow up in sheltered Christian homes have a firmly subconscious belief that if we just keep our noses clean, God will put a hedge of protection around us. Nothing truly tragic will touch us unless we sin. For a lot of us, nothing tragic has ever happened to us that we couldn't point to as caused by our own sin. We've experienced lots of life's little bumps, bruises, and inconveniences, but nothing that threw us into a sea of despair and confusion that felt like it would drown us at any moment. We could dutifully and, we thought, truthfully say that we did know that God allowed trouble and hardship in the lives of His people that wasn't because of their sin. We could see examples of this all around us, cancer, war, death, and we knew it was true in our heads, but it hadn't truly hit us in a felt way yet. We hadn't had much experience with it personally. We also had plenty of Biblical examples of this truth, and we could quote them chapter and verse, but their truth didn't sink much deeper than that. Not in any sort of experiential way. So the old unconscious view stayed there, dormant, causing lots of unknown trouble, until the moment when our lives fell apart and there was no one to blame, not even ourselves. No one, that is, but the sovereign God of the universe who allowed this to happen. All of a sudden, the book of Job became a lot more personal. And it hurt. Bad. Because the childhood view of a God who always protected you and only disciplined you with a tap on the wrist was gone forever. In the days after my positive pregnancy test, I mourned its passing. I hadn't realized before then that the last three years had taken it away forever. I didn't want to grow up and face the harsh reality that I really had to embrace God in a different way than I ever had before, a more realistic way that was a lot less comforting and simple than my old view. Sunlight breaking through the storm clouds of infertility could not give me back the old days and the old ways. I was changed forever, older, wiser, and more battered. I know that good will come from having a better experiential understanding of God's disciplining side. It already has. I'm sure that Job knew God better because he experienced boils because that was a part of God's plan for his life. I've truly learned what it means to cling to God in the last few years. The Lord's discipline has been good in my life, and it's also been far more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. The ultimate goal of God's glory in our lives is a tough process for us humans. We say that we're willing to go anywhere, do anything, experience any deprivation or sorrow, to know Him better and if it'll bring His glory in our lives. We sing it; we sometimes pray it. But we don't know what it means until He shows us just a tiny piece of what giving up our heart's desires at His request actually costs. Christianity is not for sissies, and I've been a sissy. =) Still am, actually. But I'm learning. I've learned a little about what it means to praise when He says, "No." I'm re-learning what it means to praise when He says, "Yes." =) I'm learning that my life isn't about me, and I'm learning that going with God's plan and not mine is something that I often don't do until my plan is ripped from my hands. Maybe one day I'll be grown up enough to trust in His ultimate kindness when He tears up my precious treasures for my own ultimate good. I sure hope so. After all, He is God, and I am not, and I have seen His goodness even in darkness. I just need to keep telling that to the little girl with the teddy bear. =)