Written by: Karen
If there is one couple I can identify more with than any other it would be Abraham and Sarah.
Infertility is a dark, lonely place and to date, the most difficult and heart wrenching trial I’ve encountered. To be honest, it is difficult to even put into words and no matter how well I am able to, unless you’ve walked the road of infertility, you will never know the
level of pain and heartache.
level of pain and heartache.
You battle so many things when faced with infertility.
Things like jealousy, anger, shame, loss, disappointment
and hopelessness.
Things like jealousy, anger, shame, loss, disappointment
and hopelessness.
For the first 10 years Glen and I battled infertility we never discussed with anyone. Not with my best friend or even my twin sister. It was too personal and too painful, like a raw open wound.
Glen and I approached this area in faith and believed that what God did for Abraham and Sarah, He could do for us.
We found bible verses to declare like;
Psalm 113:9
"He makes the barren woman to be a homemaker
and a joyful mother of children."
and a joyful mother of children."
We had baby names written down in an envelope we kept beside our bed. We spent hours dreaming of what our children would be like and the kind of parents we would be.
For years that all it was; dreaming, believing and seeing nothing.
I mean you battle like nothing else with infertility. There are babies and pregnant women everywhere and every one of them is screaming “I have something that you don’t”.
I believe more than anything, infertility causes you to ride a rollercoaster of highs and lows like nothing else. It’s a ride I took every month as I anticipated being pregnant only to be let down again and again, month after month and year after year.
There came a day when our infertility became very public.
It was a Sunday evening service in our church.
There was a guest speaker who moved in the prophetic. He had a track record of giving accurate prophetic words.
He called me out in front of my entire church and said; "In nine months you are going to have a baby.”
I was overwhelmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit and this word went so deep into my soul, I hardly slept for two nights.
God had heard the cry of our hearts!!
Two weeks after this wonderful and amazing prophetic word, Glen and I left for our first vacation alone in years.
We spent our drive to the Muskokas talking about having kids, and dreaming and wondering about what God was up to. We were excited and full of faith.
We even stopped and purchased a baby outfit as a way of exercising our faith.
I hung that little outfit up in our cottage and started my period....
Imagine the heartache and confusion, the shame and disappointment.
I cried like I’d never cried before.
I questioned God and the accuracy of that prophetic word.
I admit in that moment I would have liked to find that man and take his head off!!
How dare he make he hope like that!! It's funny how the first thing we do in our pain is look for someone to blame it on.
Pointing our pain at a person isn’t going to fix it. Even if someone is responsible for the pain we are experiencing, blaming does nothing except make it worse. Blaming will take you deeper into discouragement, disappointment and powerlessness.
We were solid enough Christians to know that ultimately, the one to blame was the devil. He was the real enemy.
John 10:10 calls him a thief who’s come to kill, steal and destroy. The enemy had been robbing us for years…in health and finances, in our physical intimacy and barrenness. God was not the source of all this heartache and pain!
Glen soon reminded me that the message this man preached in that evening service, before he ever gave me the prophetic word, was out of
Romans 4:17.
His entire message was about the importance of
“calling those things that be not, as though they were”.
So we had a choice to make.
Be angry and blame the man or receive the prophetic word and apply the message he taught to it And so we began to say, “In 9 months we are going to have a baby.” We said that again and again for years, believing that word to come to pass in our lives.
One thing that happened during this time was that I began working for an infertility specialist. The medical practice covered gynaecology and obstetrics, but primarily infertility and the major of the pregnant women we cared for were infertility patients that successfully became pregnant.
You would think that working in that environment would have been extremely difficult, but it wasn’t.
I absolutely loved my work!!
The grace of God was on me and I had many opportunities daily sow seeds of hope and encouragement into the lives of hurting women. I cannot count how many times someone said “It’s just so hard and I want a baby so bad.”
I was always able to share how much I could, indeed, identify with them, as I myself was barren also for many years.
I was often asked how I could work in such a place without children myself and every time my answer was the same…
I am trusting God for a miracle.
Now the question, you are dying to know by now is, did I do infertility treatment? The answer is no. We thought about it, sometimes a lot and I was tempted to try it on occasion, but in the end we never did. Let me be clear, I have no problem with infertility treatments.
The medical field has made it possible for thousands of women to have babies that otherwise would not have.
To do or not do infertility treatment, is a personal decision each couple has to make and for us, our decision was not to undergo any treatments.
I could have done just about anything at no cost if I wanted it, but I always wondered if I did move out in the medical realm, how would I ever know for sure it was God and not us.
It was too easy for those lines to be blurred and in my heart I so wanted our child to be a testimony of the greatness of our miracle working God.
So after working full time for 4 years I became pregnant.
To be honest, at this point, being pregnant was the farthest thing from my mind. Yes we still wanted children, but we had made a decision to love our life and enjoy our days resting in the knowledge that God knew the desire of our hearts. I actually thought I had a bladder infection and was preparing the lab slip to send with my urine sample, when my co-workers teased me about checking off a pregnancy test too.
I went along jokingly with them, and was amazed when I called the lab later that evening and was told I did not have a bladder infection,
but was indeed pregnant!!
On October 27, 2007
I gave birth to a 5 lb baby boy.
We held the long awaited promise
in our arms!!
Our God is always Faithful!
~Karen
