Part 6: The Clouds Begin To Part

On Sundays we’d sing “Good Good Father” and my mouth just couldn’t sing the words. I knew them to be true. 

But, God! This? Good?!

I just couldn’t see it. 

I couldn't see that this plan of donor eggs and IVF and tons of money and specialists could be good. I couldn't see that being a nurse in labor and delivery through this could be good. Seeing all these women experience what I'd wanted. And I didn't feel like it was too much to ask. 

It didn't make sense to me. So finally I just took it all to God.

My heart landed on this: “I know what You have for me is good, but God, this doesn’t FEEL good to me.” I had to just let Him know. A lot. 

And so I would sing, through tears, that He was good.

I also knew God could do whatever He wanted. I fully believed that. But I didn’t know if He would. 

He is good, but what if it doesn’t feel good to me?

He can do anything.......but will He?

It had been an exhausting battle. One where I was feeling like I was doggie-paddling in an ocean of confusion. 

How does it all make sense? Who do I believe? Science? A lab test? A doctor’s words? The Bible? A promise spoken by the Lord?

Hoping in what could happen was just too risky. 

And I began to not feel like myself. Like I did in Kenya in December. I knew I needed to give myself grace for not being “back to normal” just yet after news like this. It had only been a few weeks since my world shattered. But still...was this OK? 

Super emotional. My feelings easily hurt. Overly sensitive. And feeling overwhelmed. 

Overwhelmed.

Like whoa.

All...the...time.

Finally one Wednesday morning in late May, after a few off interactions with Stephen, I knew something needed to change. These interactions were so out of the ordinary - atypical for us. 

It just didn’t feel right.

I had had enough!

Everything was such a fight. To be positive about anything. 

Last night's sleep sucked. My breakfast sucked. My run sucked. I felt so stinkin' tired. 

Standing in the shower I was wrecked. Confused. And wanted mental clarity.

I was done! And God revealed the cloud in my head - the spiritual warfare.

I felt it, and now I could finally see it for what it was. And God provided a sweet moment for Stephen and me to connect. After getting ready for the day, I leaned around the corner where He was working on his computer. I asked him for a hug. 

Sometimes it’s the first step to softening our hearts and reconnecting. 

He said, “Of course, babe.” We embraced for awhile, then he asked me to sit with him. In that chair, in his lap. 

He held me and we began to name the fears. Call them out. To ask the hard questions that had no answers. 

What if my body can’t do this?

I’m scared my hormones won’t do the right thing.

I feel so overwhelmed at work, I don’t know if I can keep doing this job.

I am so afraid of failure. 

I don’t have energy.

My thoughts never stop, from before my eyes even open in the morning until I fall asleep. It’s exhausting.

Why, God, is this happening?

When will You grant us the desire of our hearts? The one You placed there! (We remind Him of that often.)

How is this Your goodness?

How is this a good gift to Your children?

And Stephen prayed. Oh, how he prayed. He held me and felt my tears on his face and gave all of it to God.

And the clouds broke. 

The tide began to shift. 

I no longer felt overwhelmed. I didn’t realize the extent of it until that night at M12 (our middle school youth group). Singing “When The Fight Calls”...

You’ve overcome this world with love

And made my fight Your own

I lift my eyes and throw fear aside

And sing out into the night

Cause even when the world caves

Even when the fight calls

Even when the war’s waged

I’ll take heart

I know You are greater

Forever You are Savior

I will sing Your praise

With all that I have

With all that I am Lord

I’ll stare down the waves

Cause you own the tide

I still myself and know

You wait for me

On waters wild

Where faith walks above the storm

I won’t let the storm weather my heart

Won’t let the darkness beat me down

Sing in the night my hope alive in You

I’ll walk through the fire and not be burned

Pray in the fight and watch it turn

Jesus tonight I give it all to you

I sang with passion, and I was ticked. So ticked at what Satan had tried to steal. He clouded it for far too long. 

No more!

MY GOD IS IN CONTROL! 

He CAN and He WILL. 

I finally believed that He will.

And yet, somehow even when a mind is made up thoughts come to battle.

But, I thought I was made to do this?

It gets messy in the day in day out details of living.

Shortly after this undiagnosable diagnosis of “diminished ovarian reserve” (my three least favorite words), a series of tests began. More pokes, more prods. Things going where those things should never have to go. 

Everything...everything else checked out ok, including Stephen. That was a relief, and a blow at the same time. 

So it really is just me. 

Thank You, Lord......but, Lord?! How do I live with this? 

How do I live each day knowing I’d wake up, failure securely in place? Trying to be a wife and make a home, knowing it’s my fault there aren’t any children there? 

Sure, that’s real easy when you start the day already feeling defeated. (I wasn’t. But it sure felt that way.) 

So here’s how it played out, in all it’s unhealthy glory...

Let me cook dinner. Because I can’t bear your children.

Let me do the laundry. Because I can’t ovulate.

Let me do the grocery shopping. Because I didn’t pass the test. Again. 

Let me clean...oh wait. Nope, that didn’t happen. Wasn’t enough energy. And it would’ve been way too much time spent alone with my thoughts, anyway.

Let me get dressed up and try to look hot because, well, that’s all there might be to me. 

I can dress up on the outside, but the inside? 

Still hollow. 

Still barren.

It undoes a woman...to not be able to conceive. Wasn’t she made to do that very thing? 

Isn’t that the very core of womanhood? 

It wasn’t my identity. Being a wife. A mom. God had made that clear in my years of being single. My identity is being His daughter. 

A daughter of the King.

But I have felt from childhood that my Kingdom mission was to be a wife and a mom. He had already shown me how He had other things in mind too - nurse, baker, missionary, writer.

But now, here I was, married to the man of my dreams and we were ready! As ready as we can be for something so life-changing as kids. But for a woman...she just knows when it’s time. When the empty womb inside of her activates into a thing with emotions and desires, dreams and plans. God created it that way. We call it maternal instinct. 

Well, my maternal instinct had finally been activated - it was ready!

But in the midst of an empty womb and a confusing “diagnosis,” in the mess of an unfulfilled desire, I began noticing I’d put too much focus on the things I was doing for my husband. 

The things I actually could do. 

Heaven forbid I miss that he was out of white shirts and he do a load of laundry. I’d feel a wave of failure so deep so fast and tears would well up. That feeling would take hours to shake. 

Or, goodness, if he offered (out of his kindness as my husband and in a way to serve me) to make dinner on one of my work days? I thought I should’ve planned better to have something in the freezer or the crock pot. Fail again!

I knew it wasn’t healthy. So we talked about it. Most memorably on our NYC vacation in our hotel room after a pinhead-sized mustard stain on his shorts (that he just had to get out) undid me. It totally undid me.

You don’t trust me to get the stain out? You didn’t believe me when I said I’d take care of it? Now you’re wanting to pay the hotel to clean them? 

Am I not enough?!

These are my racing thoughts as my innocent husband asks how much I think it would cost to have the hotel remove the stain. He had no idea what his actions were communicating to me. What world I was living in, feeling like I was failing at being a woman. 

Lord, help me! I don’t know how to move! I feel like too much of a failure and not enough of a wife. 

So we talked. I cried. We prayed. Stephen reminded me again that I am not a failure. To him, to God, to anyone. We prayed for God’s strength. 

For Him to move mountains. 

And I mopped my face up and walked out the door to a bustling city that never sleeps, adventure ahead, hand in hand with the man who was a living reminder of Christ’s love.  

Thank You, Lord for my husband. He is such a gift. And earthly reminder of how You fight for me as he fights for me. 

Words by Lysa TerKeurst from her book Uninvited.
I am learning this truth more and more as our journey continues.

Check out this beautiful song "When the Fight Calls" by Hillsong Young & Free

Check back soon for Part 7: An Unexpected Hope where I share a story so sweet only God could write.