Eleven years ago our hearts were fertile with hope. Melissa and I had been married three years, just finished seminary together, and were ready to embrace the new adventure of becoming parents. We were unprepared for the long and barren journey that lay ahead.
I remember the decent into the valley. The dip in the path felt subtle, almost imperceptible, after the first month. "Well, we must have been off on the timing. That’s okay. We have time." Two, three, six, eleven months passed.
Silly things, like the agreement we made with a good friend that we would have a baby as soon as he got married, became less silly. He got married. We weren't having a baby.
Questions began to overshadow our dismissive "There is always next month." The questions in the earlier months were hard but were still marked by hope. "What do we need to do differently?" "Are there some dietary changes of vitamins that might help? Timing? Temperature?”
Twelve months had passed. There was officially a name for people who had come this far: infertile.
There were ways in which the label was a relief. It somehow legitimized our struggle. It felt a bit like an unbiased spectator saying that our path was really hard. We were having a hard time articulating to ourselves or others just how devastating it was to have our hope erode when the life we wanted to hold slipped from the womb. "Infertile" gave us language to talk about our pain.
We resented the jokes people made: "I barely did much more than look at my wife and we got pregnant." The path grew darker.
With the official diagnosis of infertility we could start seeking medical intervention. After a battery of tests the medical experts concluded that there were some challenges, but none that should prevent us from conceiving. Over the course of the next months we reluctantly yet desperately submitted ourselves to medical interventions that felt unnatural and invasive. Maybe God was doing this to increase our trust and reinforce how miraculous is the creation of life. How much more of this was necessary before God was convinced that we were appropriately grateful? We confessed that our faith could use some refining, but this was beginning to feel more antagonistic than it was loving.
It seemed that we were too often the ones chosen when people wanted to confide the trauma of an accidental pregnancy. We didn't have much sincere empathy to offer. The path grew darker.
We were lost. We stopped going to baby showers or celebrating babies at all. We could only feel the sting when yet another friend or family member announced their pregnancy. Resentment and despair crowded out any visible markings of the trail of hope. Prayer in that season was silent.... when we weren't laying bare our mistrust or accusing God of being harsh. We were lost and a storm had moved in!
As we groped for anything that could hold us steady we began to realize that all the things that had at one time held us- hope, faith, trust, knowing we were loved- had at some point been lost or severely compromised along the way. The walking sticks had been fractured, the compass lost, the fire starter kit soaked.
Our relationship was feeling the pressure as well. As much as we tried to stay together in it, there were times when our sorrow and disappointment were aimed at each other. After one such encounter I left the house to go for a walk. I was so angry and hurt. As I stormed through the neighborhood my message to God was terse. "If this is what it means to be loved by you I don't want any part of it!"
I found myself in the neighborhood of a Catholic church that was connected with a school I had taught at a few years earlier. I decided I would stop in and ask the priest, a man I respected and trusted, to defend God. As I came in I was greeted warmly by some familiar office staff. I was taken back by their genuine interest in how I was doing. I felt cared for and missed by them in a way I hadn't expected, and I softened a bit... until I finally asked if Father Bob was available, only to find out that he was out of the office. Of course he was! That was completely consistent with our experience of God in this valley. God was nowhere in sight when we were most desperate and alone. The storm that had calmed a bit as I visited with the office staff was reinvigorated! I closed the conversation as politely as I could manage and left.
I nearly ran into him as I burst out the door. There was Father Bob! As we sat down in his office I jumped right in. I was short on patience. I came on strong and at one point had some internal sense that I should lay off a bit. Father Bob was not who I was accusing here, it was God. I dismissed the hesitation and blasted ahead. I came to a stopping point and gave Father Bob a chance to offer a rebuttal. He didn't. I had made some harsh accusations against the God he was supposed to represent. He made no defense. I could tell he was moved, he sat in the chair and was clearly burdened by all I had said. He could feel our sorrow, yet had no explanation. This was not what I was looking for! I couldn't help but to feel softened by his response, but there was enough venom in me to mount one more strike. I tried again, hoping I could rile him and get him to defend God so I could crush his argument with the insurmountable pile of evidence that I was carrying. Father Bob just listened and instead of standing against my evidence and giving me the opportunity to hurl it at him in an effort to crush him, he had moved over to stand with me underneath it. He offered few words, only ones that let me know he was hurting with us. If he was going to stand with us under this mound of evidence against God, I wanted him to be angrier. The least he could do was to help me throw the rocks. He did not. We hugged before leaving and I walked past the others in the office on my way out. They again affirmed how good it was to see me, how I was missed at the school. They didn't know why I was there, but they extended their well wishes for Melissa and me.
As I walked across the church parking lot toward home I began to weep uncontrollably. I had not been given the answer I wanted, but I had been given the thing my heart needed most. God heard us! God was weeping with us! I wanted some promise that the thing we had exhausted ourselves hoping for was going to come to be. We were given no such promise, but God was with us. God had heard us. We were not alone!
The darkness began to lift, even while we were still trudging through the valley.
In the weeks and months after that we found the questions and sorrow to be no less present. It was still so wearing to wonder this path, but "anger" and "alone" no longer devoured us. Their eyes still peered out at us, threatening but never really having the chance for an all out attack, never sinking their claws into us they way it had previously. It seems "anger" and "alone" have a harder time attacking a group, because that is who we walked with now. God's tenderness with us had clarified our need to not be alone on this journey, and so we began to share more with our family and closest friends. God had given us a fellowship of brothers and sisters who knew our story and walked with us. They let us cry and cried with us. They slowed down when we found ourselves weary. By their presence they encouraged us to hope, but the truth is they were the ones who carried it for us most often. They carried our sorrow too. There was far more of that than we could stand up under, so they divided that among them and carried it too.
At one point along the way we stopped and asked our traveling mates to circle up with us, right there where we were. We invited them all to our home to pray for us, for healing, for the longing of our hearts. With these friends gathered around us it was one of their kids that was the first to break the silence. We were led in prayer by a 9 year old. Not only were our friends carrying this with us, but so too were their families... the children that God had given them, the evidence of God's blessing in their life that was still absent in ours... they too were hoping with us. There was something about a child praying for our child that stirred us deeply. He was bold, compassionate, hopeful and without hesitation... on our behalf.
The journey we shared with these friends eventually buoyed us enough that we entered into the adoption process. Six years after we had started trying to have kids we got the call that a birth mother had chosen us and a few weeks later we became parents. It was not in the way we expected, but our hearts could not have been fuller. Once again it was more than we could bear on our own and so our traveling companions passed around our joy, multiplying it and celebrating with us. They ran screaming with delight along the trail with us, skipped rocks on the river, jumped in puddles and generally scared the wildlife away with all the commotion in the midst of what was now a much brighter trail through the forest. We named him Malakai, Messenger of God. God's message to us was now enfleshed in a son we held in our arms.
It was confusing to be so full of gratitude and yet that didn't mean we were able to unload from our packs all the weight of our grief and longing to conceive. Eventually, what seemed like a contradiction ultimately just became our reality. We, together with our traveling mates carried joy and sorrow, gratitude and longing, fulfillment and hope yet unfulfilled.
Three years later, nine years after we started trying to have children, we adopted our second son. His name is Tobias, God remembers. Joy was again multiplied in our midst. We danced, prayed, cheered and embraced again, so grateful that God was again giving us evidence that he is with us, hears us, remembers us.
We were delighted with the family God had given us. We were full. There remained alive in us some of the questions and wondering about conception. Whether we had just become accustomed to carrying sorrow or whether it in fact got lighter I can't really say, but it was still with us. We reconciled ourselves to the reality that this particular sorrow, the sorrow of not being able to conceive and bear a child might always be with us. This was the path we were to walk... and it was familiar. Our legs had been strengthened and we no longer felt the weariness we once had. This was our journey.
On occasion, our church service ends with an invitation to renew our hope. This last December the directness of that message was different. It was the advent season and the service had centered around the wait of Zachariah and Elizabeth (sermon podcast). An angel appeared to Zachariah and affirmed that they need not fear because God had heard their prayer (Lk 1:13). Their prayer was ours. They too were barren. The clarity with which the sermon and the story spoke to our story was undeniable.
"What is it that you have been waiting a long time for and you still don't have? ...What is it that you have wanted that has just taken the wind out of your sails? So that you, like Zachariah, came to the place where you said 'you know what, maybe I misinterpreted that. Maybe this is just the way it is going to be, this is as good as it gets.' I'm telling you this morning, this is not as good as it gets. There is a time in our lives where God will say 'I know what you want. I have heard it. I will give you the desires of your heart.' In a moment I'm going to give you a chance to say it again. I want you to say it again because I think some of us have just quit saying it. We don't ask for it anymore. It just taunts us."
He ended talking about hope being conceived when we hear God say to us that our prayers have been heard... though we may not have it for some time. We reluctantly went forward, daring to hope. What we did not yet know was that more than hope was conceived that week.
Weeks later we found out we were pregnant. We could hardly believe it! It had been 11 years since we started trying to conceive. Now we had come to a portion of the trail completely unfamiliar and we didn't know how to respond... so we kept quiet.
Toward the end of one appointment late in the first trimester the nurse asked Melissa if we had told anyone. We had not. She encouraged us to tell, because whether or not our high risk pregnancy lasted we would need support. Of course we would! Why had we not thought of it like that. That had been the way we had been journeying for so long, so why would we not let our journeying mates join us here too. So we began to tell the story.
The joy, tears, wonder that we saw reflected in friends and family loosened something in us. It was loosening the doubt and skepticism that this really could be for us. Oddly, the thing for which we had waited so long was not easy for us to hold. In fact it too was too much for us to hold. And so again, our friends held it with us. They passed it around and let loose the joy that was beyond our capacity. In some cases they were less surprised than we, for in their bag they had been carrying a large portion of hope for us. In every case their joy and wonder freed us to embrace that our path was changing.
Early on in our infertility Melissa started writing letters in her journal to a yet unknown little girl named Karis, which means grace. It has been years since either of us have really spoken or written to her, feeling so distant from the kind of hope that would allow us such intimate communication. Today, with the retelling of this story we mark the renewal of that journal.
You are a gift more overwhelming than you could ever know. We, your parents, your brothers, and the many who have loved us and you along the way are so delighted in anticipation of your arrival. May you know most intimately the God who hears us and who is with us. Our dear daughter, our grace, you are here! At long last, you are here!
