Cedar N' Steel

From the time I turned to God in college until my most recent miscarriage in September, I believed that all I had to do to be a “good” Christian was go to church on Sunday, read the Bible and other Christian books, pray, and do good things and God would bless my life. I constantly struggled to meet these expectations and went through the cycle of disciplined time with God and church attendance, a falling off, feelings of discouragement and shame at my weakness, and finally a renewed determination to do better. I felt like my persistence would eventually “pay off” and God would give us a baby.

Nothing has ever tested my faith in God more than our struggle to start a family. I’ve questioned whether He really existed. I’ve questioned whether He cared. I’ve questioned His power, His love, His goodness, His kindness, His integrity. I’ve also questioned my own life. What did I do to deserve this? (followed by a detailed recounting of every bad thing I’ve done trying to find an answer). Why is my body such a failure? And I’ve questioned my faith. What’s the point in believing in God when He won’t give me what I want and does this terrible thing to me? I started a new cycle of praising Him when good things happened (lots of embryos, diagnoses with cures, quick recovery from procedures) and bashing Him and turning away when bad things happened (unusable fallopian tubes, miscarriages). And this all happened smack dab in the middle of trying to keep the wives’s/significant other’s bible study out on the PGA Tour thriving; not the best timing God…or was it?

I’d been reading a book by Lois Flowers called “Infertility: Finding God’s Peace in the Journey,” but I hadn’t finished it. After I miscarried our second transfer, I was so angry with God, but for some reason the idea to finish the book popped into my head (thanks God!). On literally the last page before the appendices, Lois quotes Oswald Chambers from his devotional “My Utmost for His Highest”. He writes:

   “Our natural inclination is to be so precise–trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next–that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing…The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty…Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life–gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises.”

Mind.Blown. To be certain means to be free from doubt, established as true and unquestionable. Our entire lives are a series of decisions and actions to create certain results so we can feel in control. But the infertility journey, and all struggles in general, are full of uncertainty and feeling out of control. I had always read about being certain of God and having no doubts about His love, goodness, kindness, and power, but it’s a long way from head knowledge to heart knowledge. How could I actually FEEL this certainty in my heart?

Instead of fighting against God with my anger and despair and shame about having to continue our infertility journey, He was asking me to embrace the uncertainty of it and accept it as the task He was asking me to do. It’s as if He was saying “I have called you to this. Don’t ask questions or try to figure out my purpose. Just do it.”

We never know how strong our faith is until it gets tested. I realized everything I had ever thought about God was wrong. I realized I was no closer to God after 10 years of pursuing Him, than I was when I was still doing it on my own. I told God I wanted to REALLY FEEL trust and faith and joy in the midst of struggle, not just continue to put on a brave face and spout things I had read.

How can we be certain of God when things in our lives seem so uncertain? How can we trust in God’s goodness and kindness and love when everything seems to be going wrong for us? The answers start with the definition of faith. Faith is defined as belief, confidence, or trust in something or someone despite the absence of proof. Notice what word is absent in this definition: feeling. Faith has nothing to do with how I feel about my circumstances. It is simply a decision to believe or not believe whether there’s proof or not. To have faith in God means to trust Him unconditionally and without proof. And this decision is hardest to make when all the cards are stacked against God, i.e. when things suck.

Here’s what happened to me: God, through my infertility struggle, exposed my true beliefs about Him. I believed I could understand His love and earn His blessings by doing “good Christian” things, but then He allowed sorrow and pain into my life despite my best efforts. I questioned Him and myself, feeling helpless, broken and lost. The book of Job provided the one phrase that single-handedly changed my entire mindset about this process: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him…” Job 13:15.

God asks us to come to Him off our own free will, and this fact was never more evident until the moment I read that small passage in Job. Feelings come and go, but true unconditional love is a decision and a commitment. God loves us unconditionally, which means He never leaves us no matter how far we’ve strayed. But did I love Him unconditionally? Had I shown in my life that I would never leave Him, no matter how I felt about Him or how bad my circumstances? 

I DECIDED that it doesn’t matter what Satan throws at me, what difficulties God allows into my life, what heartache the future holds. GOD WILL ALWAYS WIN. There is no longer a battle going on for my soul; God has won as He knew He would when He started this process. Once the decision to love Him unconditionally was made, I became certain of God and cared not a bit about the uncertainty of infertility. It wasn’t because God proved His love or kindness or goodness or promised that He would give us a baby. In the absence of proof, I decided I was His no matter the future.

It takes an incredibly beautiful act of faith to trust God when things are ugly.  And I believe it’s only after we acknowledge our unconditional faith in God that He begins to reveal Himself to us. I am now starting to FEEL my faith (peace, joy, patience, etc) even though we are still in the midst of our struggle, with my next transfer on April 20th. I’ll be honest, I still have attacks of anxiety and worry about our situation, but they are no longer crippling the way they used to be. Now God has given me His armor in the form of my new mantra, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust Him.” When we make the decision that God has won, no matter the circumstances, He can then begin transforming us into the men and women He wants us to be.

Now I don’t read all the Christian books and listen to Christian music and go to church and pray because I think they can help me understand God and bring me blessings. I do them because God has transformed me from the inside. He has put His likeness within me and I CRAVE those outward expressions of my faith. I feel like a dry sponge thirsting for God’s wisdom, and when I become saturated I pour out my feelings into this blog or the people I encounter daily and then thirst for more. This is what it means to be reborn. The old me has passed away and a new me is free from its constricting cocoon of the world’s and my own expectations. It no longer matters, when it comes to my faith in God, whether we have biological children, adopted children, or no children at all. I am God’s, certain of and unconditionally devoted to Him amid the uncertainty of my circumstances and “though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”