Facebook and Infertility

Joel found an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about infertility and Facebook. There is no direct connection of course, unless you consider the pain that Facebook can add to infertility. Let me explain...the article was all about how infertile couples are inundated with birth announcements, we're having a baby announcements, sonogram pictures, new baby pictures, and on and on...all from expectant or excited new moms and dads. It's something you can't escape if you use Facebook. One counselor in the article even went so far as to tell her infertile couple to avoid it for one week to see the difference it made. The ironic thing is that these couples who long to have their own news to share imagine doing it on Facebook. They want what they so painfully see others have. Joel has often told me to get off or stop looking at Facebook. He doesn't go on it very often. And we can't count on two hands the number of people we know who are pregnant or new moms and dads...on Facebook...we hear news weekly, if not daily, of new babies on the way. It's a joyful thing. It a beautiful thing. It's amazing...today's technology. We don't write these words to offend, we rejoice new beings and yet we mourn the loss of not being able to have similar news to share. We weep tears of pain and sorrow. We wrap ourselves tightly in each others arms, in hopes that it will take away the pain of not having our very own adopted or biological babies in our arms. We are tired of waiting, we hurt and we are sad.

With that said...while we're on the subject of Facebook and infertility...why is it that the ads on the right side of the page are ALWAYS about free newborn samples, or try these softest booties for your newborn, or the fuzziest blanket,or innovative diaper bag, or get pregnant without modern medicine assisting, your just a "new natural method" away, blah, blah, blah. If they are trying to reach this consumer they are failing miserably. Does this happen to everyone? Is the entire Facebook world there to give free samples for babies? Maybe if they tried advertising holiday coffee drinks from caribou, dunn brothers or starbucks for FREE we would be quick to click, or run this race or read this new fiction by our favorite authors book, or on and on and on...all for free...if only.

And now we must go check facebook...

My Gracious God meets me...

in my brokenness. Or rather, our gracious God meets us in our brokeness. That is a line from the sermon this morning...he meets us in our brokenness and in many other parts of our life. The big one for us today is our brokenness. I imagine him walking down a dirt path heading West, and us walking hand in hand down the same dirt path heading East. We are headed in opposite directions, toward each other. He meets us on our path of brokenness. He was there all along, traveling the path with us. He knows infertility, he knows sadness, heartbrokeness, tears, pain, and we could go on and on. He knows when we want to go into hiding and he knows when we run to try and distract us from the pain. He knows and he meets us there.

We wonder....

We wonder as we wander...through our days, through our moments, through our lives...we wonder as we wander...out under the stars, through our neighborhood, through our friendships, relationships....we wonder as we wander...will it ever be our turn? So many people...but never us. We wonder as we wander...will the pain ever end? Will it ever have reason to go away? We wonder as we wander...does the hope other people have really mean what we hope it means? We wonder as we wander...how to keep living this pain day in and day out. We wonder as we wander...does God really have a plan to take this pain away, or is the pain his plan? We wonder as we wander...how can this ever be something talked about openly, how can we ever express the pain of no babies...how can we keep from crying, falling, getting back up again. We are wondering and we are wandering and it is lonely and sad and it hurts.

By the time....

By the time our second year of seminary came along we hoped we'd be pregnant. By the time Christmas came that year we hoped we'd be pregnant. One year had gone by and we were scared. But not as scared as we are now. We were sad, but the sadness then didn't run as deep as it does today. By the time internship rolled around we hoped we'd be pregnant. By the time we were two months, or even a month, into internship we hoped we'd be pregnant. By the time internship was over...but it was over 4 weeks ago and we still are not pregnant. By the time graduation comes we wonder, not so much as hope, we just wonder. Summer visits home, Christmases, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes....all come and go so fast leaving us with empty arms and people around us without words. This is a journey and it's a sad and fearful one. We cling to one another and we cling to God. Because in the safety net of both we can pour out our deepest darkest fears and know that the other person gets it, feels it, dreads it and yet still holds us tightly. The sadness is overwhelming, it's depth beyond anything we could have ever imagined. Tears are falling and our hearts break a little more each day. We can only pray that the brokenness will one day be whole again.
We wanted to share some words here from Former First Lady Laura Bush on their struggle with infertility:
George and I had hoped that I would be pregnant by the end of his congressional run. Then we hoped it would be by the time his father announced his presidential run, then by the presidential primaries, the convention, the general election. But each milestone came and went. The calendar advanced, and there was no baby. The English language lacks the words "to mourn an absence." For the loss of a parent, grandparent, spouse, child or friend we have all manner of words and phrases, some helpful, some not. Still, we are conditioned to say something, even if it is only "I am sorry for your loss." But for an absence, for someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like silent, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?

pain...

We are going to the ocean soon. This time the Oregon one. When we think about going to the ocean we imagine standing at it's shore and screaming and yelling at God. We can't help but feel God's presence at the ocean. But we're mad at him. He could fix this pain. He could take it away. We know he feels our pain and that he cries with us, but he could fix it. We are mad. We are sad. We are consumed. This journey is so so hard. We don't want to hear that it is all in his timing, even if it is, we don't like hearing that. You see, we want to believe this is all in his timing, but right now we're too scared that he will never fix it. We're too scared that this road will never end. So for now we thank you all for having the hope that we don't. For your prayers, for your listening ear, for your being there or not when we need it or don't need it. We imagine probably too much what it will be like to be parents. We dream, then we cry. Because the pain surrounds us, runs through us and around us. The pain hurts.

One day at a time....

One day at a time…we are surrounded by sadness, surreal-ness, anticipation, packed and unpacked boxes and full imaginations. Our life as a married couple has been one giant journey of surreal-ness. You see, we are often, if not always, in transition. We don’t always like it and it is often a lot of work but we do live it and embrace it in every way we know how. We pack our box o’ hope and sweet chocolate blue bunny and we dream a little more, our longing grows greater. Today as we bask in the surreal-ness and all that comes with it we are pondering parenthood. We wonder, if and when we have the opportunity to be mommy and daddy will we feel a sense of surreal-ness? We imagine that yes we will. And then we remember that we are good at experiencing surreal-ness, we have a lot of practice at it, we are ready for a little or a lot more. We long for it if it means we can have little God-given children to wrap our arms around the same way we imagine our sweet Jesus wrapping his arms around us…one day at a time. We will make it through this journey….one day at a time. In the midst of our longing please Jesus we ask you to listen to us, hold us, cry with us and give us the deep longing-filled desires of our hearts.

A Technicolor Dreamcoat....

Friday night we watched the play "Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat" in a small almost non-existent Montana town! It was inspiring and beautifully done and left us wanting a technicolor dreamcoat of our own....in other words, we want to keep dreaming, we want to hold on, we want the hope of dreams come true. We want to be parents, we want a first call that fits just right, we want to run a race together, and on and on. But mostly, at this point in our lives, our dream is to have babies...biological and adopted babies created by us and for us, babies first in our hearts....this is our dream. Today, we hold on to that dream, and we dream a little more of what it will be like, we imagine, we hope. The day after the theater production we went to a play park in a campground in Fort Peck, Montana and slid down the slides, swung on the swings, climbed ladders, and talked to people we ran into that we knew (small part of the country we live in)...in the midst of all of that we allowed ourselves to dream a dream that seems unreachable, but a dream that for today we hope for.