In 2016, I found myself walking alongside several close friends experiencing infertility. I tried to reconcile my faith with the infertility diagnoses of my friends, who were struggling to find support within their church communities. My friends felt there was a gap in the resources available to them that didn’t bridge their faith with their reality.
That’s how this writing journey began. It was born from the desire to understand infertility, not just the physical aspects but also the emotional and spiritual parts.
Several pages lay in a dollar-store binder beside me. The culmination of these past years. A not-yet-book, also known as a manuscript. That is what Turning to God with Infertility is right now. It is a manuscript that embodies a quest for knowledge, not out of self-love, but love for others.
As I have learned on this journey, infertility is a deep suffering that doesn’t always heal the way people would like, even after having children.
Perhaps, like me, you have a lot of questions about infertility. What is life really like for our friends? What information is presented to them? It seems that Christian and non-Christian alike struggle with the same moral and ethical issues as they pursue treatment.
I quickly realized that my questions weren’t ones that I could ask my friends. Some friends had shared their frustrations and pain brought about by others asking too-personal questions or making well-intentioned comments. My friends wanted listening ears and, at the best of times, invited truth. I could give the first, but I felt ill-equipped to provide them with any wisdom when they wanted it.
So why go to the extreme of writing a manuscript?
I, too, have experienced suffering: my parents' divorce at a young age, the murder of a close friend as a young adult, as well as other myriad disappointments of life. I know the tenderness of God bandaging my heart and breathing healing words into it. When I have seen my friends walk with infertility, my heart has risen into my throat, my eyes have burned with tears, and I have turned to God and cried out, “WHY?!” It's from this place, I wanted to be equipped to come alongside my friends, family members, and people in my social circle who faced an infertility diagnosis.
And God has lovingly taken my questions, rooted them into my soul, and fanned the flame of inquiry to uncover that “why?” The following posts will give you a window into the results of my quest to reconcile the God I know and believe in with the suffering of infertility I see around me.
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