I write this post with hesitation. it’s a post I’ve attempted to write several times, but I never could quite phrase it the right way. I probably still can’t, but I think it’s time to give it a shot.
It’s a post about faith.
I feel like I should start from the beginning: I grew up with a church background. My dad has been a minister for the majority of my life. I went to church at least 3 times a week for most of my life. I believed. I had faith. I knew what I knew. I had no doubts. I went to church after I went to college; it was important, it was a part of me, it was something I believed in.
But then I became “an infertile”, and I began to doubt.
My faith has been shaken to the core.
My journey with infertility has, admittedly, coincided with an awakening, of sorts. I saw religious people that did not practice what they preached. I took an interest in politics, and the teachings in the bible often didn’t mesh with the politics of people in the church. I began to question everything.
But mostly I questioned what I had always been taught: that God is in control, that things will work out the way they should, that you need to have faith to get what you want, that everything happens for a reason.
I don’t believe that it does.
I want so badly to believe that what should be, should be. That what is meant to be, will be. That everything happens for a reason.
But I don’t believe it. Not at all.
And I don’t know that this is a belief that even coincides with religion, or with God, or with what have you – but for most people, they go hand in hand, so it’s hard to separate the two.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told people what we’re going through, only to get a response along the lines of “Well, when it’s supposed to happen, it will happen” or “things will work out the way they’re supposed to.”
Really?
I have issues with these lines of reasoning. If things happen for a reason, why are people given children when they abort them or leave them in a dumpster? Did God give these people pregnancies with the knowledge that the result would be a dead baby? Yet I can’t get pregnant? Me, who has been planning for years and who is fully prepared, it’s not the right time to give me a baby? But all those horrible, neglectful people are given babies? On purpose? For a reason?
I don’t buy it.
I believe that some things happen for a reason. Absolutely. But I also believe in Free Will. And I believe in Chance, or Coincidence, or whatever you want to call it.
As for my Faith – as I said before, it’s been shaken to the core. This is one of those things that makes you question everything. Everything.
There are some big life events that make you question your faith/spirituality/religion/whatever you want to call it, and infertility is one of them. Some peoples’ faith grows, and some peoples’ disappears. In all honesty, I don’t know yet where I fall on the spectrum.
But I know that right now I question everything. And I don’t know how I’m going to come out on the other end of this.
I know that I question, and that I doubt, and that I think very deeply and seriously about the whole thing. In the beginning, I prayed. We both did. But now we don’t. The closest I ever come to a prayer these days is when I’m in bed at night, lying in the dark, and my prayer is a pleading whisper: “Are you there?”
And right now, that’s all I have.