Kiss Your Miracle

The other day I was doing some organizing in our home office while Sky sat on the floor playing. She was concentrating hard on closing this little plastic Easter egg she’d found, and when I glanced down at her honey-colored curls and her careful baby hands I had a rush of gratitude for my life as a mom. A box of my old journals sat on the floor near her, so I decided to dig out the one I kept during our last year of infertility. I wanted to read the end of it especially, the part where I was pregnant but didn’t know it yet. And it made me smile – the way I wrote about how tired I was and couldn’t seem to concentrate on my students. But something else jumped out at me from the pages: I was obsessed with God.

Almost every entry talks about him. Or to him. Probably a third of the journal is written prayer. I wrote about the Bible studies I was doing, the spiritual discussions Adam and I were having, our fasting days. I wrote out confessions and prayers for forgiveness and the things I wanted most out of life. Some days I had just copied Bible verses onto the pages. And it made me think: if I was thriving in my faith then, what am I now? I still pray every day. Adam and I try to get in a few minutes together with our Bibles before he leaves for work in the mornings. But if I had to categorize my spiritual life overall these days, I’d probably call it… well, distracted. Is that how most new moms feel? Some days it’s hard to keep a train of thought going long enough to find the grocery list. I’ll pick up the pencil and realize that shoot, whatever I was going to write down vanished from my head in the five seconds it took me to walk over here.

In a way, my intensity during our infertility makes sense. Infertility forced me to a crisis point in my faith. Over and over as I cried about the pain, a question would come to my mind: if God never gives me a baby, does that mean my relationship with him is done? And as soon as I could feel that thought on the horizon of my mind I’d will it to go away, telling God, “Please, please, don’t make me answer that.” And I’d try to keep praying. But once the thought arrived, I couldn’t get rid of it. He wouldn’t let me get around it. I was constantly confronted with the reality that truly following God can’t be conditional, no matter what circumstance I want to change. Some people think becoming a Christian means making one big decision to follow Jesus. And in a way it does. But my experience is that Jesus constantly asks me that question. “Will you follow me? Even now when you’re hurt? Confused? Will you follow me through this when you don’t understand what I’m doing?” Infertility brought me to a place where I had to choose definitively: I was either going with God or heading off alone. There was no in between. Those days were so difficult for me that I had to lean on him just to get by. It wasn’t possible to be half-hearted.

Then, just like that, I was pregnant. And suddenly, life picked up speed. We put our house on the market and it sold in a week. We moved into an apartment and started building another house. I finished the school year 36 weeks pregnant and we moved again, into a different apartment. After Sky was born we moved once more, this time into our new house. We were thrilled to have our miracle baby and completely overwhelmed by her at the same time. Most of my journal then, when I did manage to write, was full of details about my sleepless nights, my breastfeeding issues, and the parenting books I was reading. I know I was reading my Bible too, but I don’t really remember God teaching me specific things – just that he was with me.

When I think about God these days his sweetness to me comes to mind first. But reading that old journal made me wonder about my passion for him. Have I become complacent? Or is it just that my life has changed so we interact in a new way now? Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” God proved the truth of those words to me during the infertility. I don’t think that means I’m not close to God now, but somehow my bond to him feels different. It seems to me that in all relationships there are times of focused connection and times of simply being together quietly. Maybe it’s the same way with God. I don’t want my faith to be based primarily on feelings, where I need to create a big, emotional experience every time I pray and I don’t believe that’s what God requires. But at the same time, I don’t want to turn to him just when things are hard and excuse myself from seeking him when things are good.

Maybe comparing my relationship with God now to how it was then is the wrong way to evaluate things. Even as I write this I hear that same, simple question in my head, Jesus asking me, “Are you following me today, whether things are awful or boring or wonderful?” And I think that maybe I’m complicating what he intends to be basic – simply doing what I can to move forward with him today.

Sky’s favorite food right now is Cheerios. This is probably because she hasn’t yet tasted pizza, brownies, or warm, salty French fries with ketchup. For now, Cheerios make her happy. Eating them is a big production for her. She’ll pick them up in her little fists and then spread them out again on her tray, roll her arms over them, and throw half of them on the floor. Sometimes she crams as many as she can in her mouth. Sometimes she’ll delicately eat just one. She almost always sings a little tune while she eats them. Every now and then she’ll come across a stray Cheerio while crawling on the floor and immediately pop it in her mouth. (Though I guess that doesn’t mean a whole lot since she eats carpet yarn and lint occasionally, too.) I like Cheerios because a handful on her tray usually means twenty minutes of free time for me. Thank you Lord, for the little blessings in a typical day.

I LOVE CLUTTER. Okay, that’s not true. It’s what I try to tell myself when Skylar’s toys are scattered all over the floor. In reality, Adam and I both like things clean and simple. There’s this place here in Florida that sells yard ornaments – statues and fountains and little gnomes to put in gardens. They keep the merchandise outside and whenever we drive by it, one of us usually says “panic attack” and we both take a deep breath. We’re what you’d call the opposite of pack rats. We love throwing things away. Extra stuff (like yard ornaments) stresses us out.

Every now and then it goes a bit too far. The other day Ad deleted something off the DVR that I wanted to see. When I asked him why he said, “We had over forty shows on there! I was cleaning it up!” to which I replied, “It wasn’t messy! It was full of good stuff to watch!” For the most part though, we agree. Clutter is bad. Clean is good.

Now we have a baby, and babies equal extra stuff and extra mess. But most of the time, I don’t mind the clutter as much as I thought I would. The infertility probably plays a big part in that. I’ll never forget the days when I would have given anything to have baby gear messing up our house. And it makes sense to me that there is a price to be paid for close relationships. The more people you love, the more mess naturally follows – whether it’s the actual stuff that comes with kids or the emotional junk we pile on each other as adults. I really don’t love clutter, but it’s an easy choice for me: I prefer the messiness of relationships to the neatness of an isolated life.

I have to admit, my thoughts were all over the place on Sunday morning. After the rush to get to church on time, I dropped Sky off in the nursery and worried about whether or not she’d cry till the service ended. Once we were in our seats my mind shifted to Pastor Mike and his message. I thought about our email conversation a couple weeks ago, and wondered if he would mention those who may be hurting instead of happy on Mother’s Day. A few minutes into his sermon he did, bringing to everyone’s attention the following: single moms, those with mothers who are no longer living, those in difficult mother-child relationships, moms with rebellious kids, and those dealing with infertility. I looked around. No one in the congregation was moving. He then preached his message about a woman in the Bible who may have been a single mom (II Tim. 1:5), but who still raised her son to be sincere in his faith (a very cool Mother’s Day sermon). At the end he had all the moms stand up while the kids gave a flower to each one. As I stood, I couldn’t help but look at all the seated women – there were quite a few – and hope they felt validated by Pastor Mike’s sensitivity to women in all situations.

It wasn’t until we were at home later that I began to think about Mother’s Day on a more personal level. I picked up my flower and smiled, thinking about my baby’s intense curiosity and how fun it is to watch her explore things for the first time. The fact that her tiny hands had squished my carnation a bit and snapped off its stem actually made the flower more precious to me. I put it in a little bowl and took a few photos of it. I am officially a mother this year and I appreciated everything about the day. I have never cried to God more about anything in my life than our infertility, and God, in his sweet extravagance, chose to take it away from me. He answered my prayers and gave me a child. Lord willing, I’ll have many more Mother’s Days to celebrate with my daughter. But for me this day will always have a touch of melancholy to it and I am grateful for that. As long as I know people who struggle with infertility, they will be heavy on my mind and heart. I’m thankful for my own wonderful mom and thankful beyond words for my child. But even as I praise God for the blessings he’s poured into my life, I remember Psalm 77:14 – “You are the God who performs miracles” – and I ask him, our God without limits, to bless my hurting friends.

When the doctor first diagnosed my fertility problems, I made Adam promise not to tell anyone, not even his parents. I said it was because I didn’t want to get a lot of unsolicited advice or have to hear people’s thoughtless comments. And that was true. But there was another reason. I hated the idea that anyone might feel sorry for me. The thought of people pitying me, pitying Adam because he’d married a wife who couldn’t have children, was too much. It made me angry. So angry I couldn’t even think about it or figure out where it was coming from.

Adam was gentle and patient. He kept our secret. Eventually, I agreed that we should tell his parents. But it wasn’t until after we’d tried IVF without success that I had to absorb reality; infertility might be part of our lives for a long time and I wouldn’t make it without support. I began to see that leaning completely on Adam wasn’t fair. I allowed God to show me a few things and it finally hit me that my anger was coming from pride. I wanted everyone to think I had my life together. But God wanted me to be honest and share our pain with family and a few trusted friends. Whatever people chose to think of me was between them and God and really shouldn’t concern me at all. I decided I would work hard not to care. It was a huge effort at first, but it got easier with time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping infertility private. But for me, opening up carefully over time was best. The more I shared, the less I fixated on what people might be thinking.

Mother’s Day is coming soon and this year my thoughts are mainly on my friends who long for babies they don’t yet have. I have a running list of these friends in my head and I try to pray for them often. The other day I took Skylar out for an early morning walk, planning to pray as I pushed her in the stroller. Mother’s Day and my friends came immediately to my mind and I began to think about them, remembering how hard the day was for me in years past. I looked down at Sky, who sat in the stroller chattering away in her own language, and a wave of sadness for my friends washed over me. Ten minutes later I realized I still hadn’t started praying. I was just feeling bad. Suddenly I heard myself two years earlier, saying I’d rather have people pray for me than feel sorry for me. Empathy is important. God calls us to bear one another’s burdens and the first step in empathy is taking the time to imagine what someone might be feeling. But simple pity can slip into “I’m glad I’m not in your situation” thinking, and I don’t want to be that kind of friend. Being a Christian means believing that in all things God is working for our good. I want to be a person who walks by faith, both in my own pain and with my friends in theirs. Empathy shouldn’t begin and end with feelings – it should be the catalyst for faith-filled prayer.