Tag Archives: loss

A Picture of Infertility

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A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the depth of meaning is always in the backstory, the one no single image can ever convey.

An image tempts the viewer to fill in the narrative with all of their assumptions, and most often they are wrong.

It is National Infertility Awareness Week. We are among the 1 in 8 who have journeyed through the devastating diagnosis. Yes, devastating. There are so many moments seared in our flesh that originally felt like a slow acting poisonous arrow straight to the heart. It isn’t fair. I was certain at 22 when we first heard the news that it was the single most crushing pain I could ever experience. Now here I am, almost two decades after our infertility journey began, to offer a few words for those on the journey and those who aren’t.

Stop making assumptions about another person’s journey.  Instead, show up for those you love, be curious, be compassionate, and know two things are almost totally universal: it is a complicated-messy journey and there is always room for hope.

As I reflect on our journey to and through parenthood I am filled with exactly every emotion God has bestowed upon the human race. I grieve over all the loss and marvel over all the beauty.

I am a mom of 8 daughters. What? You can’t tell that by looking at the picture I am posting? Yeah, that is my point. You can’t assume anything accurately from this one image except, quite obviously, that these three girls are gorgeous…you would be accurate on that.

Not pictured:

The twins that died or the miscarriage less than 30 weeks ago,

All the infertility probing and needles and spread-eagling for the chance of a child,

The incredible moments of being present as another woman gave birth to a child I would raise,

The questions about stories and birth families and am I worthy of love at all?, are you sure?

The incredible depth of love that beats in my chest for the birth parents of my children,

The sorrow over having chosen children not chose you in return,

The joy over watching all the first moments, the kisses and hugs and cries of “Mommy!”

The head pounding of all the cries of “MOMMY!”

The begging and pleading and praying to God that he would just do things my way,

The humility in realizing you got a yes,

The toll it takes on your emotions, your finances, your marriage,

The realization that the story is more incredible and difficult than I could have ever imagined, or the two adult children not present at all, or all the loss that has come as they have had children and 1 million other moments that have led to this one picture.

Messy, hard, beautiful, broken, complicated journey–absolutely.

But also NEVER without hope in a God who is able to carry us through it all.

Are there chapters I wish didn’t exist? Yes.

However, it has been in the chapters I would never have chosen that God has done some of the most incredible things. The best has been in Him drawing us deeply in and inviting us into an intimacy with Him that I would not trade for anything in all the world.  And somewhere along the way He turned us into warriors, not just fighting for the daughters he has given us, but for their birth families, for their kids, for an entire group of people I would never have known.

Easy? No.

Worth it? Yes.

There is a priceless gift in the hard spaces. It is a shedding of the belief that you were ever in control and an invitation to surrender to the One who is. Holding onto the Hope that is found solely in Him, you learn you have been given the greatest gift of all: an extraordinary Savior who dreams far bigger dreams than you do.

 

Death, Focus and Finding Beauty

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14 years ago I laid in a hospital bed being pumped full of heavy duty antibiotics, an oxygen mask snuggly fitted to my face and a stout, demanding nurse seated at the head of my bed who routinely refitted the mask and loudly ordered me to breathe. Just an hour earlier the room had been full of medical professionals whose sole mission was to save my life and maybe that of my daughter’s. But the sepsis had ravaged both of us by that point and only one of us survived. I laid in that bed and flashed back to just two weeks prior, as I held my first daughter in my arms while she took her last breath. It was only then, in the stark contrast that I realized that even those agonizingly difficult moments were a gift I was not given with both. Our twins, born two weeks apart and months too soon only lived for about 15 minutes.

I laid there full of disdain for the nurse who was fighting to keep me alive, she was holding space for a life I no longer wanted, so certain was I that it was the event meant to destroy me. It was in that space, wishing I could lull off to sleep and simply wake, held in the arms of Jesus, with my girls, that I first heard Him whisper.

“Look for the beauty in this day Crystal.”

It seemed like a cruel joke at first. How could there ever be beauty in spaces like this? Then I looked over at my mother’s tear stained face, hung low, seated beside a husband who was fervently praying for my life, and I began to understand. Seasons are always woven, they are rarely solitary notes, suffering and joy are often melted together into the tapestry of our lives. The beauty of that day was the love of two who were fighting for me even when I had no strength or desire left to fight for myself.

I would continue to hear that gentle prodding as the days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months and months turned into years. Eventually, I began to seek ways to capture the ordinarily beautiful moments through photography. What started as a vision-shift turned into a way to remember the beauty in the hard seasons. Today, after days of high stress, and countless questions in the midst of this pandemic season I looked over and my breath caught in my chest as I quickly picked up my phone to “snap” a picture.

Daddy is now having to work from home, uncomfortable at our rackety kitchen table, but he was briefly interrupted by a sweet 4 year old, dressed as Princess Jasmine, who just had to hold him tight for a moment. A moment that 14 years ago, laying in that hospital bed, I could have never dreamed of. One miraculous moment, again reminding me of just how big God is and the beauty He provides in the ordinary (and even hard spaces) if we will just have eyes to see.

What beauty are you prone to miss in the distracted hardness of this time? May I encourage you to always look for the beauty? It often shows up in the ordinary.

 

Suffering

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Delicately pink and offendingly small.

Small enough to hold what once was two souls in their unfinished frames, and yet big enough to bury all my hope for the future.

I stared at the coffin as the numbness ran through my flesh, the numbness felt like a protective cloak that was holding in what was left of my sanity.

How do I grieve the loss of my children, God? How can I possibly keep going?

I looked down at the ground, carefully covered in that fake plastic grass carpet that attempts to pretty up a dying scene and hide the newly hewed out hole of earth that will welcome the latest to their return to dust, and I kept picturing my flesh falling forth into the hole.

I thought, just fall into the freshly turned dirt, heavy with the dust of those who came before. Fall in and join the dead, for what is left of you now? Hope is gone.

Let me die here with them, Lord. Why did you let me live? 

The melody began in my mind, softly, tenderly declaring words of hope and truth that were not felt by even one bone of my flesh. A song of praise, of praise to the God of dust, to the one who gave and to the one who took away.  All of my spirit joined in the chorus playing in my mind as the tears poured down my cheeks in surrender. How could I be filled with a song of praise to God while I stood at my twins’ graveside?

Was that one moment any less miraculous than if He had saved them? Or was it simply not what I would have chosen?

When would I ever choose to suffer? When would I ever choose pain? No, I would choose what I could control and fix and whatever felt good, but never would I choose pain.

What if there is profound purpose in the pain? Even as I type those words my flesh is ridiculously offended. Because, really, my self indignation wants to tell God how He should write the story differently, and it begs the question of his goodness. But does God owe me anything at all? And what could He possibly give me when I am faced with suffering, apart from my cries to remove the pain?

I am sitting in this space, over 13 years after the burial of my twins, asking the same question as I sit in yet another season of suffering and pain.

I read from Genesis to Revelation of some who came before, of God’s faithfulness, of His abilities to do far more than we can imagine, of His love. While something deep inside me cries out a deep and resounding, “Yes! True!,” they also feel like mere words on a page as I sit in this season right now. Should my feelings be what lead me? Only if they lead me to Him in eventual surrender of the simple realization that I am not God.

Remember.

I read of monuments they once built in the times of the Old Testament.

Monuments to remember what God had done.

Monuments that declare that God is bigger than their battle, bigger than their pain, that He always has a plan.

And I will myself to remember that scene, in that cemetery, with that small, soft pink coffin and with God pouring forth a song of praise in the darkness of death, and I remember anew how unfathomable His love really is. My mind still can’t comprehend how He was able. He became my hope without end. I did not come to my end that day, and light and beauty did dawn again.

In the suffering seasons, I have learned that His greatest gift to me has not been in the removing of my pain, but in the depth of His presence.  I have no words to express the mysteries of intimacy with God, apart from the deep certainty that He is worth everything, He is who I was created for, and He is my perfect peace in the storms. It is a gift of knowledge and intimacy with God only learned in the profoundly hard spaces, quiet possibly because that is what it takes for us to see and hear Him most clearly– the certainty that we need our Creator for our very next breath.

My feelings, while informative, are horrible drivers.

I have to fight to see the truth-

And to hunger for Him like the thirsty long for water in the desert.

God promises it will be hard. He promises it will cost us. He promises it will be worth it. But most profoundly He promises to give us Himself. In this we receive the most incredible gift, and this is the detail that changes everything, making the impossible possible.

This, my friends, not the absence of suffering, but the presence of the Savior, is the very pulse of the abundant life.

 

Daring God and Moving Mountains

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“When pain is to be born, a little courage helps more than much knowledge,

a little human sympathy more than much courage,

and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

V and mommy

She was serious but full of compassion as she read over the lab work.  I was tired. In all honesty most of me lay dormant inside, unable to be roused since the twins died.  Now, when we talked of Ashley and Bethany, they were referenced to simply as “the twins.” But they weren’t talked of much now, the time for polite grief long gone, and life must move on.  The battles for, and adoptions of, our four beautiful daughters had long been finalized and all our energy must be poured into life with them…

“Your liver is beginning to fail.”

The words seemed to hold in mid air for a while.  She looked at me trying to ascertain if I comprehended the gravity of the situation.

I did.

I left her office and sat it my car.  Failure. Me. Age 31. Was this how my life would come to a close?  A slow, painful death of my own creating? 311 pounds–the weight I had eaten myself up to since burying the twins.  It was threatening to bury me when all I was trying to do was bury all the hard feelings. I had always struggled with my weight but this was more, so much more.  I had a problem, or a million problems. But did I care?

I cried an ugly cry.  The snot pouring out of your nose, eyes red enough to stop traffic, blubbering, smack-the-steering-wheel-multiple-times sorta cry. And when I was done and my eyes were firmly swollen to puffy little slits, the stillness spoke– Do you want to get well? He didn’t ask because he didn’t know, He asked for my benefit.  Yes, yes I guess I did. A fire began inside me in that moment. And then, the birth of the most forbidden dream of all was whispered into my heart…

Pregnancy.  Try again. What?

I could not contain the laughter or the tears.  Seriously God? Is it time to go admit myself into the mental ward because HELLO, look at me.  My name is failure. I began to list off every single detail that must be overcome for me to even TRY to become a mom again: the weight, my various health issues, the doctors response after losing the twins, the money, and on and on.

I pointed to the mountain and I dared God to move it!

I say dared because I had an attitude about it all that would make most faithfully obedient believers blush.  I didn’t doubt that he could, my attitude came with the “would he” part and the “trusting” part. But God…was bigger than all the feelings I had tried to eat away, and he was bigger than my terror.

Sitting there, 100 percent a mess, certain I was broken beyond repair, truly terrified of what lie ahead, God met me and he breathed new life.

I love how He meets us right where we are, just as we are.

He had me in his hands the whole time.  When I could not see, He could, and he carried me on to dreams that I was not bold enough to dream.  He carried me through my fears one step at a time–just one step at a time. Trusting Him is the best part and the hardest part.  But you know what?

He moved that huge mountain!  He overcame every obstacle. And the delivery of that beautiful dream came wrapped up as a gorgeous baby girl in July of 2015–14 years after first being told we were infertile.

Today, I need to remember that He is a God that can move mountains.  Here I am again, facing a huge mountain and daring God to move it.

What mountain are you facing today?