After months and thousands of dollars in fertility attempts, my heart could not take any more so we decided to take a break. A break from not only the physical and financial strains but from the emotional strains. The heartbreak is often unbearable…

As little girls most of us grow up dreaming of being a Mommy one day, it is just a given that it will happen. No body ever, ever, ever tells you that this may not come easily or not at all. It is just how it works! Little girls grow up get swept away by Prince Charming and then they make beautiful babies and everybody lives happily ever after, it’s the stuff fairy tales are made of, right? White picket fences, station wagons and soccer camp, come on every bodies doing it! How hard could it be?

When you wake up to the reality one day that this is not going to happen so easily for you, you start to feel broken, different, disfigured and odd. You start to question everything…

By best estimate between 250,000 and 350,000 babies are born every day, how difficult can it be? It is also estimated that 1 out of every 6 couples is effected by infertility. Some of the more common causes of infertility are diminished ovarian reserve (older women or women with premature ovarian failure), blocked fallopian tubes (sometimes because of endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and STDs), endometriosis and polycystic ovarian disease. Low sperm count, poor sperm morphology (the shape of the sperm) and poor motility (the ability of the sperm to swim in the right direction) are also major contributors to a couple’s infertility. The estimates are that overall fertility problems are 50 percent female and 50 percent male.

All that being said, there are more and more couples experiencing infertility issues or simply more becoming aware of it and seeking medical help. I would ask myself, “Why?”. Why were we one of the “lucky” couples to struggle with this? All you have to do is watch the evening news and see story after story of parents neglecting children, taking for granted the precious lives they have been chosen to watch over.

Yes, watch over. I believe that God in His Sovereign Grace hand picks each parent specifically for each child. Do those parents always make the right choices and decisions for themselves and their children, no. There is a undeniable mystery between the Sovereignty of God and the free will of man.
If all were to seek to follow God’s commandments and will for their lives the six o’clock news would be filled with more traffic accidents and sports stories and far less stories of abuse and neglect.

We all know that this is not the case, Man is sinful and “Happily Ever Afters” are few and far between. Especially when operating outside of Christian values. So when going through infertility issues, many of us question the why. Why me? Why us? Why didn’t I know this could happen? Why, why, why?

It would take several years before I could start to piece together the answers to the whys. Several years before the picture would start to become clear and all things would fall into place and reaffirm my faith in a Sovereign God. The first place some of these things started to fall into place was on a mission trip to Costa Rica. This was the first place I can clearly remember God speaking to me that everything was going to be all right, the first place I could feel a hope growing inside of me that all these things were happening for a reason.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,  my help and my God” (Psalm 42:3; 42:11; and 43:5).

{more to come in part 5}