Heard of God

I have tried to write this post many, many times. There are many drafts, containing far too much boring information and not enough of what I really want to say.

Which is this:


God gave us a baby.


Three days before Christmas last year, we found out we were pregnant.  A miraculous baby boy had just started to grow inside me.  Samuel is a gift from God.

Here he is, about an hour old, all tiny and gunky and utterly gorgeous:

It's strange now, on the 'other side', especially having met so many people who don't really know our story.  It's quite fun to provoke a reaction by dropping into conversation that it took six years of trying before Samuel came along.  People often say, "Yes it took us a while too", and I'm thinking "You know nothing".  Which is awful, because however long the wait, it's all heartbreaking, constant waiting and wondering,

But we've met lots of new people this year, none of whom have been on our journey for the last seven years.  None of whom have seen the tears and the trauma, only the gorgeous sleeping baby and his tired parents.

Hence the name: Samuel.  "Heard of God"

For a long time, I didn't even like the name.  When I was pregnant and people would ask us if we'd thought about calling him Samuel, I said I didn't think we would.  It seemed a bit predictable.  It felt a bit like he was named after this blog!

But when we came to talk together about names, no others matched up.  None others conveyed the depth of meaning.

Because Samuel is named after another baby, whose mother waited years and years, who prayed for him and asked God for him.  And then named him "Heard of God".  Because God heard her prayer.

I don't know how many people were praying for us to get pregnant, but given the number of congratulations cards we received, it definitely runs into the hundreds.  (THANK YOU to our wonderful friends and family)  I couldn't count the prayers Chris and I have prayed, sometimes in desperation, sometimes with assurance, sometimes just out of habit.

But here is what Samuel is proof of for me:
 God answers prayers.

Christmas makes me reflect on our miracle child, because obviously the celebration centres around another much more miraculous baby.  Our best friends named their son Simeon, after a Jewish man who was waiting for the Messiah, and knew that it was Jesus when he met him as a baby.  Simeon and so many others had prayed and prayed and waited and waited.

And God answered their prayers in the most stunning way, becoming Emmanuel "God with us".

We can testify to two hugely important truths - that God was indeed with us, all through the horrendous times, the despairing times - and that God answer prayers.  He has given us such joy, laughter, wonder and love through giving us Samuel.  We are so very very grateful.

It's not me

I've recently written several versions of this post, never quite getting to say the nub of what I'm thinking.  Hence the lack of posts for the past months!

This year in particular, a lot of people have told me how brave I am.  I shared with a teacher at school (who knew about the miscarriage) that I had bad period pain and she told me how brave I was being.  People tell me how courageous it is to let other people into our journey.  Many people tell me they have no idea how they would handle things if they were in our position.

Here's the thing, the nub of it all:

It's not me.

Shall I say it again for effect?  It's not me!  On my own I'm not brave or strong or patient.  Sometimes I even look at myself and think, "Shouldn't I have had some sort of breakdown by now?  Surely this is too much?"  But I haven't had a breakdown.  This hasn't overwhelmed us yet.

There have been a lot of things I've been intentional about: I didn't want to hide our struggles and not let other people in; I didn't want to plaster over things and carry on stoically when inside it's disaster; I didn't want to get obsessed about having a baby, to the detriment of everything else in my life, particularly my marriage.

But there are so many things that I didn't intend, but God has graciously given me: peace, even in situations which seem desperate; joy for life that doesn't depend on circumstances; and strength.  Here is the key: strength.

In our music group at church, we often encourage one another with the verse: When I am weak, then I am strong.  Sounds like an eyebrow-raising paradox.  It's actually very encouraging.  Because when I am at the point when I feel that I cannot go on, that this is too hard, that it's been too long, that we will never come through the other side - it's at that point that God says, "I am strong, and I am with you."

I can't tell you the theology of all this, but I can only testify that when you see me being 'brave' it's through God's help.  When I seem to be coping really well, it's through God's strength.  When I talk to friends who are pregnant or with babies, it's through God's strength.

I am rubbish on my own.  This isn't some sort of false modesty.  Genuinely, if I had no faith and had to face the last 6 years, I would end up sat at home, never seeing anyone, obsessed and defeated.

And sometimes I do feel that way.  One evening a few months back, I couldn't face talking to anyone after church, and I just ran home, curled up in the bathroom and cried.  I was angry, upset and grieving.

But when I get back up again, it's in His strength.  I need to say this again and again.

Some people seem to think that a 'very spiritual' experience only happens when we cry, or make ourselves vulnerable, or have an extreme emotion.  For me, I know God's presence and help most clearly when I pray, "God, she's pregnant, this is going to be hard.  I don't know how I'm going to cope.  Please give me the strength to be a friend." And He answers my prayer.

I'm always quoting hymns/songs here, so here's another beautiful line:

"Strength for today, and Bright Hope for tomorrow."

In February, just days after we found out we'd lost our baby, a friend reminded me of that line.  That's the promise from God.  We're not at the end of our journey yet, but these two things keep us going: Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

Walking up the mountain

My memory might be distorting things somewhat, but almost the only activity I remember doing on holidays as a child is walking up mountains.  Dad, map in hand, leading the way with his Scout's pace, trying not to leave us behind.  Mum and sisters in between.  Me at the back, trying to keep up.  Perhaps my memory fails me and I wasn't always last, but the for the first 13 years at least I had the shortest legs, so it would make sense!  I have one particular memory of hyperventilating half way up a mountain in Skye.  Mum thought I was just being lazy, until she realised I was wheezing and huffing, and was able to tell me exactly what to do to get my breath back.

I've been thinking recently about how our journey through infertility and miscarriage has been like a long, long trudge up a mountain.  There are those 'false peaks', when you think you've reached the top of the mountain, but you get there and realise that there's still a long way to go.  Miscarriage has felt like that for us.  Our first pregnancy was such a relief - We are able to get pregnant, phew!  But then the awful scan and the empty sac.  Was that real?  Did we reach that first 'peak' of getting pregnant, or was that just a false peak?

This January, we found out I was pregnant again.  No drugs.  No treatment.  Just exercise, lack of wheat in my diet and a sneaky bit of progesterone cream.  Amazing!  We are able to get pregnant, even without the fertility drugs!  Even more amazing, we got to our first scan and the sonographer saw a heartbeat and said the baby was at about 7 1/2 weeks.  We really had reached that first peak.  But then I began spotting and a scan at 10 weeks confirmed that the baby hadn't really developed since our first scan.  The heartbeat had stopped.  All was lost again.

It was like falling down the mountain, finding yourself right at the start again.

Meanwhile, at this point in our lives, there seem to be far more people walking up the same mountain towards having a family.  Some of them seem to sprint from bottom to top in record time ("oops, we weren't even trying", "no, we didn't have to try for too long") and whilst I'm sure they notice that there are people who have been climbing this long, horrid mountain for ages, it's so galling.  Like someone doing the London Marathon in those bungee stilts.  Just unfair.

There are others around us who have hit bumps and wrong turns and who we've been able to counsel and console over their journey.  But even these seem now to be well into their stride and making headway up the mountain to family life.

What has struck me most, recently, though, is that even if you get to the 'top' - you get pregnant - there's actually another mountain to climb.  It's a miracle that any baby makes it through those first fragile 12 weeks, then makes it to full term as a healthy and whole newborn.  In our families we are very much in need of one of those miracles at the moment.

I used to say that sometimes our struggle to start a family felt like 'trudging through treacle'.  It felt like we were having to drag our feet out of the mud every time we took a step forward, and when we fell we would fall into the sludge.

It doesn't feel like that now.  Even though, in many ways, it doesn't feel like we're much further up the mountain than a year or two ago, it feels like the path is solid and dry, the way is clear and we have what we need for the journey.

There's a beautiful passage in Isaiah (43:2-3) about how God walks with us through our pain and struggle:
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,
When you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned.
For I am the Lord, your God, your Saviour."

God doesn't promise to always take away the hurt and the pain.  He promises something much more precious.  When I'm crying, I don't want Chris to somehow make me stop crying; I might need to let the tears out.  But I want Chris to hold me and just to be there.  And God promises to be there.  This is the beauty of Christianity - that Christmas shows us that God is prepared to come into our ordinary lives and be with us (Emmanuel).  And Easter shows us that He cares enough to give His own life so that we can know Him as Father, Brother, Friend, Saviour.

God hasn't left me alone to my hurt, my tears, my struggle to get up again.  He is there with me.  He walks with me up this mountain.  He will walk with me up every mountain that I face.

The Root of Bitterness

There seems to be an abundance of pregnancies at the moment.  At the beginning of last year, I realised that it had been a while since many people had told us they were expecting, and sensed that another wave of babies was on its way.  This is partly because we are now very much entering the years where it's not unusual to have a baby.  Until now, only some friends have had children, many of them older than us.  But now, in our early 30s, it's getting much more common for those our age as well.

It's always awkward when someone has to tell you news that both they and you know is hard for you to stomach.  I had a good friend who struggled with people telling her they were pregnant, because she had noticed that it was her job to make the other person feel better.  Sympathetic as they may feel, hard as they know it will be to hear, my pregnant friends rely on me to tell them it's ok and I'll be ok.  Doesn't feel fair, really.

But the abundance of pregnancies has given certain friends the opportunity to shine and to bless us with their empathy and tact.  Just after Christmas we had dinner with a couple of my school friends, plus husbands.  I knew that our hosts were expecting.  At about 5pm, I received a text from the other friend, letting us know that she is also pregnant.  'Argh!' was my first thought.  My second thought was to just call the hosts and say that we couldn't come.  That I couldn't face it.

But I know myself better than that.  I know that I shouldn't run away from those situations, because it'll only make me bitter.  I knew that I needed to go to the meal, to congratulate my friend and to get over the "I'm pregnant and I know it's hard for you" hurdle.  I am so glad we went.

My friends were brilliant.  There was the obligatory chat at the beginning - "'How many weeks are you? How are you feeling? When's your due date?" - and it came up a few times during the evening.  But it didn't dominate the conversation.  And when they were talking about pregnancy, they weren't weird and awkward because of our situation.  They were just normal.  I am so thankful for those friends, because they took a situation that could have made me jealous and bitter, and turned it towards cherishing our friendship and enjoying their company.  Thank you friends; you know who you are.

As I was anticipating this tidal wave of pregnancies, the same phrase kept coming back to me: to root out bitterness.  The image in my mind was more precisely to dig out the root of bitterness before it took hold (Hebrews 12.15).  Bitterness starts as jealousy, sadness and the feeling that you've been hard-done-by; this turns into obsession over what you don't have and ends in broken friendships and a hard heart.  Bitterness tells you it's ok to hide from people who are pregnant because "it's too hard for me", but doesn't take into account the possibilities of blessings coming from those friends or that you might grow a little as you keep struggling to be friends with them.

So far I've done ok at not letting bitterness make its root in me;  I'm usually genuinely happy when someone tells me they're pregnant and can congratulate them without being false to my emotions.  But where I fall down is those people who seem to get pregnant immediately they stop contraception, or for whom it's a total surprise.  Because in most cases, I can think to myself, "she's allowed to be pregnant because she's gone through X".  Now, whatever X might be (from miscarriage and difficulty conceiving to unrelated things like difficult upbringings or tense marriages), it warps my perception of the pregnancy.  It's a way of consoling myself because their whole life isn't perfect.  But that makes life into a pair of scales, where the bad things are on one side and the great things on the other, and how I view the person is dependent upon how sad I think their life has been.  Warped.

What I've been trying to do recently is to see the life of the baby.  This is much easier, because however jealous I might feel towards the mother (dependent upon how much woe I think they have seen), I can't help but be excited that a new little life is coming.  It's not about the parents; it's about rejoicing that a new person will soon be with us and anticipating what that person might be like, what they might enjoy, how they might impact the world.

What this does is take my perspective off my own circumstances and jealousy, and focuses on the positive.  I've never been very good at being sad; ever the optimist.  But this has been a blessing in itself.  As I celebrate these new pregnancies and share friends' journeys towards meeting their child, I share in their joy.  I stop feeling jealous and start feeling excited for my friend.  I stop feeling bitter and start to look forward to meeting their new bundle of joy.

I see that looking forward to sharing their excitement is so much better than looking inward and dwelling on disappointment and bitterness.

Dig out that root before it takes hold.

No words

"When you lose a parent you're an orphan, when your husband dies you're a widow, but when you lose a child... there's no word for that."

So speaks Cate Banfield, a character in ER, when talking about losing her son to leukemia.  We watched this episode recently and her words resonated.

For a good while, my wonderful best friend has often said to me, "I just don't know what to say any more".  Over the years I have whinged and whined and cried and poured out to her many many words.  And she has often had incredibly wise, caring and helpful words for me in return.  But they have recently run out.  Not because she stopped desiring for us to have a family, not because she couldn't think of some trite nugget to say, but because she loves and cares for us, and knows we don't need trite nuggets.  Her reaction has helped me a lot.  It validates my own feelings - that enough is enough now and why isn't this happening - but also that I'm running out of words.

When people ask 'How's it all going?' I usually reply with very pragmatic things: I've stopped eating wheat, my cycle's got shorter, our next appointment is in November etc.  Because I've run out of things to say about my emotions.  Sometimes I bawl my eyes out and ask Why?  But most of the time I feel 'meh'.

But I look around and think that often there are no words.  Two families who are dear to us are going through situations which are so horrendous that what can I say?  I grieve for them, cry for them, pray for them, but I have very little to say.

And I think that's ok.

The writer of Ecclesiastes says: "There is a time to be silent and a time to speak."  Often a look, a hug or a bunch of flowers are enough.  After our miscarriage one friend brought me a big bunch of sunflowers and another brought a delicious dinner round.  I treasured those kindnesses.  They didn't need to say anything.

I don't think our culture is good at this.  We want to paste things over with "It'll all work out" or "Just be strong".  Our magazines have 6 easy ways to solve every problem.  Facebook distorts everyone's reality because we can celebrate publicly (with lots of photos and words of thanks and congratulations), but when someone mourns publicly it feels awkward.  So we keep our sorrows to ourselves and only present a picture-perfect image of our lives.

So when I tell you that I've had a rubbish week and am finding it hard to be positive, I don't need to hear, "I'm sure it'll happen one day" or "Just try to stay stress-free".  Actually, what I probably need to hear is, "Your situation sucks and I don't know what to say".

I love the Bible verse "Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn".  It's pretty tough to do sometimes, but it's a lovely reminder that we don't have to respond to disaster, distress and disappointment with positivity, perkiness and platitudes (excuse the alliteration).  We can cry with those who cry, despair with those asking Why?  And then when it's time to rejoice with them, our rejoicing will be so much more truthful.  And our words will have so much more integrity, because we understand when is the time to speak and when is the time to be silent.

The freedom of being vulnerable...

Beautiful post about vulnerability...

http://saltwaterandhoney.org/blog/why-the-book-is-always-better-than-the-film

Couldn't put it better myself.

Light and Shadow

Life is full of light and shadow,
Oh the joy and oh the sorrow.

Thus begins one of my favourite songs, by David Crowder Band.  I spent much of my early twenties being amazed as I saw that these words are true.  I couldn't believe the amount of struggle and pain that my friends had, along with all the joy and good news.

Growing up, there were obviously shadows: grandparents dying, friends losing their parents, huge struggles with body image and lots of grief over boys I fancied who didn't fancy me (!)...  Which, while they seem very hard at the time, looking back (and hearing other people talk about their own childhood) I see that these weren't deep shadows.  They were more like those half shadows you get from a streetlamp at dusk.  There was a huge amount of light in our home: music, faith, structure, support, love etc etc.

Perhaps this is one reason for my amazement at the situations in which my friends and I found ourselves.

Over the past 4/5 years, that amazement has gone.  There's no surprise any more.  Life is hard.

We have seen (in our lives and in others') many causes for joy over the past few years: new jobs, new homes, new babies, amazing holidays, wonderful music-making, friendship groups formed, new missionaries sent, new couples, new engagements......

But oh the sorrow: children losing a parent at a young age, miscarriages, divorces, jobs lost, stories of abuse, cancer diagnoses, addictions, depression, broken relationships...

I'm no longer surprised by the sorrow.  But I am often surprised at people's response.  Someone very recently, on receiving some devastating news, told me how aware they were of their blessings.  Another friend constantly amazed me throughout her diagnosis and treatment of cancer, with her positivity, her attitude of looking for the good in her circumstance, and her willingness to use her 'trial' to serve others.

The song continues: Yet will He bring dark to light, Yet will He bring day from night.

Last year, after our miscarriage, someone (who, when he said this, didn't know about the miscarriage) told me how much joy he saw in me.  That I seemed more joyful than I had after only 2/3 years of trying for a baby.  Soon after, I wrote these words:


"I am amazed at how I can still find joy in other people's babies.  Others' pregnancies are still harder, but I still love babies and want to be around them.  I am amazed at how much grace I feel is being given to me, to not only cope with our loss, but to more than cope.

I've almost thrived on it.  It's like I've said to myself, "I was always petrified of having a miscarriage, but now I know that I can get through it.  What else is there to fear?"  Of course, that wasn't myself but God telling me that I am stronger than I think - because He is stronger than I think.

I would never have believed, had someone told me 2 years ago, that I would feel more peace, more contentment, more upheld in prayer, more trusting in God now, after 4 years of infertility, than I did after 2 years!

Steve spoke yesterday about God taking us through the storm, not around it.  Of course, in one sense, I wish this storm hadn't come our way.  But when I think of all that God has wrought in me over these years, how could I bypass that growth just so my impatience could be satisfied?

The situation will change, one day.  But the beauty grown from this season will remain."