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.