Recommended Reading - Resurrection Year by Sheridan Voysey

One of the most important books I have read this year, is "Resurrection Year" by Sheridan Voysey. In fact, it has been so important, I bought a copy for a friend in the same situation and recommend it to anyone who wants to understand what we #1in6 are going through.

Sheridan shares the journey he and his wife, Merryn, have travelled as they started out: hopeful at the family they would raise together; until they found themselves trudging toward huge barriers to their dream. As with all of us, they tried "every trick in the book", so to speak. 

But this is not a fairy tale, it is real life. Gritty. Passionate. Heartfelt. There's no guarantee of a happy ending, and this is what I love about what Sheridan shares, as he opens up about  the trauma, the pain and the humour of their experience in trying IVF as an option, as well as the heartache when they started adoption processes. Nothing seemed to work. Nothing seemed to help. All the healing prayers with or without anointing oil, by one or a group of people seemed as unfulfilled as the medical treatments.

What I really value about Ressurection Year is that Sheridan doesn't try to jazz up the story. He is authentic about the burden he and his wife carried, and as I read through it, I found the pain of my journey meant I could, to an extent, feel the rawness of his and Merryn's anguish. To the extent that I found it very difficult to read, except in small bursts. A chapter here, a few pages there. I started it in January and finished it in September (just in time to start reading Sheirdan's new book "Resilient" which was launched in October!).

I think Resurrection Year, will always be my "go-to" book, when I feel like I am alone in this walk. And I will always recommend it as an excellent resource to understand infertility & sub fertility. Hearing the testimony from a husband's perspective adds a new dimension to what this journey is all about. So often we can focus on what the women go through, but husbands feel it too. Their dreams are just as broken as ours. Don't forget about them.

Braver Than You Believe...

This being the National (In)Fertility Awareness week has led to some interesting conversations and experiences for me. The latest one at lunch time today, involves someone who doesn't know about my situation, but has probably worked it out. I mean - it's not difficult to work out, is it. I'm married, in my late 30s and childless!

So this guy is one of an army of volunteers who comes into the office where I work in order to help us accomplish the daily work we need to carry out. He will often pray for the team and arrive at the office with a word or encouragement he believes God has laid on his heart for each member of staff. I'm not always sure about the words of prophecy he gives, but the encouragement he brings is nice. 

Today, when there was a quiet moment and the rest of my colleagues were in various parts of the building, he spoke to me and said that he wasn't sure how relevant this was, but he felt God saying to him that I "was pregnant, or was to become pregnant."

I'm not. 

As #1in6, endometriosis has made what should be easy, a flippin difficult path. 

And as hubby and I are having problems - like, serious problems - the path is lonely and not even close to being productive. 

So, it doesn't even look likely to be a "soon-time" thing.

I try not to allow my "heart to harden" when I hear people saying these kinds of prophecy over me, because it is very easy to do. I would like to be as light-hearted as I once was, to freely accept when people tell me this. But pain and the long, hard, slog of this path have led me to be cautious. 

It's not because I don't have faith. 

It's become a matter of self-preservation. 

At least it will give me something to speak to my counsellor about later, when I meet for prayer ministry. Depression has led me to that place where self-preservation and faith have to somehow work themselves out in some kind of weird, harmonious, balance as I tread this path deeper into the unknown. Infertility - the path without a clear, definable end in sight. well there is, I guess... menopause. But I am a long way from that point. So for now, I have to try and find my way as best I can. 

Such is the journey of sub-fertility, as a woman after God's own heart. 

And as two different friends have reminded me, in a card and a wall-plaque they bought separately for me:

Hope Deferred: Depression

One of the hardest things I find about this journey of infertility, is the depression.

It crept up on me.

I didn't even recognise it for what it was, I just kept plodding through life as best I could, till suddenly I couldn't plod any further.  

The understanding of depression, which is caused by our circumstances (as opposed to people who have a chemical imbalance which impacts every aspect of their life) is best described by the writer of Proverbs as:

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick" (13:12)

Depression which is as a result of infertility is most definitely the result of hope deferred. The hope for a baby. The hope for a family. The hope for a future family life. All those dreams of watching your children play, your daughter trying to walk in your shoes, the paintings on the fridge, the home-made cards and letters, and the joy you can share in days out, complete with the frustrations of the car journey. 

The dream which is so long in happening.
The dream which looks as though it will never happen.
The dream which has gripped your heart for so long, it's long bony fingers squeezing ever tighter, squeezing out hope, squeezing out the dream and slowly replacing it with the stone, cold dread that it will never be so. 

And so the heart becomes sick. 

Sickness of the heart. 
Sickness of the mind.
Leading to a sense of disconnect with the life that is happening around you as you wrestle with the desire which should have been so easy, so natural, but which has become so elusive. 

And so the grief of infertility swamps you. 
Grief overwhelms you. 
Depression takes hold of you. 
Till life takes on a different hue - a different tone. 
The vibrancy you once knew now has a subtle grey, dark overtone. 

Hope deferred.

The worst part is that there is no end in sight. 
No light at the end of the tunnel.
No sense of knowing when the "desire fulfilled" will become my "tree of life"
But holding on... believing... hoping... one day...


Father God, I praise You for upholding me on the darkest days, and holding my head up when I just want to hide away. I thank You for Your love and strength, and the promise You gave to never leave my side. I thank You because even though my heart grieves for what has not yet arrived, that I can trust You for my future life.

This Is One Reason Why Infertility Awareness Is Important

As I mentioned in my previous post, this week is National (In)Fertility Awareness Week. After my latest experience on Saturday night, it reminds me more and more, how much we need society to be aware of the #1in6 on this crappy #Infertility journey.

Saturday night I went to a farewell "do" for a couple who are making Aaliyah (they're Jewish and are finally making the move to live in Israel.....in their 60s!). On the way, I realised I needed to put fuel in the car, or I'd be spending my night sitting on the A38!

So after filling up my car, I went in to pay for my fuel, when the "nice, old lady" behind the counter decided to insult me AND break my heart, making sure I had the most awful Saturday night one could ever have wished for.... Highly ironic for "Halloween"!

"When are you due?"
"Sorry?"
"Your baby? When is it due?"
"Ermm it's not...I'm not...errr"
"Oh. Sorry. I just thought."

And then....THEN....I start making excuses in order to not cause her offence and to make her feel better!! Whaaat??!!?
"It's OK, it's the coat. There's a lot of space for winter jumpers."
"Ohh... Oh yeah. The coat."

I just wanted to pay for my fuel and enjoy an evening with friends before they leave the UK! I went to the dinner, but my mask had cracking and people noticed something wasn't right. I left early, after arriving late anyway, and sobbed all the way home, before collapsing on the stairs just inside my front door and wished life was very different. So so different.

Even watching Strictly when I'd calmed down didn't help.

People need to be aware of the high number of couple who struggle to conceive. 

1 in 6 couples!

Would you ask a single women paying for fuel when she was getting married? Awareness should hopefully lead to less ambushes on those of us walking the road of infertility whenever we choose to wear a big, baggy, warm coat on a cold autumn evening!

National (In)Fertility Awareness Week

The National Ferility Awareness Week started on Monday and runs until Sunday. This is an excellent campaign to try and raise awareness of the plight of #1in6 couples who struggle to conceive.

One of the things the organisers, Infertility Network are asking people who feel able to do it, is to take a selfie while holding something saying #1in6.

It's a brave step!
It's a vulnerable step!
It's a difficult step!
But I do see that it is an important step!

So here is mine.

If you are able, join the #nfawuk campaign by uploading your own picture with #1in6 on it. 

Obviously it is better if it's a picture of you as a couple journeying together, but this is not always possible. We don't have to feel ashamed of the journey we're on. It's just the particular train God led us to. Who know what we will enjoy on the way, or where our journey will take us, but God is right there with us, and He is in the driving seat.

Behind The Biblical Story of Ruth - Infertility Journey

The Church I attend in Derbyshire, is currently going through the book of Ruth, and this morning during worship it just dawned on me... Ruth didn't conceive during her first marriage. In fact, that first chapter is all about broken dreams and dashed hopes.

Elimelech took his wife and two sons away from their home in Bethlehem, because there was famine in Israel, during the time of the Judges, because God was dealing with His people for their sin. It was in moving to the "enemy" land of Moab that Elimelech and Naomi held on to new dreams and the hope of surviving the famine unscathed and possibly one day returning to Israel. 

But for Naomi, all her dreams, all her hopes, her very future, her life her everything fell apart. First her husband died - which as a woman in those days was not like today where she would get a widow's pension or something. God had made provision for His people to look after the widows and orphans, but we don't know what provision Naomi would have received as a single mother with two sons as foreigners... As the enemy... Of Moab. 

Her sons, when they were of age, married Moabite women. As a Jewish mother, this would have been challenging for Naomi. A Jewish momma only wants the best for her boys. A nice Jewish wife to bring Jewish Grandchildren for the family heritage to not die out. Oh vey! Moabite daughters-in-law!

Although we don't know how long each of Naomi's sons were married before they died..... It is interesting to note Ruth 1:4: "The two sons married Moabite women. One married a woman named Orpah, and the other a woman named Ruth. But about 10 years later, both Mahlon and Kilion died." 

Can it be deduced that Ruth and Orpah had problems conceiving???

When her husband died, did Ruth, as a woman of child-bearing age realise her dreams of having a family were broken and over? Did she grieve not just the death of her husband, but the hope of her future family? Had they been trying? Had there been problems in conceiving? Had she suffered the shame of infertility before she suffered the burden of widowhood?

When Naomi returned to her home in Bethlehem, she had lost everything. She'd lost her husband, her sons, her hope for grandchildren, her hope as a Jewish mother. Broken. Beside her was Ruth, her daughter-in-law, who'd left behind her Moabite family, had lost her husband, had lost the hope she had as a mother. Broken.

Broken dreams. Broken lives. Hopelessness. 

Sums up some of the feelings of the infertility journey. 

And yet we know God turns everything around for both Ruth and Naomi, restoring them as mothers. Restoring them as women. Restoring the future and healing their past.

New dreams. New lives. Restored hope for a new future. 

This is our God.

This is part of the story of Ruth.

Wow!

Baby Loss Awareness Week

This week is 'Baby Loss Awareness Week'.

Thank God!

Validating those mothers whose babies didn't survive this world and were called home too soon is such an important opportunity for each woman to know her motherhood cannot be taken away from her, even though her child was. 

There is an organisation called SAYING GOODBYE which organises services for those couples who lost a child, through miscarriage, through stillbirth, through early death, through sickness, through accident, through murder. These services are moment when parents can embrace the feelings of loss and grief felt at the loss of their baby, whether they held them or not. If this is something you have experienced, I have known women who attended and found it a moment of God's healing in their lives.

Your son or daughter may be gone, but will never be forgotten. 

I pray Father God's shalom to hold you in His embrace along with the truth that He has never let go of you, and He will never let go of you. He understands your heartache and pain.