Nobody can be mad at Jackie Chan.

My favorite thing about babies for the first 24 years of my life was having something around me to blame weird smells on. Growing up I wasn't super into dolls or caretaking or playing house and when my first niece was born I cringed with anxiety every time someone asked me to hold her. I had absolutely no idea how to interact with a tiny human being and I had never cared to learn until she was born. I loved holding Joleigh, but as the baby of my family I was just getting used to the idea that people were no longer holding me! I remember the first time my sister-in-law asked me to change Joleigh into her PJs. I was terrified. I remember thinking, "How do I do this without breaking her?" I just didn't "get" babies and this natural, mothering instinct that most women are born with was foreign to me. Then all of the sudden, out of nowhere, I woke up one morning with the unquenchable desire for motherhood. I thought to myself, "I want to be a mother. More than anything in the entire world I want to be someone's mom and I am ready right now." That morning I felt all of my plans and goals for the future shift; I was no longer as concerned with my career and was actually dabbling with the idea of giving it all up to raise children. I have never felt more like myself than I did that morning. Telling my husband I was ready to have children was one of my favorite moments in life. Mike was pretty much born to be a father. He is responsible, fun, caring, sensitive, dependable, and children LOVE him. He is a human playground. He has been ready and excited for kids since the day we got married and had been patiently waiting for me to catch up. Well I caught up in a big way that morning and by noon we had the whole thing planned out. First baby in 2014, second in 2016, third and fourth sometime before 2021. We bought a 6 bedroom house, dependable vehicles, and found careers with schedules that worked with the demands of parenting. We spent time praying and reading and journaling and talking to trusted family and friends. We were doing this! Sometimes I still go back to that morning in my mind and fantasize about the excitement and simplicity, as it's diminished in each day that has followed. Our journey has not gone the way we had hoped.

First month of trying, no baby. Second month, no baby. Third, fourth, fifth, and sixth month, no baby. Seventh month, missed period, hope, excitement, pregnancy tests, joy, intense cramping, severe bleeding, doctor's office, miscarriage, no baby. We mourned our loss and feared that there may be a bigger problem. My sweetest memory of our miscarriage (can there be a sweetest memory of a miscarriage?) was when we told the news to our friends Kyle and Kelley. Kelley wept with us before Mike even finished sharing what had happened and to our surprise, with tears in his eyes, Kyle said, "Congratulations, you are parents!" His comment was so totally opposite of everything we were thinking and feeling in that moment. It completely jolted us out of mourning and into celebration. We hadn't even stopped to consider the bigger picture: God used our bodies and created a life, a soul that is loved and cherished and protected by Him for eternity. We are parents. It was an incredibly special moment shared with incredibly special friends. More on that later. Fast-forward to our 13th month of trying. We found ourselves sitting in a fertility specialist's office after being poked and prodded and drained of more blood and fluids than I care to elaborate on, being told that we had a .2% chance of natural conception and that IVF was our only option but even that would come with challenges that others wouldn't have. When it's quiet I can still hear our doctor's voice giving us the news and I hate it. It helped that he looked like Jackie Chan. Nobody can be mad at Jackie Chan.

Shifting into 2015 has really helped me process these events, as they magically feel much further behind me now that I am writing 2015 instead of 2014 on my checks. I spent so much time in 2014 ruminating on "what could have been" and "how" and "why." We were told that approximately 6% of people struggling with infertility in the United States face the problems we are up against here. Why are we are a part of that 6%? Why is this happening? What went wrong? What did we do? What can we do? Why is there no medication or surgery that will fix this? I prayed and begged for another way. To this day, with each month that passes, I pray for a miracle and expect a miracle that does not come. It is exhausting and I am tired. I could continue on about all the ways this is negatively effecting my life right now, but that's what I've been doing for over a year and it's getting me nowhere. I have been a hamster in a wheel trying desperately to fix what has gone wrong and change our current circumstances. God very gently changed my perspective on things last night and I wanted to share how. Most of my ah-ha moments come to me at night. God loves to wake me up when I am half asleep, weak-minded, and defenseless so I can't think clearly enough to rationalize myself out of what I am experiencing. Last night God gave me a picture.

This might not look like much to you, but this is the map that's going to help me navigate infertility, so it's a pretty big deal. By the way, this is the closest thing to a football play that I will ever draw. The big circle is our problem: infertility. The X's represent all of the difficulties in this process, all of the things that we wish could be different, the things that continue to weigh us down and feel trapped by our circumstances. X = Our miscarriage. X = Polycystic ovaries. X = Hormonal imbalances. X = No medical reasons behind why Mike and I have the conditions we do. X = Medical bills. X = Other people's insensitivity to this process. X = Our trip to Europe that we cancelled so we could afford IVF. X = Trying to understand WHY and HOW this happened. The X's go on and on. In the middle of the night as I was given this picture God reminded me of Jesus on the night before he was crucified. Jesus was up against unspeakable persecution, death, and betrayal by his closest friends. He was about to die for all of mankind and asked God if there was any other way. Matthew 26:36-39, "Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Even Jesus asked for another way. He didn't like the way his circumstances were playing out either. Jesus could have sat there and ruminated on his X's: X = Torture, X = Betrayal, X = Death, X = Mockery, X = Pain, X = The weight of the sins of the entire world.... but He didn't. He knew that focusing on the X's was not going to change his fate. He didn't waste time questioning his circumstances or trying to convince Peter not to deny him or racking his brain for what he possibly could have done differently with Judas to prevent his betrayal, or whatever else you think could be done to fix your X's in a way that will change your current circumstances. Jesus presented his request to God, and then he moved forward with his circumstances with courage and the end-goal in mind.  I am not comparing our infertility to the crucifixion of Jesus, but I am learning from how he handled a situation that he desperately wanted to be different. I, too, want my circumstances to be different. Unlike Jesus, I have not done a good job of moving forward with courage and the end-goal in mind. I have been stuck in Gethsemane for the last year praying for a different way.

The beauty of the picture I got is the arrow pointing away from the problem and the question mark that is waiting for me there. Instead of focusing all of my energy and prayer and attention on the X's I felt the Lord asking me to focus that energy and prayer and attention on what he has for us next. I cannot change our circumstances. There is nothing I can do to fix this. Maybe Mike and I will have children. Maybe we won't. I have presented my request to God and now I am being called to move forward with courage like Jesus did. This means focusing my thought life and my prayer life on what is next, expecting blessings that will come in ways I could have never imagined. My prayer for myself and for those of you who might be reading this while trapped in your own Gethsemane is this: God, thank you for a way out of this mess. The way out might not the look the way I imagined, but it looks the way You imagined. Teach us what it really means to accept your will and how to do so with gladness. Forgive me for kicking and screaming my way through this season when you have longed to walk me through it peacefully and lovingly all along. Forgive me for constantly focusing on the problem and trying to change it according to my will while at the same time praying for your will. Thank you for your grace and patience with me in this process! Give us your courage and peace when things don't go our way. Continue to mature us spiritually. Continue to show us what you have for us and why it is so much better than what we had in mind. Continue to give us pictures and words and dreams and encouragement from others to guide us in your way. Amen.