Never, Always, and unexplained infertility

I swore to myself that I’d never post publicly about this. 

Never.
Always. 

These are holy words. They should be so rarely spoken in our conversations that a hush comes over the room when someone says them out loud. Why, might you ask? Because they are so rarely true. I can only think of a handful of occasions where it’s appropriate to say always. Where never is actually true. And they usually describe God. 

God is Always Good.
Jesus Never Sinned. 

God is always for us. God will never fail us.

I find myself saying “always” and “never,” but they are too precise for our unreliable world. You can ask Kevin about my obsession with using these words correctly. The quickest way to get my guile up is when he says, “Shelby you always…” or “Shelby, you never.” They are unfair and usually untrue when it comes to humans. See what I mean? Holy Words. 

I’ve mentally repeated this vow to myself over and over again through the years, “I’ll never post about this subject” but it’s time to ink the truth that has slowly wrapped around my heart for five years. 

Here’s why this vow and these words matter to this story. 

Our bodies are meant to reproduce. One of the very first commands that God gave Adam and Eve was to be fruitful and multiply. It’s inherent in our design. I read this scripture as “Have great sex with the covenant love of your life, and then you celebrate your awesome union with lots of squishy babies.” I’ve always seen children and parenting as a natural, normal, and wonderfully good part of life. I never imagined my life without them. When I was a kid, I loved the game of Life, and I wanted my little car game piece to have lots of little blue and pink nibs in it.

So, subconsciously, or maybe very consciously, I’ve grown up with a core belief about what it means to be a woman. The belief? Part of being a woman means bringing, cultivating, and stewarding life into the world. This is part of what it means to be truly alive, truly feminine, and to find meaning in life as a woman.  Sure, I know many single and married women without children who are living meaningful lives, but FOR ME? I believed that having children was a part of what it meant for me to really live. But in one moment, that deeply held belief was shattered as I came face to face with a practical reality. 

“You’ve got a case of unexplained infertility.”

After sitting in a sterile, uncomfortable waiting room for forty-five minutes, a fertility specialist waltzed in the door saying, “It’s unexplained infertility.” I remember being quite baffled when the Doctor said this. 

“You mean to tell me, I did all those tests just for this guy to tell me what I already know?” This is why I don’t like going to the doctor…. So we ask,

“Uh, unexplained? What exactly should we do?” 

He gave us three options.

1. Do nothing.
2. Try IUI. 
3. Decide how many kids you want, do some rounds of IVF, and then discard the rest of your fetuses. 

I’m sorry, discard what? What do the acronyms mean?

This was the moment I felt this belief start to collapse. 

Later, I began wrestling with the diagnosis. I also wrestled with the lack of a “real” diagnosis. I wrestled with Why. Intense, spiritual wrestling. All the feelings of shame and insecurity I thought I had mastered slapped me across the face.

I thought God was punishing me. That I deserved to be barren, and that God has closed my womb because I was unworthy. That I was a mistake.  I was a curse on my marriage. I would have no legacy and nothing worthwhile to show in my life. These were the thoughts that ran roughshod over my heart.

And I had to start picking them apart. Or I was going to break.

Was I really…? Would God actually…? 

The diagnosis of unexplained infertility dismantled a core belief I held about my identity, my femininity, and what it meant for me to live a meaningful life before God. This is why I’ve never wanted to really talk about this. When I left that doctor’s office, unexplained infertility triggered a season of full-blown identity crisis, hiding, and enormous amounts of shame.

If you’ve spent longer than five minutes with me, then you know I prefer action over inactivity, particularly if I’m in pain. For awhile after the visit, I wallowed in my shame. But I didn’t stay there too long. One day, I started doing something about infertility (with a helpful prodding from my mom.) mostly because moving felt better than staying still.

I researched, and I started correcting the physical problems I knew about. I started studying what the scriptures say about infertility (surprisingly a lot). I wrestled. God touched my hip socket. I cried. God saw my tears. I kept working on it. After a time though, my usual strategy of getting busy and ploughing through it began to reach its’ limit.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that “doing something about it,” I realized God was less interested in the outcome (pregnancy) and more interested in who I was becoming in this unforeseen circumstance.

Would I trust God without outcomes? Would I worship Him without guarantees? Would my identity as a woman really be contingent upon having children?

I’ve learned over this long season, that unexplained infertility is the battleground where God is forming me. The question is, what am I being formed into? Will I be resentful, hard, spiteful, or ungrateful? Will I be a woman who only worships God when He gives the outcomes, I feel I deserve? Will I trust He’s good when it doesn’t feel like it?

Over time, I stopped asking God why. When I don’t understand, now I ask, “What do you have for me in this?” And he answers in surprising ways.

So I praise Him.

God you are El Roi, The God Who Sees Me. (Genesis 16:13)

Sometimes I ask myself what my inner life would be like if He had NOT permitted me to go through this season of infertility. What if I had never been forced to go through this? 

Once, my heart was a barren wasteland full of conditional ‘trust’ and expected outcomes. It is slowly becoming a chamber of trust in spite of unmet expectations. I’ve prayed for children. I have prayed for successful outcomes. But over the years, I quit expecting that particular outcome. Not because He can’t do it.

Let me be very clear. It’s not because He CAN’T do it. But because it’s no longer necessary in order for me to trust him. My faith feels less transactional today. Less commoditized. I wouldn’t have said the same five years ago.

It’s difficult to really name all that God seems to be doing in my heart, and I’m fully convinced there’s work still to be done. But just maybe God has been using this season to fix broken places in me. Maybe this is less about a barren womb and more about becoming the type of woman that God always intended for me to be.    

Unexplained Infertility happens to be the battleground. I still wrestle. Some days are harder than others. But I’m more equipped now. By God’s grace, I’m more formed now.

So, as I’ve tried to make sense of this unexpected season of life, I want to share a Bible story you might be familiar with. I think it is a part of a much larger pattern, and my small story seems to fit into the pattern. 

Once, there was a man named Moses. Out in the wilderness, he saw a burning bush, and God invited him to take off his sandals and step onto holy ground. It was likely the strangest, most least likely place Moses would have expected to hear from God, and yet…That’s the place God chose to reveal who he was. God invited Moses in, and God didn’t hold back. “I am who I am.” He spoke. And Moses had a choice. 

Perhaps you’re in the middle of something hard. 

Perhaps you’re holding tightly to a vow you once made. 

Perhaps you are tempted to speak those holy words, always and never, over a story that hasn’t resolved the way you hoped just yet.

But it’s not really about a resolution, is it?

Maybe, just maybe, 

You’re standing on Holy Ground.

“Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” (Exodus 3:5).