God's approval...

Something has been bothering. On one of the support pages I posted about something that was bothering me. I vented. Along with the vent was a post about my plans to help my fertility. Apparently the idea of having a gastric bypass to help with my pcos is not one that many feel should be an option for me.

In that conversation I had with those people, it became evident that we are all so stuck in our need to become mothers that sometimes we forget that everyone needs to make the best choices for themselves, and that one option is not right one for everyone. I received a backlash of judgement from ladies who should have been my support. I wasn’t asking for advice, I was asking for support in my decisions and my struggles in trying to not become a bitter person and trying to be happy for all who have what I so glaringly don’t have my life. My 12 and 13 year old students ask innocently about any children I have, and then why I don’t have any yet. To them it is a given, they don’t yet know the struggle some of them or their friends and family will have, yet these women were those same children at one point.

How is it that we go from the innocence of childhood to tearing each other apart as adults? I am starting to see it younger and younger in the schools as well. We are too quick to pass judgement on someone, and I will be the first to admit that I do that as well. Instead of walking away from that conversation with an uplifted heart, I walked away with doubt and shame for a choice that I made. That somehow I was giving up too soon on medicine, and that I should just wait a little longer. Give it a chance.

It was then I realized that we all have different stories of how we have become who we are. I struggle with health and fertility issues which has put a financial strain on us. My struggle aren’t necessarily that of others. As I interact more with support groups on Facebook, I have realized that we too often tear down those that have a success story or those who are choosing a different method. We as humans seem to naturally want others to be as miserable as we are, to feel that pain we are feeling. We can’t let that define us. If anything that my IIH has taught me is that we can’t let our pain and problems define who we are. Yes I don’t do the same things I have been able to do in my past, but that doesn’t define me as a person, and I certainly can’t be ashamed of the decisions I make from this point on or have made in the past.

God has called us to love one another. He didn’t say judge each other. He also didn’t say only love the person if they do certain things. What he calls us to do as humans is to recognize our faults, and recognize and forgive it in our selves and others. We shouldn’t be saying harsh words to each other, and we definitely shouldn’t call it a support group if we are going to do nothing but tear each other down. That isn’t support.

With all of that being said, something was posted on Facebook that really bothered me. We too often as Christians tell women that a child is God’s blessing, or in the words of a friend yesterday, God’s approval on you and your husband. While these words are said with good intentions behind them, it is something that has bothered me. For someone who knew it would be a struggle to conceive (didn’t realize that it would be this much of a struggle) I struggle with the idea that it is God’s plan. Is it God’s plan that I was in pain for 16 months, that my husband and I would have thousands in medical bills for something that wasn’t even fertility related, and yet keeps us from being able to try for fertility treatments for the sheer reason that taking 10,000 out in loans for a treatment that has a 20% guarantee of working? I just don’t see how any of struggle in the last year has been God’s plan, and then to be told that it is all his plan with so much suffering that I have gone through. It just cuts you to the core. What could you possibly have done to deserve so much bad in one’s life? That is what it feels like every time I hear God’s Plan.

Nothing will take away the pain of not being able to get pregnant. That is a failure that is something that you just work through, with the hope that some day it will be a possibility. So when I read that it was God’s approval on someone to get pregnant, I lost it. That sentence passed judgement on all the rest of us who struggle. It isn’t a bible verse, it isn’t even true. Because if it was, then why do women who use and abuse their bodies get pregnant. Why do parents who abuse their children were able to become parents? There is something inherently wrong with the statement that children are god’s approval.

I then find myself thinking that she meant well, she has never truly understood what fertility struggles are. That I pass it off as she doesn’t know any better. This goes for anyone who posts a complaint about a little nausea, or that the ultrasound has to be done again and it is an inconvenience because you are uncomfortable while doing it, or that you are tired just a little more than usual. All of these things I would give anything to feel in a heartbeat. And that is where I become bitter, and I can’t let this feeling take over. I can’t let it define me. It is yet another thing that I have overcome, and with the strength God has given me, and used my situations to develop me I can. See that is where God comes in all of this. It is these situations that happen to us that God uses to help us to become better people, and find and discover ourselves in new ways.

I can do anything through him. I am going to try to be more uplifting to those around me. Not to let the negativity suck me in, and truly realize my strength in these very tough times for me.