Jumbled Up Thoughts

This week I was reflecting a lot on my relationship with God and my thoughts on prayer.  I had a lot of different thoughts, and I will see if I can effectively summarize them.

Typically it is just when I start to think things are going pretty well, and I am emotionally and spiritually back to where I was before all of this craziness with infertility started is when I fall back on my face and realize that there is no going back to what I was like before infertility.  There is only going forward.  And I can choose to go forward in faith or I can choose to simply go forward without it. 

On Friday I happened to catch a few minutes of Dennis Prager on talk radio.   He was talking to a lady that whose sister had died a premature death.  Her belief in prayer was now being threatened.  Dennis Prager brought up some good points.  He asked her “When you have heard of the millions upon millions who died prematurely [before]…how did you reconcile that with your faith?”  She responded that she “accepted it as a part of life, and honestly doesn’t know”.  Prager then stated that a “very big mistake within major religions… is to assume that our requests will be answered.  In the vast majority of instances, God says no.”  To which I would reply—"No" is an answer, just not the one we were hoping for.  Which doesn’t necessarily help me feel any better, and occasionally makes me feel bitter.   

He then went on to give another example of how a lady called him up one day and informed him that she now believed in capital punishment for murder.  This was not due to anything he had said to convince her, but due to the fact that her brother had been murdered. 

When I heard this, I knew I was in the same situation—my relationship with God and feeling about prayer was being threatened due to my negative feelings with infertility.  When others dealt with infertility or loss, I was so naïve about what they were going through and accepted it as part of the trials in life.  But now that I was STILL going through it, it wasn’t so easy to brush away.  Would I lose my faith over it?  That was the question.

At times I have accepted God’s will, at times I have been angry, and at this point in time I was tired and confused.  Would I now after everything turn my back on God because in my weakness to accept His will it seemed like He had turned on me?  I would be the one to lose in a battle against God.  That much I knew.  I fully believe in the doctrine of my religion and I had made a commitment to myself and to God that I would act accordingly to these doctrines.  So who would be the liar and go back on their promises now?  It would be me.  And if I faltered, then God would be off the hook.  It’s crazy the way my mind thinks.  God can do whatever He wants, who was I to force His hand?  I knew that wouldn’t work. 

And on top of all this, I was having a problem with prayer, again.

Going back to Dennis Prager, in his radio broadcast he continued by saying that when we pray “we shouldn’t say please give me X, Y, and Z,” instead we should say, “because I believe in you and love you, I would like you to know what I would like.”   

All that my mind registered from hearing that was “since God typically says no, why am I bothering to ask Him for help?”  Also the phrase:  “unmet expectations create frustrations” came to my mind.  I thought, "that was my problem—I was expecting God to help me, and when He wasn’t, I was feeling frustrated."  So my solution was to not ask for His help.  I began to pray again, and didn’t ask for anything, but I was still feeling frustrated and upset.  I think it was because I didn't believe He would help me if I asked.  

On Sunday I was poking around on my church’s website and ended up reading a talk by Rex Pinnegar about prayer.  (“Peace through Prayer,” Ensign, May 1993,  65 )  Peace through Prayer

This was the part I especially liked:

“There is terrible suffering in our world today. Tragic things happen to good people. God does not cause them, nor does He always prevent them. He does, however, strengthen us and bless us with His peace, through earnest prayer.

“It is not the usual purpose of prayer to serve us like Aladdin’s lamp, to bring us ease without effort,” Elder Richard L. Evans wrote. “Prayer is not a matter of asking only. It should not be always as the beggar’s upturned hand. Often the purpose of prayer is to give us strength to do what needs to be done, wisdom to see the way to solve our own problems, and ability to do our best in our tasks.

“We need to pray … for strength to endure, for faith and fortitude to face what sometimes must be faced.” (The Man and the Message, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1973, p. 289.)

It was the Lord himself who taught us by His own example how to find peace when the answers we receive are not what we asked for. On the eve of His crucifixion, with “soul … exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,” Jesus knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed to the Father, saying, “O my Father, if it be possible [and he acknowledged ‘all things are possible unto thee’], let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matt. 26:38–39; see also Mark 14:36.)

We can only try to imagine the anguish the Savior felt when we read in the Gospels that He was “sore amazed and very heavy” (Mark 14:33), that He “fell on his face” and prayed not once, but a second time, and then a third (Matt. 26:39, 42, 44). “Father, if thou be willing remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42.)

We cannot imagine the anguish of a loving Father, who, knowing what had to be done, accepted His Beloved Son’s willingness to suffer for all mankind. In this agony Christ was not left alone. As if the Father were saying, “I cannot take it from you, but I can and will send you strength and peace,” “there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.” (Luke 22:43.)

If we, like the Savior, have the faith to put our trust in our Father in Heaven, to submit to His will, the true spirit of peace will come as a witness and strength that He has heard and answered our prayers.

If we resist the inspiration of God and turn from His promptings, we are left to our own confusion and lack of peace.

Sometimes, when our prayers are not answered as we desire, we may feel the Lord has rejected us or that our prayer was in vain. We may begin to doubt our worthiness before God, or even the reality and power of prayer. That is when we must continue to pray with patience and faith and to listen for that peace.”

Reading this helped a little bit.  Now I just need to put it into practice.  I like that last paragraph, I think it summarizes how I was feeling.  

I hope that those of you who are going through hard times will be able to find some peace through your trials.  

Are we not all mothers? Celebrating my Day

On this Mother's Day I wanted to share some quotes from a talk that Sheri Dew, (a lady from my church) gave (Ensign November 2001, Are we not all mothers?)

She talks about Eve and the fact that all of us are mothers.  I like this scripture I read in Genesis 3:20 today: "And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the the mother of all living."

These were some of my favorite parts, but here is the link to the whole talk.

"While we tend to equate motherhood solely with maternity, in the Lord’s language, the word mother has layers of meaning. Of all the words they could have chosen to define her role and her essence, both God the Father and Adam called Eve “the mother of all living”—and they did so before she ever bore a child. 


Like Eve, our motherhood began before we were born...righteous women were endowed premortally with the privilege of motherhood. Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us....


For reasons known to the Lord, some women are required to wait to have children. This delay is not easy for any righteous woman. But the Lord’s timetable for each of us does not negate our nature. Some of us, then, must simply find other ways to mother. And all around us are those who need to be loved and led. 


Eve set the pattern. In addition to bearing children, she mothered all of mankind when she made the most courageous decision any woman has ever made and with Adam opened the way for us to progress. She set an example of womanhood for men to respect and women to follow, modeling the characteristics with which we as women have been endowed: heroic faith, a keen sensitivity to the Spirit, an abhorrence of evil, and complete selflessness. Like the Savior, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,” Eve, for the joy of helping initiate the human family, endured the Fall. She loved us enough to help lead us. 


As daughters of our Heavenly Father, and as daughters of Eve, we are all mothers and we have always been mothers."


So while I know this, I am still a bit apprehensive about going to church today.  Last night my hubby told me they would be passing out flower to the mothers, and my heart sank.  This has been a tradition in the past, but they seemed to be getting away from it, but I guess they changed their mind.  I got angry and frustrated.  I hate the awkwardness that comes when people get to me and are not sure if they should give me a flower or not.  And I really don't like it when people that know I don't have kids wish me a Happy Mother's Day.  (Because even though I just wrote about how we are all mothers, it can still be hard to remember that when you are surrounded by people wishing you a Happy Mother's day)  I will try to just say thank you and move on, but I would really rather they just say, "Hi, How are you, good to see you.  Hope you have a good day."  Or if they give me a flower say, "thinking of you today"  That would be nice,  just don't say Happy Mother's Day to me.  But I know it will happen, so today when I am told that I will say "thank you" and know that they are really telling me "Happy J Day".  Also I will try to remember a quote attributed to Brigham Young, "he who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool , and he who takes offense when offense is intended is usually a fool".  


This morning when we woke up my sweet husband told me, "Happy J Day"  "Today we celebrate you.  This is your special day."  We made belgian waffles topped with strawberries and powdered sugar and had a nice morning.  He gave me a sweet card and helped me feel special and loved.  


I also wanted to thank the blogger at "my infertility woes" for her post in celebration of us today.  It was beautiful and reminded me that today is a day to celebrate each of us and the efforts we have made to bring about the desires of our hearts.  


Thinking of all of you today.  You are all so wonderful.  

Trying to take my own advice

My day had it's ups and downs.

Work was crazy busy.  Exhausting, funny, and disturbing all at the same time.

Just let me ask a few things of any of you that end up getting pregnant and having your babies in the hospital.  Please remember that you are in a hospital, not a hotel!  Please remember that nurses and techs and a whole host of other people are marching in and out of your room.  And while nurses have seen everything, that doesn't mean we want to.  We don't want to see you snuggling in the little hospital bed.  And while we are already in your room, we certainly don't want to see out of our peripheral vision the dad walk out of your bathroom in just his undies and calmly proceed to put his pants on--he should run right back into the bathroom until we leave.  Yikes!  TMI you say?  yeah well, I thought it was a bit TMTS (too much to see)

Came home, ate some award winning chili and then vegged out watching a bit of America's Funniest Home Videos.  That never gets old.  People do the funniest things.  We had some good laughs watching that.

Then my hubby and I took a little time to read the Bible together tonight.   We happened to read in Luke 18: 1-8.  I used to love this parable about praying always and not fainting.  The parable talks about a judge in the city who got tired of a widow who kept asking him to avenge her adversary.  In the end he granted her request just to make her  go away and stop bothering him.  I had read these scriptures during my infertility treatments and figured I could also "weary the Lord" until He granted me the desires of my heart simply because He was tired of my pestering Him with this request.  Sometimes the scriptures make it sound so simple:  "ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be granted unto you".  Reading these scriptures tonight brought me back to that time when I tried to weary the Lord with my request for a child, but came up empty handed.  As I remembered this, my faith faltered and I felt sad.  My husband, tried to remind me that we don't know God's timing.  This is true, but still hard to accept sometimes.

My husband has been practicing the blues on his guitar, so of course he proceeded to play some to try to cheer me up.  He sang an Eric Clapton song about being confused and angry.  I told him, that wasn't really helping.  So he switched to another song.  One thing I love about when he plays is that he likes to change the words of the songs.  He started playing the John Maier song "Waiting on the world to change".  Then he added lyrics about things that happened this the week such as, "waiting for the carpets to be cleaned" and I don't remember what else.  But it was funny and did the trick.

I know everything will work out, it always does.  It's just hard to remember that sometimes.  In the meantime I'll just try to make the best of it.  A phrase that sometimes helps me just came to mind--I can do hard things.  I'm pretty sure infertility qualifies as a "hard thing".  If that's the case, then I can get through this.  At least I hope so.

Barren Women

This year I am reading the Old Testament. I just love the stories in the Bible. I was reading today in Genesis 25:21 about Isaac and Rebekah and I discovered that Rebekah had been barren. This verse simply stated that “Isaac intreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.”

I had never known that Rebekah was barren. I knew about the others: Sarai/Sarah, Rachel, Hannah and Elisabeth. But I don’t know how had I missed that. Well, at any rate, I know now. And I can add her to the list. I always feel a kinship to other infertile women past and present.

At times being infertile or “barren” has felt like a punishment from God. I have wondered what I did to deserve this. And I being a person with many weaknesses I have found plenty of reasons why God might want to punish me. But when I remember these remarkable and choice women in the scriptures who were barren, I am reminded that infertility is not a punishment from God. The people that either make it into the scriptures are usually either really bad or really good. And it is obvious that these women were great women with important roles to play.

It has been helpful to read these women’s stories and see how they overcame their challenges. I wish mine challenge was as short as one little verse in the scriptures-- that my husband prayed to God and God intervened. But I am being facetious, I know it wasn’t that simple: one prayer, one verse, and all of their hopes and dreams came true. It would be like having a genie in a lamp. I am sure they prayed and waited upon the Lord for a long time.

As I thought about this, I realized that I hadn’t ever really thought about how Abraham’s whole family had quite a difficult time getting pregnant. They must have had to exercise a lot of faith in the promise of the Lord that they would have a great posterity. And the Lord clearly wanted to bless them, otherwise He wouldn’t have promised Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob that they would have seed as innumerable “as the stars of the heaven” (Gen 26: 4). And if there is one thing we can count on, it is that God keeps His promises.

Many times I have felt as Rachel did who demanded of her husband, “give me children or else I die” Genesis 30:1.

I feel like I have tried every one of their tactics: pray, plead, cry out in anguish, and make promises to the Lord in exchange for a child. I guess I haven’t gotten really old like Sarah and Elisabeth, although I really don’t think I could handle having a child when I am 100 yrs old. So I don’t know that I want to try that approach. I think that is one thing I would pray to not have happen.

I guess for now I will take the advice in Galations 4:27, “Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not”, while in the back of my mind I will remember when one woman’s prayers were answered as depicted in one of my favorite scriptures: And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her, and opened her womb.” Gen 30:22

God is aware of each of us, and the trials we are going through. That is one thing I am certain of.

Barfing, Envy, Coming to Terms

What do all of these things have in common?

I have no idea.

I hate when I have to barf. Last night I felt sick to my stomach like I needed to puke, but couldn't, when finally I followed my husband's advice to stick 2 fingers down my throat and get it over with. Never before had I done that, but it worked. And I felt better.

Now on to envy. One thing I hate about blogs is that when I read other people's blogs they seem to be having a great life. Everything is super great for them, and I feel so inadequate or wonder why don't I have the talent or abilities that some of these people have? And I hate myself for it and I hate others for having those abilities and utilizing them. I'm sure I could do great things, but for whatever reason I need to learn to be content with the tiny spot of earth God has asked me to tend. I often feel like a "worker ant" just carrying crumbs to and fro, knowing I am part of something big, but sometimes wishing I could be the star for just a short moment in time.

Next up, coming to terms. I happened to click on the cjane enjoy it blog button that one of my friend's blogs has and I of course was envious of her and her success. I want to be a writer and a great photographer and here she had both. Why her, why not me? I know she has had a tough life, her sister was in a plane crash (I read nie nie-might ring a bell), but still, that wasn't helping. Then I happened to click on her "about me" icon and I was struck by the fact that she had experienced infertility and had decided to blog because as she wrote, "In 2005, I Courtney Jane decided to start a blog because I heard that blogging made dreams come true. And oh boy, I wanted a baby. When I wasn't pregnant after my fourth month posting, and with a daily serving of people telling me to "just enjoy" our child-less state, I moved to make my blog proof that I found joy in infertility." I couldn't believe this when I read it, and in that moment I felt normal again. I felt that here I had a chance to be happy, (not holding out for the pregnancy part). And a small part of my envy and sadness slipped away.

I was at church today and everyone was talking about how last year was a tough year, and I realized that so many people are fighting a hard battle. And probably this next year will still be a tough year for me and many others. I will hope for rainbows and ponies, but will not be surprised if I have to settle for lucky charms and ponytail hairdos as the highlights of my days.

I wonder, does anyone ever envy me? That would be interesting to know. Because if they did, I would just tell them they were off their rocker, and that there was no reason to be jealous of me. In thinking of that it reminds me of church a little bit. At church everyone is dressed in their Sunday best and it is easy to be envious of one another because everyone looks great. But under the surface everyone is struggling. Some have issues in their marriages, some have problems with their kids, or kids with their parents, or health problems, infertility, financial uncertainty, loneliness, etc. You name, someone's got it. Everyone is dealing with something. No one has a perfect life. But you don't see it, all you see is how they seem to have it all put together for those few hrs each week, and if you are not careful, you create a warped sense of who they are in connection with who you are. We all just put on a pretty face and try to get through life as best we can. I guess it really does just come down to how you act and react to your individual trials and situations.

I guess life is a lot like barfing sometimes. You can sometimes feel so sick to your stomach tired of life, but once you go through the trial and experience, supposedly you feel better. (At least that's what I've heard--j/k, I know that's true, it is just hard to remember sometimes)

Today I was thinking about the scripture, "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25) I thought, what was he thinking, seriously? Did Adam really think he would be helping us have joy by partaking of the forbidden fruit and enabling us to experience mortality and all the trials that come with it? Well, whether he did or didn't know what he was doing, God did. He provided us with a Savior who would make it possible for us to repent and be forgiven and experience joy in mortality. God wants us to be happy, that if for sure. And that is how I came to terms with that scripture and my life as I know it today.