From the Archives - Long Journey From Here to There: A Couple's Struggle With Infertility

     Last spring I went to a baby shower for the first time in eight years. It was hard, in fact, there was a time I thought I'd never, ever go to another baby shower.

     In January of 1997, Matthew and I had been married for five years, and we decided it was a good time to start a family. But we didn't get pregnant and didn't get pregnant, and didn't get pregnant.

     About the same time, we found out that my mother's breast cancer had moved to her bones - one of the most painful kinds of cancer to have. So we put thinking about a family on hold in order to deal with her sickness, chemotherapy, and radiation.

      Mom died at home on January 28, 1998, a little over a year after her bone cancer diagnosis. In her final days she was in a lot of pain, but all she could think about was seeing Jesus. It was a tough time, and we grieved deeply, but God's grace allowed us to move on with our lives.

     We still weren't pregnant, so we decided to go to a doctor. He recommended a "mild" fertility medicine, which we prayed about and researched thoroughly. We found that it was possible that we might have twins, but nothing like that kinds of result you see in the news, so we took the medicine.

     That's when I started having pain so severe I couldn't walk. Matthew would carry me from bed to the couch. We went back to the doctor and he did a laparoscopy - a tiny incision where a scope is used to look around and laser out anything that doesn't belong. When the doctor opened me up, he found endometriosis so bad he couldn't do anything but sew me up and send me home.

     The severity of the endometriosis explained why I wasn't getting pregnant. The next course of action was a different, powerful drug that induced menopause in order to shrink the endometriosis. Of course the best treatment for endometriosis is pregnancy, but if endometriosis is preventing you from getting pregnant...

     When you're trying to get pregnant, each month is a cycle of excitement and grief. You can't help but get your hopes up and think, Okay, it will be this month. You spend two weeks waiting to see, and in an instant you're crushed. It dominates your life; you can't think about anything else.

     In the meantime, all your friends are getting pregnant and having babies, you become angry because it seems so unfair. Your friends drift away as they spend time with people who have children. As a couple, you become isolated, alone. People don't know what to do so they just don't do anything.

     As a couple you are dealing with stress and grief because your family isn't becoming what you dreamed it would be. Infertility is a big reason for failed marriages, and this is the stage that can make or break a marriage. Fortunately for me - and unfortunately for all other women - I have the best husband in the world. We decided we were in this together and had to grow together instead of letting it pull us apart.

     For a long time I struggled with anger, even hatred, toward anybody who got pregnant, Just hearing the words "I'm pregnant" took me months to get over. At one time we had 19(!) friends who were pregnant, and this only heightened our sense of isolation. I felt awful for having such strong anger toward those people because I knew they had not done anything. Ultimately I discovered I was not angry with them, I was angry at God.

     The months I was on menopause drugs we couldn't get pregnant, so it was somewhat of a break, but I was more aware of time passing and getting older. After six months, they did another laparoscopy and lasered out as much of the endometriosis as they could, hoping to give me enough relief to get pregnant.

     And ... nine months later I was pregnant! As a high-risk pregnancy, I started early with weekly doctor visits and ultrasounds. As one ultrasound, we discovered it was twins. We were elated. We wondered if God was giving us an extra blessing after we'd waited so long. But at another ultrasound, between three and four months, they found one of the twins had died. Two weeks later, the other twin was not growing either.

     Since we had been trying for so long - five years - everybody knew we were pregnant. One thing I'd always daydreamed about was telling our family we were pregnant. Everybody immediately started buying thing for us and stocking the nursery. When we found out we were having twins, they started buying diapers. But when you come home from the hospital with nothing, to a room full of diapers and clothes, it's like you're being stabbed in the heart. It hurts that bad. And it continues to hurt; no one pulls that knife out.

     That entire time, from the surgeries through the miscarriage, we lived in a pit. We couldn't understand why it took so long to get pregnant, why God allowed us to be so happy when we were, and why we couldn't keep those babies. It made no sense.

     About two months after the miscarriage we started trying to get pregnant again. My pain got much worse, and we decided to completely reevaluate our lives. We had so many questions. Why do we suffer? Does God think we would not make good parents? Why are teenagers throwing their babies in trash cans? What do some people "accidentally" get pregnant while others can't, no matter how hard they try? Why are there parents who continually complain about their children?

     We decided to make something out of our pain. God took us down this path for a reason, and we did not want to waste our pain. We felt led to take steps to be able to minister to other couples who go through this, to people who are around them, and to the churches who should be reaching out to them.

     We thought seminary might give us background and training to minister or start a ministry. We began to pray and research, and my dad suggested we look at Trinity. We soon discovered the bioethics program and scheduled a campus visit. The whole time we were here on that visit, it was clear that this was where the Lord wanted us to be. So we sold all the things we'd planned for a family - the home with a big backyard and a swing set, family cars - and moved here.

     God's hand in our being at Trinity is even more evident when you consider the fact that on our first visit here I was in extreme pain. In fact, I could barely walk around the campus; I was in a wheelchair for a large part of the trip. When we got home my doctor scheduled me for a surgery to remove one ovary and Fallopian tube, and, again, as much of the endometriosis as possible, with the hope of preserving my fertility.

     When we did move to Chicago, I'd been on bed rest for eight weeks recovering from the surgery, and we still had some hope that we would get pregnant. About that time I found out that both my brother and I were born after my mother had one of her ovaries removed. I found a little hope in knowing that.

     The doctors said surgery would give me eight to ten pain-free years, but it was only months before the pain returned. Since we moved here in June of 2002, I've spent every day in pain. Some days I can barely function or walk, but most of the time I decide that it isn't going to get the best of me, so I take medicine, and by God's grace, live my life.

     Back when we first couldn't get pregnant, our doctor in Louisiana recommend that we try in vitro fertilization. We went to a local fertility clinic and they told us that since pregnancy is best cure of endometriosis, and IVF was our best chance of getting pregnant, that was the thing to do. We had already decided that we were not going to do IVF. It is a complicated issue, and there is no chapter and verse in the Bible on IVF, so I was thankful that we had taken the time to set our own limits ahead of time.

     My main doctor was an awesome doctor, and although he was not a believer, he was very respectful of our beliefs. He did everything he could to help us get pregnant within the boundaries we had set. The doctors at the fertility clinic said IVF was our only option, and if we didn't do that, we wouldn't get pregnant.

     When we moved here and started a doctor search, all of them said IVF was what we needed, and if we weren't interested in that they would ask, "Why are you here?" We finally found a doctor who was more accommodating, but I wasn't super crazy about him. Although he suggested IVF, he was willing to talk about alternatives. Just one more testimony of God's hand is that we recently found out he's one of the area's leading physicians in endometriosis and surgical treatment of it. God is good!!

     Because the pain has gotten so bad that I can no longer live with it and because I now have adenomyosis as well. I'm going to have a complete hysterectomy this month (April 2004). Deciding to have a hysterectomy was a hard decision because it will take away any chance, however slim it was, of ever having a baby. It's a whole new grieving process.

     This has been, and in many ways continues to be a difficult journey. But, and I want to stress this point, we absolutely could not have made it through without God. There were times when God felt far away, and there are lots of things we still don't understand, but we know that God has been actively working "behind the scenes," as it were, much like in the Old Testament account of Joseph. As we look toward the future, it is with great hope that God will use the journey of our lives to bring glory to Himself. In order to remind ourselves of God's goodness and to memorialize our twins, we named them Joseph and Hope.

     So I have a small glimpse of a great future - even if it is without kids. I'm not all gloom and doom like I have been at times in the past. We believe that we can serve God in ways that we might not be able if we had children.

     I remember years ago reading a book on infertility. In it a women said she knew she was healing when someone told her she was pregnant and it didn't cause a week of tears. I remember thinking, "That will never happen for me, I will always go into a personal pit after finding out someone is pregnant."

     This year, for the first time, I found out someone was pregnant and it didn't sent me into a tailspin. I thought I must be getting better.

     And I went to that baby shower even though I thought I never, ever would.

By Ginger Eppinette

Former Member of Trinity Wives Fellowship

Suggested Books: When Empty Arms Become a Heavy Burden by Sandra Glahn and William Cutrer

     Empty Arms  by Pam Vredevelt,  I'll Hold You in Heaven by Jack Hayford,  The Ache for a           Child by Debra Bridwell, Disappointment With God by Philip Yancey, Deceived by God by John      Feinberg, Does God Need Our Help?: Cloning, Assisted Suicide, & Other Challenges in                Bioethics by John F. Kilner and C. Ben Mitchell, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians by Gilbert      Meilander

Jehovah-Jireh: The Lord Will Provide

      "So Abraham called the name of that place, 'The Lord will provide'; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'" - Genesis 22:14.

      My husband John and I moved to Trinity in July 2013, less than a month after our wedding and only a couple of months after completing our undergraduate degrees. I became involved in Trinity Wives by being a part of a small group, and the leaders combined the groups for the very first session of the year. One of the small group leaders did the line game as the ice breaker, where you put a line on the ground and people stand a little ways from the line. When she asked a question or said a statement that applied to you, you would step forward to the line. I'll never forget the last question she asked: "How many of you have seen how the Lord provides, whether it was in providing so that you and your family could come to Trinity, or in previous times in your life?" The laughter and joking died away, and everyone became very serious. It seemed as though everyone in unison stepped forward to the line, proclaiming "Yes. The Lord has provided." Even in times of struggle, even when we don't think it is possible, the Lord has always provided, and He will always provide in the future.

      When John and I first came to Trinity, we had only a little in our bank accounts. It was enough to get us through a couple more months of paying rent, and we had to take our students loans to pay for tuition. I had been looking for and applying to jobs since April; and by August, I was getting pretty desperate and starting to feel defeated. I started applying for anything and everything in the medical and pharmaceutical fields, from receptionist to lab technician, in hospitals, clinics, and manufacturing companies, whatever I could find. Finally, I had applied to a clinic receptionist job in Zion that was posted by a temp agency. The temp agency asked me to come in and interview in person, saying they would try and find me a job that fit with my skills and what I was looking for, but they didn't think the receptionist job was it. My resume was lying out on their counter after my interview while I was waiting for my contact to look through his listing of jobs. Someone just happened to walk by, glance down, and see it. And then she picked it up and finished reading it. When she was done, she immediately asked to see me, and then told me right away, "I have a job for you!" I couldn't help but ask her if she was serious. And she confirmed that she was serious, even adding that I would be a perfect fit. The company wanted me to start right away, and how crazy it was that my resume was just laying out there, and she happened to see it because she had been trying really hard to fill this position. In my head I was thinking, "What a God thing. I don't care what this job is, I'm in." And so I began my job at Akorn Pharmaceuticals, just in the nick of time. And that job has helped provide for John and me throughout our whole time at Trinity, and blessed us beyond what we imagined. So when that small group leader asked if I had seen how the Lord provided for me and my family to be here at Trinity, I stepped forward along with all the other women.

      Sometimes it's hard to trust in the Lord to provide. When you can barely make rent, or the student loans are piling up, it can be difficult to let go and say, "Lord, it's in your hands. I trust You." But one of the names of God, Jehovah-Jireh from Genesis 22:14, tells us that our God is a God who provides for us. Along with Genesis 22:14, there are many other Bible verses that speak the truth of "The Lord will provide." Here are just a few: Matthew 6:25-34, Matthew 7:7-15, The Lord's Prayer ("Give us this day our daily bread), Philippians 4:6, and Philippians 4:19.

      Finally, let's take a look specifically at how the Lord provided in Genesis 22, the story which causes Abraham to proclaim Jehovah-Jireh.

      God was testing Abraham's commitment to Him. Can you imagine your thoughts if God asked you to give up your child (your only child as it repeatedly says in Genesis 22) to Him? Imagine Isaac's thoughts as his father tied him to the altar. But both Abraham and Isaac had faith that the Lord would provide an alternate sacrifice, and because of their faith, God provided a ram in the place of Isaac.

      How this points to Jesus! It amazes me that even in Genesis, God's plan for the redemption of His people is being revealed. Reading through the text, I can see the similarities of Isaac and Jesus. I can see how God provides for Himself a lamb. I can see how God did not withhold His Son, His only Son. And I can see even more clearly how the Lord has provided for us. With Jesus, God has provided for us a way to finally stand before Him. He has provided for us the ultimate treasure, the treasure of Heaven. And He provided the sacrifice necessary to atone for our sin.

      "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." - John 3:16

By Alyssa VandenHeuvel

Saying Goodbye

      Summer in seminary can be really hard. It often means goodbyes to dear friends graduating and moving away.

      The goodbyes have hit us heavy this month and last. Our family lives on campus. It seems like almost all our neighbors started their programs at the same time and are now all graduating and moving away at the same time. For our little neighborhood this has meant a mass exodus of many of my children's playmates, my mom friends, and my husband's colleagues.

      It has been hard to experience the transient nature of our neighborhood so personally. Each of us has expressed our sadness differently these past few weeks, my two-year-old repeatedly stuck objects up her nose, hoping that it would bring back her friend's mom, who was a nurse. It did not work, and her grieving process ended in a trip to the ER!

      Grieving our friends will look different for each person and family, but it is important to say goodbye well. This is a common topic discussed among missionaries, and it seems particular applicable to seminary students and their families in the summer.

How can we say goodbye well in seasons filled with much transition?

1) Actually say goodbye. Don't just avoid your leaving friends. Talk about how much you will miss them. Help them pack. Hug them. Wave when they drive off. Be present and actually say goodbye!

2) Have some fun. It doesn't have to be all tears. Have one last BBQ in your yard. Go someplace new together. Have a game night. Take some special photos. Enjoy each other and celebrate the wonderful gift of friendship!

3) Pray for them. Pray for their marriage. Pray for their children. Pray for their new job. Pray for them to continue to grow in godliness and love for the Lord. Pray!

4) Pray for yourself. Pray that the Lord would use even this sadness to draw you closed to Him. Pray that you would be thankful for good friends. Pray for your heart to not grow hard to welcoming new students and their families. Pray that these transitions would point you to Christ and our only forever Home. Pray!

By Lexi Zuo

Lexi is a sinner saved by grace, wife to Jeremiah, mother to  three little ones, and an avid reader. She blogs regularly at www.MrsSeminary.com.

Leaders Need a Consistent Devotional Life

           We are not meant to life the Christian life on our own. Christ wants to live through us. Galatians 2:20 says: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

           Christ gives us the Holy Spirit to live in us from the moment we first believe. That Spirit gives us wisdom, direction, love for people, courage, fruit of the Spirit, everything we need for ministry ...if only we'll take time to learn and to listen.

           What happens when I get so busy in my activities - or trying to figure out what is best - that I don't take time to read from Scripture and pray? I plunge ahead into trying to fix someone or something without Christ. Instead of gratitude, I meet resistance; instead of God being glorified, I am just exhausted.

           Big decisions in life drive people to God for guidance. Very needy times drive most people to God, pleading for help. But it is the ordinary days, days packed with duties and responsibilities, when a consistent devotional life with God is so essential. On these ordinary days, I learn who God is and how God wants me to live.

           Much of ministry is through ordinary things. People watch for evidence of Jesus in the ways I live: in how I deal with disruptions in my day; how I treat my family members, my co-workers, and those difficult-to-love church members; in what my priorities are and where my joy comes from.

           I want to be available to Christ every day and all day long. That kind of closeness with Christ comes from daily spending time alone with God. On these days I build the openness and trust in my relationship with God that is both my compass and my anchor when difficult times come.

           This past spring, we learned the importance of prayer as Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer. Here I'd like to focus on reading Scripture as a part of our devotional life. There are four reasons that reading the Bible regularly and often should be a part of our daily devotional time. It builds our faith, reveals our inmost self, keeps us from sin, and is useful in our ministry.

           The Scriptures teach me who God is, why Jesus came, and the meaning of Christ dwelling in us. In reading, I am reminded of God's goodness, loving kindness, justice, and that God knows all and controls all. As I come to know the true God, my faith and trust grow: "So then faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:16).

           As I read, the Holy Spirit both reveals the desires of my heart and convicts me of sin. The Bible says, "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing the soul and spirit, joint and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account" (Hebrews 4:12-13).

            While I am reading the Bible, my inmost self - my heart with its deepest desires - responds. 

God already knows the desires of our heart and is delighted to grant them in the best ways and at the best times. Other specific desires for things or better circumstances can shout and make it hard to hear our deepest desires: desires for love, for purpose, for belonging, for peace, for truth. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the true desires of your health.

           Scripture also makes me aware of thoughts and attitudes that come from my old nature, my self-centered sin nature. God wants to free us from areas in our lives in which we are slaves to sin. We can use our daily devotional time to confess sin and accept God's forgiveness. As the Scripture promises, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (I John 1:8-9). Sometimes, however, we still have to face the consequences of our sin.

           Finally, Scripture is very practical and useful in our ministry. The Bible itself reveals that it is inspired by God. "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (II Timothy 3:16). From Scripture we learn about undeserved grace and mercy. We learn courage in the face of persecution. We learn persevering through disappointment, about dealing with loss and carrying one another's burdens, about rejoicing with others when they are blessed, and about the certain promise of eternal life.

           I hope you are convinced of the importance of spending regular time reading God's word. It builds faith, reveals our inmost self, keeps us from sin and is useful in our ministry.

           Now for the details: How can we find time for regular Bible reading and prayer in our busy lives? There are many options. Before I had children, I got up with my husband so that each of us could spend a "quiet time" with God first thing. When I had infants, I read Scripture aloud while nursing or sang along with Christian nursery songs. When I had little children who woke early, we both switched to nighttime quiet times just before sleeping. With older children, it's possible to have family devotional time around a meal.

           Some of you have long commutes, and you listen to Scripture or a daily devotional message while you drive. When I have sleepless nights, I read Psalms. When I'm sick, I go back to listening to music. Don't hesitate to enlist your husband's help - ask him to help you develop a discipline that works best with your lifestyle.

By Suzanne M. Kilner

Faculty Wife Advisor to Trinity Wives Fellowship