When things don't go according to plan......

Scripture reference for the week:
Jeremiah 29: 11-12
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you."


At one time or another, we all have experienced disappointment, sadness or loss in our lives.

Maybe you have experienced frustration, anger or sadness during a break up or a divorce from someone you once loved very much. You wonder how you will ever move on. And if you have kids, you wonder how life will ever be the same for you or for them.

And after the break up or divorce, it is unbelievably difficult when you can't find someone to love right away-someone who loves you as much as you love them, someone who will take care of you. You ask yourself, "What is wrong with me? Why is this happening to me?"

You may experience frustration when you lose a job and you can't find another one right way. Or maybe you are experiencing financial difficulty, wondering how you are going to make ends meet. How are you going to put the next meal on the table for your family or yourself? How will you pay your mortgage or make your next car payment?

And maybe you are experiencing the worst possible scenario in your life-the loss of someone you love. Whether it be a spouse, a child, a mother or a father, a grandmother or grandfather or even a pet. The passing of someone that you love is life-changing and unbearable! Some days you wonder how you will even wake up and breathe in and out, let alone, get yourself dressed and fed.

Life is full of so many questions, so many twists and turns that we never truly understand. We often wonder, "Why me? What is your lesson here, God?" During these times in our life our faith is tested more than ever. It is difficult to trust in God and know that there are better times ahead. But it is during these times that we have to trust that he DOES have a plan for us, even though HIS plan does not sometimes seem to be OUR plan.

Please read below about when my faith was tested more than ever before in my life. (Story submitted to Guideposts magazine):

Finding Faith in the Midst of Infertility

A checklist. Isn’t that what we all have for our lives?  A plan that we have hoped for and looked forward to accomplishing since we were children?

Many of us hope to live out the American dream: go to college, find a job, get married, buy a house, have children.

At least this was the checklist that I always dreamed of.  I had my life planned out, like a recipe, with each step written down, ready to be checked off as each one was taken. I had a vision of how I wanted my life to unfold.

Even though there were bumps in the road and a few challenges in life, the first few dreams on my list were checked off. I graduated from college, worked at my dream job, and married the man I had a crush on since childhood. But little did I know that the next life plan, to become a mother, my biggest dream yet, would be so difficult and that my faith would be tested more than it had ever been tested in my life.

My husband and I began trying to have a baby after being married for a year and a half. But after several months of trying to conceive, we were unsuccessful. Doctors discovered that I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which made it difficult for me to ovulate.

A year and a half of fertility treatments began. For months I took oral medication to try to stimulate ovulation, but to no avail. The next step was hormone injections.

While I used to get faint at the sight of a needle, I soon became very accustomed to it. Nightly, my husband injected needles, with vials full of hormones, into my abdomen, in an effort to trick my ovaries into ovulation. And on the evenings when my husband wasn’t home to inject the needle, I could not allow myself to get lightheaded. I had to inject myself at the same time, every evening, husband or no husband.

During the weeks of hormone injections I frequently visited the doctor who performed blood work to check for rising hormone levels and internal exams to check for egg growth. When I produced eggs that appeared to be the right size, I could move forward with the next procedure.

Finally, I started to produce eggs and they looked to be the proper size for ovulation and fertilization. With that, the doctors performed an IUI, intrauterine insemination, which placed my husband's sperm directly into my uterus. They believed that I had a good chance of ovulating at that point and that one of the eggs would be fertilized in the fallopian tubes, resulting in a pregnancy.  

While I awaited the news to see if the procedure had worked, I found myself in extreme pain. My abdomen ached like someone had punched me in both ovaries. I could barely walk. I found out that while there was still hope that I might be pregnant, the last round of hormone injections had caused my ovaries to hyper stimulate. My ovaries had tripled in size.

The doctors told me that I had to go on bed rest so that I did not risk losing my ovaries.  For two weeks I was only allowed to sit up to eat or leave the bed to use the restroom. I felt like an anxious, caged animal, waiting for the process to be over, waiting to hear, “You’re pregnant.”  

But at the end of it all, the only words I heard were, “I’m sorry. You’re not pregnant.”

Why was this happening to me? I could not understand.  What happened to the life plan? What happened to the checklist?

Physically, I felt like a voodoo doll, being stuck with needles and gadgets, by someone trying to force me to have a baby. But, it was the emotional side of the unnatural experiment that was even more difficult.

I experienced times of sadness and felt like crying all the time, partially because I felt like I was never going to have the children I always longed for, and partially because my body was pumped full of hormones.

As my friends became pregnant, my emotions took another set of ups and downs. One friend became pregnant easily. “It was unplanned.”

The other tried for three months and boom, she was pregnant. Soon, I became one of the only girls in my group of friends who did not have a baby on the way. I was happy for my friends, but I always felt a feeling of “Why me? What about me? This isn’t fair!” Of course I felt disappointment, but I began to feel anger as well.

Up and down, twist and turn-I was hanging on for dear life, trying to survive the roller coaster of emotions.

It was not until I recovered from bed rest that I decided it was time to get off the ride. I had had enough, physically and emotionally.

In an attempt to get our mind off the exhausting process, my husband and I decided to take a vacation. We took an amazing trip to London to see my favorite band, Pearl Jam. During that weekend, I enjoyed my life. I was my “old self” with my husband, not the monster who walked, talked and breathed fertility treatments, and I did not worry for one second about not being pregnant.

I returned from this unforgettable trip and that’s when it happened. I snapped out of my “getting pregnant trance.” It was like someone knocked me over the head with a baseball bat. Suddenly, I realized that I had abandoned my faith and God during this difficult time in my life.

I wondered how I had gotten to that point of giving up on God and my faith. I knew better. I knew that it wasn’t up to me to decide when and if I could have a baby. It was up to someone else. It was up to God, not me.

I knew that God had a plan for my life too. I knew that God knew my plan and my timeframe better than I did, and I needed to trust that this was true.

I wondered what his plan was. Did he want me to spend more time with my husband so that we could become even closer, or maybe there was a baby out there, waiting to be adopted by us. What was his plan for us? I did not know.

But what I did know at the time was that I would be a mother someday.  Somehow and in some way I would be a mother.

And finally, two years after trying to have a baby, I was at peace. I let go of trying to control my own life and put the situation in God’s hands. No more fertility treatments. No more medical experiments. My plan to have a baby was up to God now.

And three months later, his plan was revealed when I found out that I was pregnant with my first son.