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There was never any disagreement, Lauren & I have always
wanted kids. Though it may seem weird to some, we started talking about
having kids someday while we were still just dating. We talked about how many
kids we wanted, about having biological kids, and about adopting (more on this
in a later post). For us, it wasn't ever a question of if, just a
question of when.
Like a typical guy, it took me a little longer to be ready for the
kind of responsibility, that kind of life changing commitment that is required
when you have a kid, but it wasn't ever due to a wavering of my desire. Lauren
always viewed having kids as a blessing that she just didn't want to wait for
any longer, but I had some trouble getting past asking myself, "How are we going to pay
for this thing?" I think that the majority of this was bred out of the
distinct roles that God has designed us to play as parents; Lauren, as the
mother and nurturer, and me as the father, provider, and protector. No
difference in value or importance, just a difference in the roles we were made
to fulfill.
For better or for worse, when I thought about having kids, one of
the first things that crept into my mind was the checklist of things we would
need to provide for this kid. Daycare, health insurance, diapers,
formula, a nursery, a college savings plan...it seemed like an endless list to
me. I knew we could do it, but selfishly, I also knew that our lives would
change drastically and I wasn't quite ready...but knowing what I know now, it's
hard for me to not feel a little bit of guilt about this decision.
I don't feel guilty for wanting to be prepared before we brought a
life into this world, but I feel guilty for the pain that I feel like I
unknowingly helped contribute to Lauren. While I know that there wasn't
anything that I could have done to prevent the struggles we went through due to
the infertility (Lord knows I tried to come up with every possible solution), I
just can't help to think that if I hadn't have needed so long to "be ready",
maybe Lauren wouldn't have experienced so much of the daily pain I saw her go
through in the months leading up to our pregnancy. Maybe if I hadn't made her wait so long the struggle wouldn't have taken the toll that it eventually did.
Those of you that know me well know that I am the epitome of a
"doer" personality. I get a huge sense of satisfaction by being
able to identify a problem and fix it. I've always been this way and my
self-reliance, while often a positive, normally is the single biggest attribute
that causes strife in my daily walk with God. I am way too quick to say
"Don't worry, I've got this" instead of "God, let me give this
over to you." God has to constantly remind me that if I were left up
to my abilities, I would come up severely lacking, and in a nut shell, that's
why our battle with infertility was so hard on me. Not because I was having
to wait for something that I really wanted, but because I was completely
powerless in the situation that surrounded me. My wife, the person that I
love most in this world, was in spiritual and emotional warfare unlike anything
I had ever seen and there wasn't a single thing that I could "do" to
make it better. No action I could take, no words I could speak, nothing seemed to
have an impact of any significance. Though we were going through this
together, we often felt alone and alienated because neither one of us could
understand just how the other one felt.
Let me back up a bit and fill you in on how we progressed to this
point because I believe that understanding the journey will help you to better
understand the struggle. When Lauren & I first got married, we did
the birth control thing for a little while, but were really never able to find
a drug/dosage combination that worked for us. Most of the ones we tried
either made Lauren feel bad or affected her moods and personality pretty
severely, so we decided that it wasn't worth Lauren's happiness (or mine for
that matter, because "Happy wife, happy life", right!?!) to continue. We
decided at that point that we would just go about our business and if we got
pregnant, then that was God's timing and we would rejoice and start to prepare
to become parents.
This continued for a couple of years without as much as a false
alarm. As a guy, I never thought twice about it, ignorance is bliss, but
as a woman and a medical professional, this was the beginning of what was going
to be a very long almost 3 and 1/2 years for Lauren. We didn't
actively start trying to have a baby until after we moved to Houston which was
about 2 years after Lauren coming off of her birth control. At that
point, we held our breath every month in anticipation of a positive test, only
to be met with disappointment time and time again. The disappointment was hard for me, but I had
no idea just how hard it was on Lauren.
For me, the struggle to have a baby didn’t begin until we actively
began trying to have a baby. I would
always jokingly tell Lauren that up to then we were just practicing and I had
never enjoyed practicing more! But for
Lauren, the struggle had started 2 years before that and had been slowly
escalating every day since. It breaks my
heart to think that my wife had been hurting for years and I never had a
clue.
As the weeks turned to months and the months into years, Satan
continued to subtly attack Lauren. So
much so, that the last few months before we got pregnant, Lauren was battling a
serious case of depression and was at the point that she was beginning to lose
her desire for motherhood. Watching her
battle this is absolutely the single hardest thing that I have ever done. The depression completely transformed the woman I loved into someone that I didn't even recognize. It tore me apart on the inside to be
absolutely helpless in comforting my wife.
I did absolutely everything that I could think of to try to lighten
Lauren’s load, but nothing seemed to help.
I had been praying for Lauren and our future baby for years, but I had
never been brought to my knees to beg God like I was while Lauren was battling
her depression. I begged God to provide
Lauren with some relief, to either help us to get pregnant or to change the
desires of our hearts. I knew He heard
me, but I just couldn’t see relief in sight.
This time in our lives was incredibly difficult, but God never
ceased to provide for us. When we moved
to Houston our first priority was to find a new church home. We visited several amazing churches, but
ended up choosing to join Houston’s First Baptist because of the community we
found in our Life Bible Study class (it’ll always be “Sunday School” to
me). God knew that we needed community
after moving so far away from family, but little did we know, he hadn’t just
given us community, but he gave us the exact group of individuals that we would
need to help up almost 2 years later.
We immediately got very involved in our class and joined a small
group Bible study that met on Monday nights.
We hadn’t been attending but maybe a month when we noticed a trend in
the prayer requests. Out of maybe 5 or 6
couples, 3 of them were currently dealing with infertility. Lauren and I prayed and prayed for each of
these couples and rejoiced with them when they each had their precious little
babies. Little did we know that it
wouldn’t be long before the roles were reversed and it was us asking these same
couples to petition God in prayer on our behalf.
More next time…
More next time…
In Him,
Chad
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