Good Friday: yes, it really is that bad

I wrote this last year but wanted to share it again this year. 

Good Friday - yes, it really is that bad

Maybe it's my melancholic temperament, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when I relate a hardship to someone else and their response is, "Oh, it's really not that bad." Now to be fair, probably some of the things I complain about aren't that bad and I need to lighten up. And I know that the respondant is seeking to help me, seeking to make things easier by helping me see the "positive side" of a situation. But the fact is, some situations don't have positive sides. Or if they do, it's not in the form of a "silver lining" that I just need to squint harder in order to see. Some things in this fallen world are just broken and bad and hard, period.

Such as Good Friday. It hit me in a fresh way this Good Friday the fact that Jesus really died. I know that sounds so basic - it's what we say every Sunday in the creed: "he suffered death and was buried." But this year, for whatever reason the fact really sunk in that Jesus' agony and death on the cross wasn't an illusion. It wasn't an optical illusion or a prank. The Son of Man, God Incarnate, really truly died that black, black day. He gave up his spirit and "descended into Hell," as the Apostles' Creed says. There's no amount of squinting that will find the silver lining in that reality - Jesus died. 

The Good Friday liturgy brings this point home. It's stark and sparse. Images covered in red. Priests prostrating themselves. The crowd (us) saying "Crucify him!" This year I felt a real, aching sense of sorrow at thinking of Jesus bleeding on the cross and being placed in a cold, hard tomb. We sang a song that had the line, "Heavy with weeping let these three days pass." If Jesus hadn't really died, then this would all be a show. It would be play-acting, drumming up emotions for the sake of catharsis. Instead, it's a real mourning - Jesus died that day on Calvary. If Easter Sunday didn't arrive, there would be nothing "good" about Good Friday. 

In trying to parse out why this point impacted me so much this year, I think it's because it hit home that our faith is not one of rose-colored glasses and optimism. It's one of resurrection and hope, which are two markedly different things than a tinny sort of forced cheerfulness. For me, that gives me the freedom to really grieve over the sorrows in my life - yes, infertility really is that bad. It's that hard. There's not really a "positive spin" you can give to the fact that my body is broken and my vocation to motherhood is stunted. It's all right to grieve that - in fact, it's a fitting response. 

The same goes for any truly tragic thing - yes, it really is that bad that babies die in the womb, that children starve to death, that young men and women are murdered in their prime, that the elderly languish alone, unloved. Christianity's response to the suffering of a broken world was not to say "there, there, it's not that bad" - instead, the response for which the world had been groaning since the dawn of time was the sacrificial offering of God Himself on a bloody cross, knowing that no platitudes or bandaids would go to the heart of the crisis.

I have thoughts on Easter too...coming soon =)

Holy Week ovulation ultrasound series

Happy Holy Week, everyone!

As the title says, my Holy Week this year includes an ultrasound series to see if I'm ovulating properly. When I started my new cycle at the beginning of April and saw that day 11 (the day my dr. wanted the first ultrasound) fell on Monday of Holy Week, I tried to think of some deep symbolic meaning for the timing and came up with...nothing. Not that there isn't meaning - my brain is just not grasping it. It's too busy juggling the demands of work + the physical and emotional demands of IF testing.

As mentioned in our little happies post, we were so blessed to have Rebecca and The Man stay with us this past weekend! We also enjoyed a little blogger meet-up downtown with Lora, Alison, January and their husbands/children. The whole weekend was so fun and we were blessed with the first amazing weather of the year - perfect for strolling around downtown and seeing trees like this:

Quintessential Washington - I LOVE cherry blossom time

The weekend was also a huge blessing because it got my mind off the ovulation series. I was very anxious about it because: 1) I'm just tired of IF tests, which are painful, awkward, and uncomfortable; 2) My work week had suddenly ballooned with meetings, and since you have to get wanded when the time is right, I was nervous I'd have to miss an important meeting or two.

Well, Monday's test wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. (I had read through TCIE's handy guide to ultrasounds to make sure everything was legit!) Uncomfortable and awkward, yes, but not nearly as painful as other tests I've endured. (I just had to think the word "speculum" to feel instantly relaxed!) Dr. S was very kind and gentle and even more pleasantly chatty than she's been before. She found both ovaries (whew) and many follicles, but none over 1 cm so she said I don't need to come back until Thursday, which is huge because that means I won't miss my meetings after all. I know deep down that it would have been okay, but I did cry tears of gratitude driving home and thinking, "an answered prayer! Thank you, God" (the cynical side of me wanted to add, "for once" - working on that faith and trust thing).

Plus, Mr. M has been fantastic - when I started crying Monday morning over a dumb situation, he could tell that I was just maxed out (which I was) and he stepped in - he did the laundry and the grocery shopping Monday, and has just been so helpful and supportive. He's a keeper =)

Monday evening I treated myself with a big glass of wine, cheese, and reading a book on our back deck. Ahhh...the pit of anxiety completely let go of my insides. I'll go back Holy Thursday and probably Good Friday for the next ultrasounds. Good Friday definitely seems appropriate!

+EcceFiat+

Little Happies #5

Little Happies (by Mrs. Eccefiat and Mr. M who in real life share the same last name):

1.) Visit from Rebecca and her DH this weekend!!!
2.) Cherry Blossoms (and photobombing other people's pics no j/j)
3.) Cupcakes
4.) Good music - especially and currently the song Stubborn Love by the Lumineers; the video is so striking and healing for anyone who has gone through the tragedy of divorce like my DH
5.) Grilling steaks for the first time this Spring!!!
6.) Special surprise snacks, like pirolouttes and mango fruit strips, from my DH.
7.) Beautiful weather.
8.) The cool side of the pillow.
9.) Holy Week
10.) Following everyone else's lead: 1,051 days of beautiful marriage! We have grown so much in love!!!

Part 4: Let Your Suffering Be Fruitful

This is part of a series by Mr. M on "How to Live Joyfully with Infertility." Read part one here: Get Your Treasure Right, part two here: Go Into the Desert, and part three here: Be a Beloved Son or Daughter.


Let Your Suffering Be Fruitful

Our Fig Tree with San Damiano
Cross in the Background





It was a long night wrestling with God about infertility. I just simply continued to pray and to pray to him asking him for light, strength, comfort, guidance, healing, etc. We have a fig tree in our living room (see above) and I remember looking at it as a sign of my situation. According to tradition, the tree of good and evil in the garden of Eden was not an apple tree but rather a fig tree for the fig tree in scripture can either be the sign of life or of cursing death. (We see this tradition reflected in Michelangelo who painted a fig tree in the garden of Eden on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.) So I was sitting in my living room thinking should I grasp after this fruit of a child by doing what is forbidden (i.e. sinning in some way)? Or should I patiently wait on the Lord to give me the fruit He desires. Of course, I knew the answer, but my heart and my will were having a hard time on that day. It was that night that I realized as if for the first time that we happened to have a San Damiano cross behind our fig tree. As I fixed my gaze a little more I saw Christ's blood pouring out onto saints, the dead and suffering in hell, and even a little rooster. The rooster represents St. Peter and all those who at one time or another were a hypocrite like him in the Gospel. Needless to say, I really resonated with this little rooster. “Yes, Lord I am a hypocrite for doubting you. I am the rooster.” It was at this point I saw in that very cross the simple truth that Christ proclaims from it: “Behold, I make all things fruitful – even the greatest suffering of death.” So I thought to myself, “If Christ can make death fruitful, he certainly can make my infertility fruitful too”. I just have to have faith. It is then I got another message drilled through to my soul from God: “Your suffering is not pointless. Your suffering is worth suffering through.”

The rooster is by his right knee cap. It is small and difficult to see
to remind us that sin is always lurking in the shadows of our souls.
Sin tries to hide from our gaze as long as possible in order to entrap
us more deeply in its grips. 

This is the answer all infertile couples must find for themselves with the help of God. I am very very sympathetic to other infertile couples who seek to avoid and to eliminate the pain of infertility by medical means. Some of these medical means are wholesome and should be sought, but others are very dangerous to the soul, especially IVF, as it alienates the spouses from one another and from the child. Now I am not going to get into why this alienation occurs here in this blog post and please know dear friends who may read this blog that I am the last person to be unsympathetic to those who choose IVF. In fact, I radically cry and pray for those couples who have chosen this procedure and I understand exactly their pain and attraction to IVF because of my own infertility I am experiencing with my wife. (If any of you ever through this blog want to talk about it, then we are here to offer a listening ear and to discuss it. You are not alone; we walk with you. We are here for you regardless of what you may have done.) But what I am trying to say in this post is that medical means of any sort - good or ill - to alleviate infertility can push the bigger question off: why go through this suffering Lord? 


The only way to answer this question is to realize Christ's promise: “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32). It is the truth of Christ that gives meaning to our suffering. That is, for suffering to be fruitful and to be meaningful it must be a witness to something; and to be a witness is to point toward a truth we have discovered. A truth that is worth suffering for at all costs. A truth that is worth dying for. A truth that is worth suffering through infertility for. What is this fruitful truth that has set us as an infertile couple free? For us, there are many truths we think our suffering is a witness to. Let me just list a few.


First, our suffering is a witness to the fact mentioned previously in post one that Christ alone can satisfy our desire, including our unfulfilled desire of a child. He is the greatest good in our life. Not children, not a career, and not any other good work we may do. If we have a robust relationship with God as His beloved and we are faithful to what He wants in our lives (not necessarily what we want), then we have everything.


Second, our suffering is a witness to the fact that children are radically a gift. They are not something ever owed to any of us, created solely by our wills, or to be grasped at with any means, even good means. For instance, adoption is not a substitute for our unfulfilled desire. No, our suffering of not being able to conceive biologically related children will remain even after we adopt, which is why we have to see the meaning in our suffering. But more importantly, we must choose adoption not as a fulfillment of our desire but because we feel called by God through our situation of infertility to serve the good of this little vulnerable child who has gone through a tragedy. In other words, our suffering points to the fact that the child is a gift. So we choose adoption primarily for the child's sake not for our own because again a child is a complete gift to be loved for him or herself. A child is not the alleviation of our desire anymore than it is the result of the parent's desire when conceived through sexual intercourse. No, a child cannot be reduced to the question of being wanted or not-wanted by parent's desire. A child is a gift always loved and created by God (through an act of the parents) whether or not particular parents want them. In other words, there are no unwanted children. There are only parents who fail to recognize that the child is a gift from God and loved and wanted by God always and to act accordingly with this truth. Our suffering when properly understood and lived points to this profound and forgotten reality about children today. A child is an irreducible good in himself or herself who is not owed to anyone. This is the basis of the child's radical dignity and equality with its parents. This dignity and equality of the child as a gift and the rights of the child to be treated as such our suffering proclaims incessantly.


Third, our suffering is a simultaneous witness to both the fact that children are inextricably bound to the marriage relationship and the beauty of marriage in itself. Our culture has forgotten these truths (especially in the whole misguided same-sex “marriage” debate), but our suffering proves otherwise. Our suffering shows that yes you can have a completely beautiful marriage even without children, but nonetheless that children are intrinsic to love. Children are not an optional aspect of married love. Otherwise our suffering wouldn't hurt so much to go childless. In other words, if children weren't intrinsic to love, then our suffering wouldn't be felt as a lack. Or if children weren't intrinsic to love, then our suffering would be reduced to simply not getting something we want, like a little kid in a candy store who didn't persuade his mom to buy him a chocolate bar. But no, infertility is a greater pain than all of that. Infertility is a lack felt in the depths of love, which is why it is so tear gushing and terrible. Nonetheless paradoxically through God's grace we can still have everything proper to love when we follow Him. This is the mysterious paradox of our suffering – our marriages are complete and good in themselves and yet they lack the fullness of children that is pursued in our love as a total gift of ourselves. Therefore, how dare someone tell us to our face or publicly that children and marriage don't necessarily go together! To me, it makes a mockery of our suffering and adds an insult on top of our injury. I pray for those souls who believe these things and I pray that they recognize the great damage they are inflicting upon the suffering of infertile couples whose authentic witness of suffering is being ignored and stifled by the political and cultural ideology en vogue.


Fourth, our suffering is a witness that suffering can be turned into joy against all odds. Just because you have infertility, it doesn't doom you into a life of sadness and nothingness. Paradoxically, there is much to discover that is good in this suffering. For instance, all of these insights I typed about here across 4 posts. All of the insights my wife has shared on this blog. But more than that, God wants to use our infertility in unexpectedly beautiful and fruitful ways. To borrow a phrase that Pope Francis used to speak about all wounds: infertility is a unique point of intimacy with God. Or to use my words, infertility is grace waiting to happen. I am sure of it. In our own life we discover this mysterious grace in many ways. We have to have spiritual eyes to see it, but it is there. For instance, our time of infertility has allowed us to take care of the weak and the sick more than our married friends with children. We have grown to see these weak, disabled, and sick individuals as our “spiritual children.” We have also come to see that our support and accompanying with other infertile couples are also part of this graceful fruitfulness from suffering and vice-versa (their support to us is an overflowing of their graced fruitfulness to us). Further, we have discovered fruitfulness through marriage ministry, through our jobs, through participation in our parish, setting up an Archdiocesan Mass for infertile couples, etc. While these activities can never be equated with physical fruitfulness, nonetheless they are still spiritually fruitful. This spiritual fruitfulness is not “second best” either. Rather, it is the goal of all physical fruitfulness. (Truthfully, this question of fruitfulness would take another long post to sort out how spiritual and physical fruitfulness are always related, so I digress.) But let me just say that suffering can bear much good fruit – this is the beauty and truth of the cross. So find out what that grace is in your suffering. Find that hidden fruitfulness buried beneath the barrenness. Every couple will be unique in this regard. But above all as you seek for this grace, remember what Christ proclaimed to me: “your suffering of infertility is not pointless; it is worth suffering through. Behold I make all things fruitful.”


Conclusion: Don't Put Off Your Joy Today


In conclusion, I propose for all of us struggling with infertility that this is our time to realize that radical sonship and daughtership God is giving us each day. He loves us so much! He really does. This is the core of our identity: we are God's beloved sons and daughters with a mission to go ever deeper into this sonship or daughtership through virtue, witness, and recognizing our unique missions of fruitful grace! How wonderful and beautiful! Our joy doesn't have to wait until tomorrow. It doesn't have to wait until doctors cure the underlying condition of our infertility. It doesn't have to wait until we have children adopted or otherwise. We can have it today by living from this core of who we are, by recognizing our treasure, going into the desert, being a son or daughter, and letting our suffering be fruitful. If we do all of this, then I believe we will surely be living joyfully. That is something to be hopeful about; and my prayer for you all dear friends on this infertility journey is that you may know this hope and joy today not tomorrow. Please continue to pray for us.


Epilogue: How Do You live Joyfully with Infertility?


I have shared a number of thoughts during the course of these last four posts. I pray that through God's grace at least one thought was helpful toward your healing. However, I am still very much in this “school of suffering love” known as infertility and I very much need to learn from others. Therefore, my wife and I would be grateful to learn from you dear friends along the journey of infertility. Perhaps you can help us? Perhaps you can share a piece of the good news of Christ with us by answering the following question: how do you live joyfully with infertility? You can mention anything from serious to fun – wherever you have found grace and joy! Please share your thoughts and insights below in the comment section. Thanks!

Part 3: Be a Beloved Son or Daughter

This is part of a series by Mr. M on "How to Live Joyfully with Infertility." Read part one here: Get Your Treasure Right and part two here: Go Into the Desert.

Be a Beloved Son or Daughter

Too often we go through life trying to accomplish and achieve and refusing to receive from another. I have been there. In regard to this whole infertility trial, once a priest told me that "perhaps God wants you to ask for a child." In other words, he was using simple language to gently suggest that God wants me to learn receptivity in this whole ordeal and that I had in fact hitherto not been receptive enough. Guilty as charged. Also, I bought into the culture's mores. Our culture hates receptivity because it bespeaks dependence and dependence means weakness. You're weak, like a child, if you are dependent. Adults go through their entire lives believing this lie, not realizing that our true freedom is actually receiving everything from the hand of God. This point was hit home to me recently by another incident with a priest.


I was sitting in the confessional crying my heart out to a priest one day. My sins all revolved around infertility and the mess it has made in my soul. In particular, I confessed that I was not poor of spirit but greedy. I wanted to be a father so badly rather than accept what God was giving me currently. That priest looked my in the eye, forgave me, and said for your penance I want you to meditate for five minutes upon the fact that you are a beloved son of God. He also mentioned to me that in order to be a good father in the world you must first be a son. Many fathers go their entire lives without realizing this truth and on their deathbed they have tremendous regrets. You have been given a grace to recognize the importance of sonship that is necessary for fatherhood. For a good father gives everything he has received first as a son of God. Wow - phew! This hit me like a ton of bricks. I have something to do to be a good father and I was completely missing it. But wait there is more to this story of grace.


He recommended a book – A Father's Tale by Michael O'Brien. He suggested this book because the main protagonist is a father who comes to learn this important truth about receptivity and total abandonment to God – in short, sonship. So throughout the book the drama is his slow realization of how important it is to be a good son in order to be a good father. Now what is amazing about this recommendation is that as Father was suggesting this book, my jaw dropped because I was in fact in the middle of reading this book! Coincidence? I think not. It was grace. What is more crazy is that as I had been reading it, I thought that much didn't apply to me because “I wasn't a father!” Wow. How blind I was! After Father said what the book was about it instantly resonated with me. Yes, he is a hundred percent right in his reading and I was a fool to not realize this truth. But the bigger point was that I had forgotten to be a son and what applies here applies to his daughters too.


We need to live from the core of who we are: beloved sons and daughters of God. Do we know we are beloved sons and daughters of God? Moreover, to live from this core dignity of who we are we need to develop virtue and get out of destructive habits. In regard to destructive habits, we need to fight and simply run away from self-pity, self-hatred, escapisms (food, buying, alcohol, sex), fear, the entitlement mentality, and focusing on defects, failures, past sins or disappointments except where necessary in order to grow in virtue. If you want happiness, then get away from these things right away! Resolve to stay far far away! But to do this staying away we need to cultivate the opposite of these things – virtue.


In regard to developing virtue, try to find your root sin and to cultivate its opposite virtue. Right now my root sin is sensuality, which is placing some created reality other than personal relationships and achievements ahead of God. If I placed achievements ahead of God then this would be pride. If I placed some aspect of personal relationships (like affirmation and praise from others) ahead of God, then this wold be vanity. In reality, we all struggle with all three of these things. But we all struggle with one of these three more than the others. For me it is sensuality, placing a thing of God – a child – ahead of God in my life. It is not wrong to desire a child, of course, but I have let this desire and sadness about not receiving a child be put ahead of what God wants to give me and to do in my life in a number of ways (too many to go into). So the opposite of this sin is being poor of spirit, which for me means consciously receiving everything that happens to me in my life from God as a good gift. In order to accomplish this virtue, I then made a list of several things I was going to do to cultivate this virtue. By cultivating this virtue I am living in the sonship God wants for me. I pray I can continue this faithful sonship.

Next: Let Your Suffering Be Fruitful

Part 2: Go Into the Desert

This is part of a series by Mr. M on "How to Live Joyfully with Infertility" Read part one here: Get Your Treasure Right

Go into the Desert
Now I am under no delusions that the above is incredibly difficult to realize. For instance, a week after I had these revelations I, along with my wife, was babysitting my best friend's children (2 boys – ages 3 and 9 months). We were having a grand time. I was throwing the older boy around on their couches and he was laughing wildly. His younger brother was hyperventilating with happiness too seeing his brother being flung about. Then I spun him around several more times followed by several more tosses! “Again! Again!” He cried. Eventually my arms got tired, but boy did his smile not get tired. It was glued on his face the entire time. When I saw that smile, all I could think of was “Man I wish I could make my own son smile and have joy like this.” It sunk me. Needless to say, amongst all that happiness, I was being dragged into all of these negative thoughts like “God just doesn't want me to be a father. I'd probably wouldn't be good anyway. I don't even have a job yet to support him. Man, I'm a loser.” Luckily, by grace, I am a sanguine by nature so I didn't dwell too long in the moment and moved my thoughts pretty quickly back to that beautiful child at hand and we read many books about dinosaurs. But later when I got home, I just wept internally to God in my prayer. “Oh God, you are so not my treasure right now. I just want to have a child. So please please make me know how beloved I am.” It is at this point that the second step comes in.

If we are going to realize that the core of our dignity and happiness is God alone, then we need to spend abundant time with Him. There is no way around it. If you want to be unhappy, then keep avoiding spending time with God. If we want that joy and love we are seeking, then we have to spend time with our beloved. Period. This is hard for me though as a social sanguine who gets himself into trouble by taking on too many activities. Also, I frequently don't feel like “I get anything out of it”. So I have begun to think of prayer as a desert, as it is often portrayed in the scriptures. After all, Jesus frequently went into the desert to pray. Why the desert? Why not go to the synagogue? Perhaps a comfy room in his house? Perhaps by a beautiful scene of nature? Why the heck a desert? Primarily because it is the perfect analogy and place for prayer. Follow me here for a moment.

How I feel on some days

A desert is a place of emptiness and radical abandonment of all things. Prayer has to be a desert of emptiness. I have to stop thinking of prayer as this always happy place I go for consolation. No it is a desert where there is work to be done to find water in order to survive. That water-finding is the work of person's prayer searching for God and taking time to be with God. More specifically, it is emptying our hearts out to God to receive His love. So prayer is not first and foremost what we get out of it, but first must be what we give to God. This makes prayer difficult at times because it does demand a lot of us. Who here hasn't wanted to reserve a number of places of our soul away from God? I know I have. To empty oneself is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to trust. To trust is to accept. And to accept is downright hard when you are going through pain. Prayer, like the desert, is a hard place to live. Thus, we naturally to some extent want to avoid prayer, but this aversion should be seen for what it is: a clinging to things that are not God, pride, dissatisfaction, lack of trust, not-accepting, and a refusal of one's happiness

Our prayer life has to be simple like the dirt of the desert. In the desert, things are simple. There is a cactus here and there as a reminder to seek God's live giving water, a snake once in awhile to keep us fearful of evil, some tumbleweed balls to distract us, but for the most part it is just sand or cracked ground, miles and miles of nothing. So we need to keep prayer simple like the desert is simple. We too often make it complicated, get disappointed, and move on to something else as quick as we can. We need to have simple prayer times, which means this: simply spending fifteen minutes a day giving to God our concerns in quiet conversation and then just being loved by God in quiet mental conversation. Don't bring spiritual reading to these fifteen minutes. That can be done at another time or if you have longer time to give to God. The only book you should bring to this desert prayer time is the Bible and read passages from it slowly as God always speaks slowly to us or if you really prefer choose a few lines ahead of time from a spiritual book to contemplate.

The joy of prayer is like finding a gushing river of water in a desert. Consolations and desolations come and go in prayer. We shouldn't expect always to have great feelings or great insights. Nonetheless, there are innumerable graces I have felt in my life after trying to have a more consistent prayer life. Through much groping in the desert you will find a rushing river of water. You won't find water the easy way. You will get drops here and there; sometimes finding a nice cactus. But eventually the water will start to build. You will start to see more and more water under different rocks and then bam the river is in front of you. This river is a peace; a peace of heart that God wants you to have and to give to the world. Speaking from personal experience, there is a peace that reigns in my heart from knowing simply and radically that I am beloved by God on some days that you couldn't get me to trade for millions upon millions of dollars and yes even dare I say all the children in the world. But this peace and knowledge of knowing I am beloved doesn't come overnight. It takes a lot of time spent with the beloved. I am still very much learning this simple reality of being a beloved son or daughter of God, which brings me to my next point, to be continued.

From Mr. M: Some Thoughts on How to Live Joyfully with Infertility

Note: My husband was inspired to write a series of post (four) on his own experience of infertility + how to live joyfully nonetheless. I'm really grateful for his insights (obviously I'm biased!) and also think his thoughts are extra appropriate now, being in the thick of Lent with Holy Week right around the corner.

With no further ado...

I know it seems too good to be true. Really, can I have joy with this incredibly painful and often misunderstood suffering of infertility? Well, yes. But as I type these words I cringe and tremble because it is so hard. I know from personal experience struggling with infertility that it is the hardest thing in my life. Also, I fail at these ideas I'm proposing weekly, if not daily. Perhaps they will help. Perhaps they will be an oversimplification. Perhaps they are presumptuous. But yet they have been a grace for me and my wife in our life so I want to share this good with you. Thus, I thought I would share what God has placed on our broken hearts as healing balm. I will share these thoughts in four posts corresponding to four thoughts but please note that these thoughts are not meant to be in any way exhaustive for the depth and complexity of drama of infertility. And by the way, this suggested Rx is an on-going treatment for all of us, we infertile couples, so please keep me in your prayers as I pray for you.

N.B. Alot of these thoughts occurred to me while I was “on the cross” crying for the children I desired one weekend while I was on retreat. As a result, several of these thoughts I would like to credit to words and encounters with particular priests on that retreat. Therefore, I would like to give due thanks to these unnamed spiritual fathers. Here is the fruit of their priestly presence and teaching in my life.

1. Get Your Treasure Right
   There are two things in this world: God and the Things of God. Sin is placing any thing of God, no matter how good, above God. We do this in any number of ways every day in many different actions. Yet the worst is when we place our identity and happiness in one of the things of God, rather than God. To be sure, God wants to give us many of these good things, but only after we first recognize that God is the giver of these gifts and that He alone is our happiness, not these other things of God. Now, there is a unique temptation of infertility that comes in exactly here. The greatest temptation we face is to place our entire identity and happiness in a child we wish so badly to have. Do we not often think, “I'll be happy when I have a child. When I don't have to deal with infertility treatments. When I (fill in blank here).” Yet the incredibly gut-wrenching, soul-piercing truth is that as good as this desire is, a child is still not God. We have everything when we are beloved by God. Do we really believe that? Is God our treasure above all things, including children? Is God our happiness? A happiness that we can have not tomorrow or down the road, but today. I know there have been multiple times where like the Rich Young Man of the Gospel I have went away sad and empty because I didn't want to make God my sole treasure. Oh God help me to leave all things behind and cling to you as my treasure! Please help to heal my mind and my will when I get my treasure wrong.      

Next: Go into the Desert