The things we say, but shouldn’t:

Lately I have been listening a lot to what people say in general about infertility.  I’m not just talking about the “fertiles” that have opinions on infertility here, but also actual Christians that are infertile.  It even reminded me of things I have said myself, out loud to others, or even in prayers to God.  And I realised that we are being extremely unfair to God.  He is blamed for a lot of things that is not His fault.  Mostly it is because I have learnt so much lately and my eyes have been opened to a lot of lies that we believe.  I want to try to explain to you with examples, so that you will hopefully also get some understanding and revelation about these things.

1.  “I know/believe God can make me pregnant, I just don’t know if it’s His will.”  I was really guilty of this one.  I have said it myself, I might even have blogged it, and I’ve said it many, many times in my prayers.  “God, I believe in miracles, I believe you can do amazing wonderful things beyond my imagination, but I don’t know if it’s your will for me to get pregnant or have children…”  When I did the Divine Healing Technician course Curry Blake explained it very nicely, and was I convicted!  If you have a child (Sorry, not an ideal example for this blog!) and that child wanted something from you, let’s say a toy, or a bike – how would you feel if that child said to you:  “Mom, I know it is in your ability to give it to me (you can afford it), but I don’t know if you want to…”  Parents want to give their children everything they want, because they love them.  If it’s at all possible you would do everything to your ability to help them, it is never a question of whether you want to or not and it is actually very insulting if your child should imply that you don’t want to…  It’s the same with God – we are insulting Him when we say:  “God I know you can give me a baby, but I don’t think/know if you want to…”  We say things like this because we don’t know God, and we don’t know what His will is.

2.  “It was God’s will that I had to be infertile, to teach me something.”  Here is the same mistake again – we don’t know what God’s will is, otherwise we would not say things like this.  Also God does not teach us by letting us “suffer”, or by letting bad things happen to us.  I want to quote Dr Fr.ed Chi.lds from his book:  Are you ready for your healing, pg 194:  “It is inaccurate for anyone who has suffered a debilitating accident, serious disease, or tragedy to say, “God did this to teach me something.”  God never uses sickness, disease, or bodily deformity to teach or guide His people.  God has given His Spirit (Holy Ghost) and His Word to instruct, correct, rebuke and guide His people.  Since all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purpose, He can certainly use tragedy as an opportunity for His Spirit and Word to teach us.  However, that is much different than God doing bad things to teach us.  God does no evil.  John 16:13 (NIV) is one witness that God uses his Spirit to teach us.  “¹³ But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”  2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV) is a witness that God uses His word to teach us.  “¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

3.  “God had to break me/my will, so that I could conform to His will.”  This is once again a statement from someone who does not know God.  God will not break you.  God will not hurt you.  It’s the devil that hurts, and breaks and destroys…  God will not stoop to the same level as the devil to accomplish anything in your life. Here are some scriptures that describes who God is:  1 John 4:8-10, 16 (NIV):  “⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”  1 John 1:5 (NIV):  “⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”  Psalm 92:15 (NIV):  “¹⁵ proclaiming, The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”  From these scriptures we can see that God loves us, so incredibly much that He sacrificed His Son for us, and that he has no wickedness or evil in Him so he cannot hurt us.

So what is God’s will about having children?  One of the first commands God gave Adam and Eve after they sinned in the Garden of Eden was:  Genesis 1:28 (NIV):  “…Be fruitful and increase in number…”
Exodus 23:25-26 (NIV):  “²⁵ Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, ²⁶ and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.” 
Deuteronomy 7:13-14 (NIV):  “¹³ He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land— your grain, new wine and oil— the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you.    ¹⁴ You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young.”
Deuteronomy 28:1-4 (NIV):  “¹ If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.    ² All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: ³You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.    ⁴ The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock— the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.”
Psalm 113:9 (NIV):  “⁹ He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.   Praise the LORD”

Psalm 127:3-5 (NIV):  “³Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.    ⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth.    ⁵ Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate”

Psalm 128:3 (NIV):  “³ Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots round your table.”
1 Timothy 2:15 (NIV):  “¹⁵ But women will be saved through childbearing— if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”

So do you see that it is God’s Will for us to have children?  Most of these scriptures are also found in the Old Testament so that means it is Old Covenant scriptures – if it was God’s will under the Old Covenant is definitely His will under the New Covenant!

4.  “God works in mysterious ways.”  God does not work in mysterious ways.  We have a Bible to teach us how God works.  We need to read it and learn from it and then nothing will be hidden or mysterious to us anymore.  It says in Matthew 13:11-12 (NIV):  “¹¹ He replied, The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  ¹² Whoever has will be given more, and he will have abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him”

5.  “God’s timing is perfect.  We need to wait on God.”  Please read the following on God’s timing and on Waiting on God.  There is not much more I can say about it except that I think it’s more a matter of God waiting on us than us waiting on Him.  He is waiting for us to claim our inheritance, to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and to stop being victims…

6.  “God gives and takes away.”  If you read Mistake #1 from Common misconceptions from the book of Job: you will see how that statement is completely wrong.  It’s a verse that is often misquoted from the book of Job.  Let me quote from that post:  “God adds and multiplies, Satan subtracts and divides.  God is not a taker, but a giver.”  Let me prove it with some more scriptures:  James 1:17 (NIV):  “¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”  Psalm 84:11 (NIV):  “¹¹ For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favour and honour; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”

7.  “I/you am/are being punished for something I’ve/you’ve done wrong.”  What could you have done that is so terrible that you have to be punished with infertility?  And why are other people like drug addicts or prostitutes not punished like that?  Because it is not a punishment.  Look at the blind man Jesus healed in John 9:1-3(NIV):  “¹ As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.    ² His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?    ³ Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.“  Another example:  Luke 1:5-7 (NIV):  ⁵ In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.    ⁶ Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.    ⁷ But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren; and they were both well on in years.”  I love this last example – It is so apt – even though they were “upright in the sight of God,” Zechariah and Elizabeth were barren, so it was not due to punishment… 

8.  “They say children are a blessing from God.  Then why am I not being blessed?”  I believe it’s not a matter of not being blessed, but rather a matter of your blessings being stolen from you.  In John 10:10 (NIV) it says:  “¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  I’m sure if you looked at the scriptures above about God’s will for us regarding children you will see that children are definitely a blessing from God, unfortunately we don’t always receive those blessings, but we cannot blame that on God!

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Some revelations:

Last night in bed I was thinking that I’m supposed to be 12 weeks now, but I’m not because we’ve lost our baby.  Then I thought that the sister at the hospital said that 2 samples were sent away for genetic testing and I remembered that originally my pregnancy started out as a twin pregnancy… Suddenly I felt sad, because up to now I’ve been mourning one baby, but we actually lost two.  We were so grateful for the one embryo with a heartbeat that we completely forgot that there was an empty sac, or blighted ovum as well, that did not make it to 7 weeks.  I feel it’s not right to dismiss that one, because we did not see a heartbeat there, it was still a potential baby that did not make it.  I think I must acknowledge that it was a twin pregnancy and that we lost twins here, even though we didn’t lose them at the same time… 

I paged back in my diary this morning and I came upon an entry I wrote on 28 February this year.  It was the night before I tested after we did the FET.  I had a strong suspicion that it would be negative again, because I knew the quality of our embryo’s were not good at all. I thought back to something that Joyce Meyer often says:  “we must do what is right and not how we feel”.  I’ve heard her say that during numerous sermons, and that’s what I made my mind up to do then and what I’ve been trying to do lately.

I decided that:  “I will be friendly and not sad when I’m around other people.  I will smile and ask other people how they are doing.  I will help others and not feel sorry for myself.  I will go on with my life, make the best of it and be thankful for all the blessings I receive from God.   I will not allow my emotions to control me.  I will not be angry with God, and I will not throw a temper tantrum because I cannot get my way.”

It was not too difficult to act that way then, because it was the 3^rd failed IVF, but also like I said I expected it – I could see on the sister’s face on day of ET that the embryo’s were not good at all.  She had a look of pity in her eyes and she could not make eye contact with me when I asked about the embryos.  She and the doctor talked about the number of cells (3), but avoided the discussion of quality; the doctor only talked about fragmentation and said the one had very little fragmentation.  I believe they wanted me to protect me and not tell me the bad news straight out and that they did not want me to be without hope.  I phoned later and asked the other sister what grade they were and she said grade 5 – the worst grade my clinic gives. 

Now it’s way more difficult to act that way, but I’m trying my best.  Sometimes I force myself to do something that I really don’t want to do, because I know it’s what God wants from me, and I must say I haven’t regretted any of it at all so far.  He knows what’s best for us…

This morning I got a strong feeling that I must trust God’s timing.  I thought back over our infertility history and I remembered that we actually wanted to do our first IVF in Aug 2001, we made a plan to get the money for the IVF then, but when we got to our FS he said that maybe we should try a IUI one more time.  We hastily accepted as we were not ready for IVF yet.  I think God stopped us from doing IVF at that stage, and when the IUI failed we were not even tempted to try IVF.  Later in 2007 we did do our first IVF and it failed, but we were both so traumatized by the negative result, that we didn’t see another FS for 18 months.  Again I think that God organized it so that we would wait for further IVF’s. 

By the time I was ready again I started to read about Intralipid drips and found that it helped for some people with multiple failed IVF’s.  I just knew that I had to get that with my IVF’s, but it took some convincing to get my FS to give it to me (I tried from my first appointment with them) – You see it’s a very controversial treatment, and not all FS’s believes it works.  Eventually I convinced my FS and I got the first one with my FET, but like I said earlier the quality was very poor, and nothing can improve poor embryo quality, so that one did not work.  But the second cycle with intralipids did work, unfortunately I miscarried. 

From my research I found that intralipids were only first used for IVF’s in 2006 in the USA, but it took quite some time, before others started using it as well.  It’s only since early last year that Vita.lab (one of the biggest and most successful infertility clinics here in South Africa – I’m not with them) has been using it here and where I heard of it for the first time. 

So I’ve been thinking that God has stalled us with our IVF treatments for a specific reason – so that I could get Intralipid treatment with my IVF’s.  I also believe all the failed cycles last year were necessary to convince my FS that I indeed have an implantation problem, so that I could convince him to give me the Intralipid drips.

So now I must just trust God that He knows best and that I will get pregnant again, but this time at the right time, so that I can have my healthy baby.

I’m finding strength in these scriptures today as they have to do with God’s timing:  Isaiah 30:18 (Amp):  “¹⁸And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be gracious to you; and therefore He lifts Himself up, that He may have mercy on you and show loving-kindness to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are all those who [earnestly] wait for Him, who expect and look and long for Him [for His victory, His favor, His love, His peace, His joy, and His matchless, unbroken companionship]!”

Isaiah 40:31 (Amp):  “³¹But those who wait for the Lord [who expect, look for, and hope in Him] shall change and renew their strength and power; they shall lift their wings and mount up [close to God] as eagles [mount up to the sun]; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint or become tired.”

 Habakkuk 2:3 (TLB):  “But these things I plan won’t happen right away.  Slowly steadily surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled.   If it seems slow, do not despair, for these things will surely come to pass.  Just be patient!  They will not be overdue a single day!”

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