Derailed

Warning: This post is full of my thoughts and feelings related to my journey as a Christian. 

When you feel like you've done everything right and you've prepared yourself for a dream and then you find that the dream isn't in reach over and over and over again, you're struggling to find the meaning to this "waiting" period while secretly you're scared whether or not you'll ever reach your dream.

When I was struggling with God in my infertility journey, it was hard to get rid of the thought of "the unfairness of it all" when people who seemed to be abandoning or abusing kids could have kids so easily. I also struggled with the whole idea that "God is good". 

Why didn't He fulfill our dream? At that time I felt that it was one of the most selfless dreams of all*. After all, we didn't ask for riches or fame or power (not taking anything from anyone else - position or money - so to speak). We only wanted a person to call our own, our own flesh and blood, to love and to cherish (that normally would only take making love to create). It didn't help that in the Bible there were lots more stories of miracle pregnancies and answered prayers for barren women. 

* Side note: Though, ironically enough, some people claim this to be a selfish dream (with all the many abandoned children across the world).

I remember being angry at God at the unfairness of it all. Why did He answer some prayers but not others? It was the thought that He didn't deem us fit as parents that also haunted me for a period of time, even though I also knew that if I truly believed He was a sovereign God, then I should have known better.

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” 

- C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

 
While struggling to make sense of my journey, I found some quotes that have helped me. If what I believe about God is solid, then I will never doubt God's goodness at all. Yes, the world is so full of stories of injustice, but the world is full of imperfect people with free will, so it's only natural that injustice exists because people do make mistakes. (And when I say people, that includes me)

“If God 'foresaw' our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose god is outside and above the Time-line... You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He know your tomorrow's actions in just the same way--because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but the moment at which you have done it is already 'NOW' for Him.” 
- C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.” 
- C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.” 
- C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

Further along in my journey I also found more comforting quotes from Glenn Packiam's book Secondhand Jesus.

"He will do everything in His power - everything - to make us His. So if giving us stuff achieves that goal, so be it. But if allowing things to be taken away gets us there quicker, He may just opt for that route."

I took comfort in the idea that God is and will be using my infertility journey somehow. I surrendered to Him unwillingly at first. Along my journey, these Bible verses have also helped me a lot in making sense of it all...

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

- 2 Cor 1:3-5

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Last but not least, this was one of the songs that comforted me during my toughest moments...I sang this song over and over for a period of time because I felt my faith slipping away and I needed to hold on to that frail and thin thread of faith left in me...and this song has blessed me tremendously.