The eve of ONE, the topic of Faith

I want to say this while I'm in a place where things aren't going great (ONE the egg) and aren't going horribly (not cancelled thanks to the ONE the egg), they are just going (to retrieval of, you guessed it, ONE the egg in 10.5 hours). If said now, hopefully this won't appear to be mood/situation based (though it very well may because obviously things aren't going stellarly, I'm not that delusional/drunk/yet). 

My IF journey has tested my faith, probably for the first real time ever. As for me, I've always had a faith in God. But, honestly, my life never really had any true crises beyond the "normal" life stage ones like teen years, boyfriends, marriage stress. But I gotta tell ya, this IF stuff is kicking my faith's butt. While I know it gets a lot worse than IF in both life and in the medical world, IF has taken away something that is supposed to inherently be the female's natural born ability while replacing it with a treacherous, soul flattening roller coaster. And during that exchange, I am surrounded by people who get a child "they've prayed for" and by people who get a child "they've prayed against". Well, I've prayed for one and I have no kid, no living kid at least. I don't even pray that it happens naturally anymore, afraid that's asking too much; instead, I just pray the man-made drugs work well enough to hopefully make it happening even possible. 

But, standing here facing down four years of trying so hard, five years of failed ivf cycles and three lost heartbeats due to doctor's mistake, honestly, it hurts far far too much to still try to believe that there is a God out there who chooses not to make it my turn finally. Instead, it is much more plausible for me to believe it's all random. Totally random who gets a kid and who doesn't. Who gets a healthy kid even and who doesn't. On the flip side, though, I know too much about the intricacies of conception to believe that it is all random, so I'm torn. And in that being torn, the distance grows between the God who could fix this all and myself who cannot fix any of this.

While I obviously haven't sorted out the pull between the amazingness and appearance of cruelness of my God, I have to give an unprompted plug for a book that has given me a unique point of view on the topic that I can grasp, believe in and explore more. It's an older book, copyrighted 1983, entitled Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey. When I read it this past month, I didn't find cheesy sayings like, it's all God's plan, just believe; or, it's to build character or teach me something. Instead, I read what I feel was an honest look at why life sometimes sucks despite the strongest faith and how to begin to make peace with God when, well, when shit goes wrong or doesn't go according to our plan. It takes a new look at what the Bible says, while also putting a very interesting, new to me, spin on the story of good ole Job (who was said to have an incredible faith, yet lost everything, absolutely everything, but came out with his faith beaten and bruised some, but intact nonetheless). 

Overall, I have to say that I loved the point blank examination this book offered with no cutesy crap thrown in there to attempt to make it all better overnight. It isn't going to be better overnight, therefore, I need a deeper explanation about how I'm supposed to make peace with the fact that I am in the same, yet totally different, place I was four years ago.