Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Wish There Was a Button for That

First, let me apologize for my lengthy break in blogging. Work picked up for me, which meant I had much less free time to blog. But I hope to get back to blogging more regularly, so cross your fingers.

Life is full of joy, but also challenges. For those that experience the suffering of infertility, you can find yourself riding a roller coaster of emotions over a period of several years. My journey being no exception, I have had moments of solid trust and faith that God is in control and I'm 100% okay with that, and then seemingly the very next day will have a moment of complete despair and hopelessness.

Doubting is a part of life, as much as anything else (joy/bitterness, happiness/sadness, dancing/mourning). To be human, is to be filled with doubts. In those moments of despair and heavy doubts, I often wish I could simply escape it.

 photo 2013-08-08160432_zps858154a7.jpg

We have this button at work. Once the building is locked after work hours, you have to press this button in order to open the door.

In those moments of doubt and despair, I wish there was this sort of button for my life. With a simple push of a button, I could escape the pain and suffering of waiting for an unknown period of time for a child. It would be so much easier if I had a button like this to push in times of despair. It would be so easy to skip over this difficult part of my life.

But I think that's God's point of this, and any, trial. He doesn't want me to skip over this difficult part of my life.

He wants to share in this suffering with me. He wants to hold me and comfort me and listen to my every cry and catch my every tear. He wants to teach me what it means to persevere. He wants to teach me what it means to have unfailing faith, even when it makes logical sense to give it up. He wants to write a beautiful story leading us to parenthood, and to the specific children He has chosen for us, but He needs me to learn that time and events must fall into proper place for that story to unfold.

So it may be easy to have a button like this for your life when it gets tough, but skipping over the hard parts of life will not help you in the long run. You will miss out on so many character-building, faith-building, and relationship-building moments if you do. And trust me, those moments are worth experiencing.

I'm saying this as much to myself as I am to you, but try not to skip over the difficult parts of life. Instead look for God in those moments. Look for the ways that God is working, or the ways that He has blessed you. Sometimes you have to look really, really, really closely, but it is always there, somewhere.

Romans 8:28
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.