When hoping for a baby is not enough

Infertility treatment is often described as a roller coaster. There are a lot of ups and downs. The downs go by many different names: anxiety, fear, frustration, anger, sadness, guilt, devastation... but the ups, the ups go by one name:

Hope.

Hope can be a scary thing. Hope makes us vulnerable. In our vulnerability we say things like, "I don't want to get my hopes up" because we know just how painful the fall will be if our hopes are dashed.

I've been thinking a lot about hope lately.

I hope I get a positive test.
I hope this cycle will be the one.
I hope we get answers at our next appointment.
I hope the treatment works.
I hope we can afford this.
I hope I will be pregnant... someday. Soon.

I hope.

It's good to hope and it's good to be vulnerable because both those things make us fully alive, but I need something more. "Believing it will happen" is not enough for me because sometimes it doesn't happen. "Trusting God" can't be trusting that he will grant me a pregnancy because what if he doesn't? I need something more. I need something I can set my hopes on, without the threat the failure.

I knew the answer was somewhere in Jesus, but I as I tried to work through my questions, I could not figure out exactly how. As is so often the case, the answer I needed came from a verse I had read many times before but had not yet worked its way into my heart:

Hebrews 10:23, " Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful."

I read the verse late at night, taking in a quick devotion on my iphone. There, in black letters on a glowing screen were the words my heart needed to badly to hear. "Hold unswervingly to the hope we profess."

To the hope we profess. What is the hope I profess? Not that I will get that positive pregnancy test. Not that I will know the joy of new life inside. Not that I will join the song of millions of women before me as I groan and bring a child into the world. Not that I will hold my baby tight and warm, skin to skin. Oh how I long for those things, but they are not the hope I profess.

The hope I profess is one thing:

Redemption.

Unswervingly, I hold to my redemption in Christ and now, as I look into the face of doctors, pills, injections, and the prospect of more white spaces on the pregnancy tests where I wish with my whole being that a pink line would appear.... now in the face of my infertility I hold unswervingly to the hope that God will redeem these days.

Just as God is redeeming the days my son and I lost as he waited, alone, in an orphanage...

... so too I trust that God will redeem the fear, the pain, and the longing I presently know too well.

Be glad, people of Zion,
    rejoice in the Lord your God,
for he has given you the autumn rains
    because he is faithful.
He sends you abundant showers,
    both autumn and spring rains, as before.
The threshing floors will be filled with grain;
    the vats will overflow with new wine and oil.

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—    the great locust and the young locust,    the other locusts and the locust swarm—my great army that I sent among you.You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,    and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,    who has worked wonders for you;never again will my people be shamed.Then you will know that I am in Israel,    that I am the Lord your God,    and that there is no other; never again will my people be shamed.

God works in redemption, repayment, and restoration. In his time and in his way, I know he will redeem this experience because he is faithful. 

That is the good, greater, guaranteed hope to which I cling in the middle of my uncertain hopes for pregnancy. Some days I do feel hopeful about our treatment and getting pregnant. Other days, the hope that God will redeem my pain somehow is the only hope I have. It doesn't take away the longing, but somehow... it's enough. 

He who promised is faithful. 

xo