Over these last four months of hospital visits, infection, pills and pessaries, anxiety attacks and unexpected negative reactions to the tablets, my faith in God’s ability to do a miracle for us has been sorely tested but in my knower I know that He has what it takes. A God who became man for love of me and defeated death to set me free can do anything! Yet when it comes to my performance…..? Whether I am waiting well and can continue to wait well is another matter entirely. I don’t doubt His ability to deliver us from this struggle, but I do question my own capacity to be patient in the waiting, to remain humble and not indignant, to rejoice in others’ answers to prayer in the face of my own sorrow, to choose joy and to trust in His ability to use all things for my good. If the answer to our prayers was reliant on my performance I would have lost out the minute we started trying!

There comes a day as we approach our second anniversary of trying for a baby where in truth I have to admit that I have come to the end of myself now. I have fought for nearly two years against how this journey to parenthood looks for us. I have desperately desired a baby, refused to accept the struggle and the pain, pushed against our circumstances as being the final word on our quest for a baby and been open to anything and everything to see our dream fulfilled. But I am spent. The fight has gone out of me and I don’t desire to struggle in this anymore. All my strategies, planning, timing, openness to medication have failed and I am out of options and energy. The drugs I have tried so far have left me unwilling to try anything else and I choose not to put my body through any further scans, tests, monitoring or fiddling. Unless God says so.

I am really ready to listen now. I am really ready to surrender.

I suspect every woman on this journey must get to this point. After 22 months of trying for a baby I am at the point of “enough now”! I want a baby God’s way or not at all. So we agree to stop ‘trying’. It is not that I accept barrenness as the final word on our situation. Divine hope knows no limitations and I know we can have that miracle but it is time to stop pursuing pregnancy.

It is time to embrace the life we have as two (plus our cat!) – with children or without them. I cannot be destroyed by this any more than I have been. I am not who I was and I cannot continue to be the scrap of the Helena that I once was. My generosity and kindness seem shredded to me. I am isolated, anxious and without joy. My body aches with suppressed stress and tension.   This is not life as God intended and it would be selfish and wrong to continue as we are. It is time to embrace and be reborn, to enjoy each other and the lives we have been given. It is time to choose joy and adventure as it is before us.

The slate is wiped clean. As 2015 unfolds I leave the writing of my life from now onwards up to my Father. He knows my pain, my desires, my hopes and dreams. He can write what He likes on my life because His way is the only way to live and I will not wrestle with Him anymore. Give me a new name, Lord God.