The other day I found myself listening to the song that helped me through our first failed IVF pregnancy at the beginning of the year. It’s a beautiful song by Emile Sande called Breathing Underwater and sums up for me the incredible, despair-free journey we took as we lost two little ones to miscarriage over the New Year. Back then I sensed that Father God had scooped us up from the edge of a dark pit before we toppled in, and carried us safely through the months which followed.

I miscarried our most recent IVF embryos exactly three months ago today, and the landscape that we have traversed after this miscarriage has been so different. It has taken me a very long time to admit the depth of pain – perhaps accumulated pain – that I have been in. I started a new job only a few days before finding out in our early scan appointment that all was not what we had hoped for and two weeks later my body heaved and rejected what it could not sustain. The combination of beginning a new position alongside experiencing physical and emotional trauma felt like the worst timing in the world, and so I put a lid on my pain in an effort to march out the days at work. Despite seeking prayer support and booking a week of holiday, I should have guessed that I could not carry on as I was and that I might eventually implode. But sometimes, we’re not very good at admitting that we’re in trouble and that we need help, even as the telltale signs of physical stress begin to emerge!

My week of holiday, which was meant to be the rest we so desperately needed, was ruined by a nasty chest infection and conjunctivitis which only worsened upon my return. I took an extra week off to recover and then returned to work, but was immediately struck down by another infection, and at this point a kind and firm doctor realised that my body was crying out for help and intervened. I am bemused and ashamed now that I resisted for so long in admitting how ill I felt, but despite my pigheadedness, I also recognise God’s hand in the joining of dots as first my boss at work, then the counsellor (yes, I’ve just begun some counselling) and finally the GP all joined forces in ensuring I took the time off I needed.

Alongside this physical meltdown, I knew that I was up to my eyes in an emotional pain for which I had no words. My waking thoughts and prayers were little more than a deep groaning, “I’m so broken. My heart is so broken”, and this refrain would rise up from my spirit in the middle of the night, as I surfaced for the day and as I went to sleep at night. I had nothing more than a deep, raw agony of loss and I had no idea where to start in trying to heal. I felt like I was looking down into the well of my emotional reserves and could see straight to its very empty bottom. There was nothing left this time to draw on. The pain I was feeling had risen up in my life like a great, yawning cavern and as I stood at the edge and peered in, blinking furiously into the darkness to assess how deep and wide it might be, I was too frightened to venture further unless it sucked me inside and I never reappeared again.

When life wounds us deeply, when we go through trauma, we so often wonder where God is in the hurting. The words on the pages of our Bible can seem dry and crisp; we can read familiar verses without understanding the heart of the one who first breathed them. In the face of what seems like betrayal or disappointment, we can feel so justified in pointing the finger and asking God where he is in our pain. I have to keep coming back to the truth that God is right beside me. He is good and knows exactly what we need. His promise to redeem, heal and restore us is never withdrawn no matter what life looks like or how we thrash about or turn silent in our determination to cope.

As I began to accept and hunger for the space that was opening up to me, God presented me with two keys to dealing with this vast cavernous pain I was reluctantly tiptoeing around. The first came in the shape of my counsellor who explained to me that tears and confronting pain would not lead me into a depression (my biggest fear), but that by addressing the issues causing the pain, I would find I was making steps away from entering into depression. In other words, keeping emotions and hurts bottled up would damage me far more than taking the courageous step of releasing them. I’m aware that this is a very simplified approach to the huge topic of depression and that for many it’s not quite as simple as this suggestion, but for me it provided permission to press the ‘release’ button on my pain, rather than trying to swallow down what I knew was lodged inside me.

The second key came in the shape of a blog post by Kris Vallotton which I stumbled upon that same evening entitled, Leaving Pain Behind, which proved to be the confirmation I needed to step into my pain in order to get out of it. Like the children’s story, We’re going on a Bear Hunt, I couldn’t go around it, I was going to have to walk straight through it to get out the other side. Can I encourage you, if you’re reading these words and can just feel that inner niggle of, “Oh cr*p! I recognise this for myself”, I have found that the pain I thought was that big scary bear at the back of the cave ready to eat me alive, turned out not to be in there at all, but something much smaller and easier to deal with. What’s more, I also discovered that addressing the pain I was in simply required making the space and time to let God have full access to my heart and He did all the rest, in His best way for me, as only He can.

We underestimate the power and importance of self-care, of being kind to oneself, of stopping and admitting what we need in order to get well, whether that be prayer, rest, extra sleep, having another good cry, a walk, time alone, time with others, a trip to see the doctor or a counsellor, etc. I am learning that on this occasion I needed a mixture of having the time and space to rest and recover, and also to allow God into that space to do what He needed to do and to not question His methods or motives. Regardless of how hard life can be, God’s goodness never changes – we just have to keep reminding our aching hearts of that.

Let me tell you more….

As momentum was beginning to build around me to facilitate my time off work, I saw increasing confirmations that what God had in store for me was the need for silence and stillness. I’m not very good at sitting with either! To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure I would like what I heard in my head if I sat silently with my thoughts – and more importantly, I wasn’t sure I’d like what God had to say if I sat quietly and listened! As I endeavoured one afternoon to put this silence and stillness into practice, I was distracted by a link to a spontaneous worship set and as I settled down, these words floated out into the air around me:

We’re so thankful for your presence that’s in this room right now. I just feel the joy of surrender, the joy of surrender. What a joy it is to lay down our lives. We’ve got to lose our lives to find it. I’m going to lose my life in you.

I will dare to believe that anything is possible. We throw caution to the wind. It’s time to risk again. I believe anything can happen, anything can happen when we rise in the faith in the name of Jesus. There’s more, there’s more. Jesus is at your door and he’s saying, “I’m coming for you”.

I will dare to believe that anything is possible. We throw caution to the wind.

It’s time to risk again.

As I listened to the words of the song and relaxed into God’s presence I realised that it was just this that was my problem and the root of a lot of my pain. I had been frightened of risking my heart again – on God, on a future pregnancy, on dreaming again – but the encouragement, the call from Him, the dare was right there in front of me: it’s time to risk again.

And as I asked myself to trust God, a picture came to my mind of Him standing before me. And as this picture played out in my mind’s eyes, God reached out, put his hand on my chest and then reached deep inside my heart and scooped out what was inside. He then put his hand to his mouth and swallowed what was in his hand. And then he did it again and again. At first, I didn’t understand what He was doing, but then it became clear: God was scooping all the distress, despair, loss, sadness, grief, hopelessness, discouragement, disappointment, bitterness, trauma, resentment and anger from deep inside my heart and swallowing it down right there in front of me. And as I watched He did it again and again. Eventually, knowing what dark and painful thoughts and feelings were in my heart I cried out, “No no no, you mustn’t do that. It will hurt you. It will destroy you”. I felt I was watching someone I love swallow poison in front of me. But God replied, “No, I’m God! It won’t touch me. This is what I do“. And sure enough I could see with every swallow, God was simply absorbing the negative energy of my pain, brokenness, grief and anger and it wasn’t impacting him at all. I guess in an incredibly graphic and intimate way, right in front of me I was seeing the enactment of Isaiah 53:4 when it says, “He took our sicknesses and removed our diseases.” Right there in front of me, God was taking up my pain and bearing my sorrows as only He can. And so I sobbed and sobbed and opened my arms wide to let Him take it all from me.

If this blog post is resonating with you, I would encourage you to click on the link to the worship set above and allow our amazing Daddy God to talk to you about what it is you need. Perhaps like me you have been holding on to anxieties, pain and fears, or you feel frightened of the uncertainty that lies ahead of you. But you know we never regret allowing Him to bring his wonderful power and love to us, and it’s always perfectly tailor-made to suit us. There is nothing in you that can put him off, no matter how much it might be putting you off, or how long you’ve been burying it for. It says in Zephaniah 3:17 that “he delights over us with singing” and this song cracked open my clogged-up heart to him.

In the days which have followed I can confidently say that my heart is no longer crying out that it is broken. I still feel vulnerable, I still feel wary of the future, and I still wobble, but I am free of the pain I was in. I trust that my God is totally for me and that nothing that is within me will put Him off getting near to me.

One final thought… I have also found the Philip Yancey book, Disappointment with God, to be a hugely helpful read over the last few weeks, as I have wrestled with how to deal with life when it throws difficult things at us and God seems to have forgotten us. Yancey explores in an honest and authentic way what it is to have these questions and how to find the answers we’re looking for. The central message of the book asks the questions, will we trust Him, will we risk our heart for Him as He has done for us? I want my answer to always be “YES” no matter what life throws at me.

Reading declarations of love and appreciation about someone’s spouse on social media has a tendency to make me feel just a little bit queasy. I’m not madly into PDAs although hand holding and the occasional side hug are fine every now and then. But it would be wrong of me, after all this time, not to talk about the incredible man who is my husband and just what a rock he has been over the last four and a half years.

Rolling back the years to when we were first dating, he was always baby mad. Any excuse to hold at least one little person (at a time) at church on a Sunday and he’d be first in line! Throughout our dating and engagement this translated to regular epistles on loving me, including how spectacular, no just downright hot, I would look with a baby bump and how he couldn’t wait to see it. Babies were on his mind from the get-go and it’s one of the wonderful parts of his personality that I love so much.

Over time this enjoyment of other people’s children and dreams of his own have become a source of wounding. I’ve seen him come home downcast after playing bass at a morning church service from struggling with the sea of children in the congregation before him. He’s watched films with scenes of newborns and cried at the harsh reality of his own children’s absence in his life. He’s felt alienated from his buddies as they move on without him, as they forget that perhaps this deep void in his life is something he needs to talk about, much as I do with my girlfriends. So often the woman gets all the attention and the man is underestimated and over-looked.

His personal pain in this period of our married life grieves me deeply. I hate to see him hurting. I hate that our recent loss has hit him so very, very hard this time. I hate that I can’t change our circumstances for him. (Perhaps we are understanding just a tiny little bit more about why Sarah would allow Abraham to sleep with Hagar in Genesis 16, for although a concubine-to-hand is definitely not on our To Try Out list, the desire to bring forth life for one’s husband is an urgent one).

My hubbie has maintained an impressively positive attitude throughout all the ups and downs of our infertility years. He’s never grumbled about the varying degrees of cleanliness he’s seen in the array of clinic cupboards to which he’s been sent to give up his wares for testing or collection. He’s held my hand throughout more procedures than either of us can remember and refused to leave the room when a terse nurse would have him wait outside. He’s mixed the IVF drugs and administered injections when I fumbled in my nervousness with needles, and he knows which arm is best for the nurse to use when taking my blood. He’s sat in awe at the sight of a pregnancy test stick turn to ‘positive’ and he’s waded into every gory minute of our miscarriages. He’s championed me, defended me and loved me in our mutual pain. He’s listened to me go on and on and on and on over all these years as I rage one minute and weep another in the ups and downs of all we’ve been through. And every single month when pregnancy has been a possibility, he’s been waving the hope and victory flag for Pupo (Pupo the faith monster is our affectionate fuzzy friend – Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise!) even when I knew another period was likely to be hours away.

Three Christmases ago a close friend of mine handed me a pot of words that she had been writing and collecting from her prayer times for us (what a gem she is!). She sheepishly commented on one that she felt stood out as an anomaly from all the others, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Initially I pondered with her at the strange choice, but now I am in no doubt that this verse, along with all the others, is an absolute fit for our circumstances. In The Message version it says this, “Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. They’re really doing themselves a favor—since they’re already “one” in marriage”. My man has absolutely given his all for me. He’s put me first time and time again. He’s shielded me, sheltered me, prayed for me, held me, fought for me and loved me as we journey to these dark places together. He is not perfect, but he will always be my absolute hero.

As it happens my husband’s name means, “He (God) shall add”. And so as we wait and wonder about our family, we know that in this amazing name, and in his namesake in the Bible who dreamt and saw confounding miracles come forth, lies a promise that our God will add to us too.

I’ve been asking myself this week whether blogging in my current state is a wise idea. I’m not feeling particularly rational. I’ve been struggling to sleep. I haven’t spent hours in prayer or reading my Bible this week and I’m not really hearing God speak to me. Any observations or wisdom that might spill out on this page will not be made from my usual considered approach to our circumstances.

I’ve been trying to work out how to summarise the last two months when they are split so neatly into two such intense extremes. Today as I write this I am waiting to miscarry. My tired, tense mind can’t even begin to comprehend how to process this bit of information.

This time last week I was in a beautiful but tentative state of early pregnancy; grateful for every day that passed triumphantly and thankful for every reassuring symptom and sign of new life gently beginning to take shape inside my body. But just a few days later, at seven and a half weeks pregnant, I had my early pregnancy ultrasound scan, and where we had expected to see one, possibly two tiny babies beginning to form and hear the amazing sound of a heartbeat or two, we had the cruel shock of observing an empty amniotic sac and no new life to be seen. Several blood tests and another scan later and the outcome seemed pretty conclusive. We had a new term to add to our collection: “blighted ovum“.

The run up to our second embryo transfer had been so profoundly saturated by Father God’s words. We were led back to the same passages in the Bible over and over again, particularly those passages in John 14 and John 16 which talk about asking God for specific things and expecting to be heard and answered. Over the days leading up to our transfer so many beautiful moments unfolded. We live in a rural village and one day were privileged to see the birth of two lambs. The farmer told us that the mother had been declared barren when she was scanned with all the other pregnant ewes but here she was, a little late to the party, adding her own offspring to the collection. This event felt profound to us and we pondered the deep significance of its timing. Answers to prayer came thick and fast as we sought God’s face on the medical decisions we had to make and we saw positive outcomes blow the medics’ cautious predictions out of the water. Our God was in this. He had told us in no uncertain terms to entrust the outcome to Him and so far it was looking good.

I’m not going to tell you that I handled the Two Week Wait after the transfer in a perfect state of quiet trust and peacefulness. The fear and doubts shot out of my mouth even as my heart wrestled to keep them locked up. During an IVF cycle you are so hyper-aware of every single minute detail. Each step is nail-biting and each waiting phase feels fully loaded. On top of the mind games and waiting is an intense awareness of one’s body as additional hormone supplements must be taken to give the baby – or babies in our case – their best chance of survival. There is no switching off from twice daily pessary insertions and the delightful side effects they cause! But it has always, always been worth it.

The day I tested to see if I was pregnant I broke an agreement which my husband and I had made, that we would take the test together after work. He knew that if it was negative, I might never manage to get out of the house because I would be wrecked by the result. In my stubborn pigheadedness I decided I couldn’t wait another minute, but I had also talked myself into the conviction that I could not be pregnant. Fast forward an hour and I was sat on our prayer room floor howling in thanks to God and total disbelief that He would still bless His unfaithful, doubting daughter with her heart’s desire. The next three weeks passed in a mixture of amazed disbelief and tentative excitement.

Scroll forward again to the clean, bright fertility clinic suite and there we were in the aftermath of our appointment with nothing but confusion, shock and horror to hold our hands. As I sit here, still in disbelief, still trying to process the images that I have recently seen on-screen, I cannot work out why our circumstances have once again led us here. Pain, loss, disappointment and grief are beginning to feel like the only companions I will ever have in this life. We have lived so long beside them that I doubt I will ever get to hang out with joy or begin to dream again. I am so familiar with how it feels to live in the utter heartbreak of infertility that I wonder whether I’ll ever view life through any other lens.

I know that every woman handles miscarriage in her own way. Some are private, strong and silent. Some are more vocal, needing the comfort of others and the room to grieve openly. Some carry on as if nothing has happened. Others make it clear to all that their world has just fallen apart. Some run to God for comfort; others wonder whether He really can love them at all. There are many, many, many women who experience miscarriage, and many who never breathe a word about it. Every woman needs to be seen and heard in her own way during this hideous time. And loved, loved, loved. I am still zombie-like, groping about in the darkness for the words for this fresh devastation. Having experienced two miscarriages already, I am frightened of the physical pain and fresh sorrow that will accompany the bleeding when it begins.

And as always the same questions return. What about God? Where is He in this? What on earth did He mean by asking us to “entrust Him with the outcome”? We had experienced the joy of heaven over this new opportunity for new life and now this? How do I open myself up once again to let Him comfort me when He is silent now? How do I trust that He is who He says He is when life serves me nothing but pain and torment? How do I possibly believe that I am the apple of His eye when He continues to bless so many women around me with their miracle babies, but not me?

I turn to the Psalms, to poetry, to the words of David because I don’t have words to give Him,

Max Lucado once said, “Rather than ask God to change your circumstances, ask him to use your circumstances to change you”.

I’m going to be honest, not once in the fifty months that we have been going through infertility have I stopped asking God to change my circumstances. I still long to have children of my own and I believe it is right to keep seeking God’s face for the fulfillment of this promise. Furthermore, I suspect that whether we take up the challenge within this statement or not, it’s likely that one way or another our circumstances will change us anyway. I am not the Helena of 2013 when we first started trying for a baby, and whether I had got pregnant easily that year or not, over time my circumstances would have changed me. Change is inevitable, as much as we resist it. We can’t help but be suspicious of it, figuring that we like ourselves as we are thank you very much, and actually we didn’t think there was much that needed improvement.

But how naive we are.

Infertility has an unfortunate habit of making one incredibly insular and self-involved. As my previous post, Badges of Honour, explains, for many of us, infertility can leave us feeling that we are the only one to have ever experienced this struggle, the only one to know what it is truly like and we battle to think outside of ourselves and our own situation. But my struggle to conceive has also blessed me with the unique opportunity to consider the ways in which I am being changed and what I have learnt along the way. In the beginning, I wrongly assumed that God must need to test and teach me something that many of my friends didn’t need to learn, and that attending life’s School of Infertility was the best way for me to receive this education. These days, I simply believe that through my circumstances I have been given the chance to embrace Lucado’s dare, humble myself and invite God to transform me. And whether it’s infertility or the breakdown of a marriage, or job redundancy, or depression or loss, in it all God is beckoning us forth to learn more of who He is and how much He loves us.

These days I find myself contemplating and counting the treasure that Father God has bestowed upon me over the last few years. These jewels around my neck are precious and costly and I wear them with pride. They are the treasures of Isaiah 45:3, hidden in the darkness that we have been walking through, and stored in secret places. They have indeed revealed more about the God I worship and adore; the One who calls me by name. They have changed how I see myself and how I see my God and they remind me that I live a different way now.

These treasures haven’t come easily. They have required much seeking and persistence. The treasure hunt itself has defined and refined my character. I have learnt along the way that Father God delights in a treasure hunt. I can feel His smile as together we uncover another gem. He adores the hiding and the finding, and He loves to watch my face as I uncover a new gift. There is so much glee in realising how much we both love a happy surprise, especially one which has been gained through trouble or refining.

As I share them with you today, I want to encourage you to look to the gems that you now also wear around your own neck. Celebrate them and marvel at their beauty, for they come from the One who loves to give good gifts to His children and who calls you to live a richer life than you had planned for yourself.

Treasure #1: The renewing of my mind

It took me a while to cotton on to the fact that the renewal of my mind was the key to everything. For a long time I couldn’t work out what this verse in the book of Romans even meant! I assumed that one day God would take hold of me and like a Marvel comic book protagonist going through a laboratory superhero transformation, He would simply reprogramme me with a new way of thinking and in an instant I would be changed to approach everything with a Christ-like mindset. How silly I was! I have learnt that being a follower of Jesus means just that: following to see where the Lord leads and choosing to actively participate in His way of life. Once I realised that by reading God’s Word, worshipping Him in how I live my life and actively choosing to declare the truth of His promises to dispel the negative thoughts that plagued me, the way I thought and spoke about myself, my circumstances and my heavenly Father changed. When I choose to focus on what God says about the world, my situation and who He is, I find freedom from fear and sadness, joy in the little things, an overwhelming sense of hope and a deeply grateful heart. I have had to work at this discipline. Renewing my mind seems to be an ongoing work, requiring time, patience and practice as I delve into layer upon layer of my life, my history and my heart. But as I choose to apply God’s word to my life, to surround myself with words, songs, pictures and choices that reflect who He is, my life has become a richer, steadier and more hopeful place than I could ever have imagined.

Treasure #2: The power of praise

This season of physical barrenness has opened up to me a beautiful, plentiful, colourful vista of praise. Over the last four years I have hungrily devoured a wealth of songs, albums, poetry and Psalms which have revealed and reflected the compassionate, powerful heart of God and provided me with the words I have groped to find to show Him how I feel in return. Whether in a place of deep loss and grief or soaring on the high of answered prayers; whether using worship music as a love song, a weapon against the enemy or a battle cry, my desire to lift my voice and glorify my God has intensified and grown. I am a hungry, passionate worshipper whether I’m in the car, the shower, at church, work, or home and whether the songs are by Christian musicians or secular singers. God can be found in everything! Praising God is a shortcut to hope and His presence on the bad days. It is intimacy and joy on the good days. Yes I have lifted my hands and praised Him with gritted teeth and a breaking heart. Yes there have been moments of apathy or indifference as I struggle to engage, but the overwhelming, urgent need within me now is that I have to praise Him! There is no greater privilege, no greater joy than to join with the angels in lifting my voice to the One who gave me the very breath in my lungs. Worshipping in all circumstances recentres us and shifts our perspective away from ourselves and onto the majesty, splendour and wonder of a limitless, loving God who holds the world in the palm of His hands and knows us better than we know ourselves.

Treasure #3: Surrender

I’m under no illusion that I am a bit of a control freak. I come from a family where everything is planned, everything is a known quantity, and if we don’t know something, we research it until we do. Minimal risk is a good thing. Spontaneity is to be treated with caution. And I’m on the more relaxed end of this spectrum in my family! But infertility has forced me to walk away from this constant ‘need to know’ attitude. Within months of starting to try for a baby, ‘everything going to plan’ lay in pieces at our feet and we found ourselves walking an uncertain path with no clear idea of where it would lead or for how long we would be walking it. So often our easy, luxurious Western lives go without a hitch. We make decisions and they happen. It’s only the rude awakening of something like an unplanned biological hiccup that pulls us up sharp and reminds us just how weak and feeble we really are. Surrender has not come easily to this independent, feisty, self-sufficient daughter. It’s taken me a long time and many, many moments of yielding and re-yielding my heart to God to enable Him to have my hopes, dreams, fears and character; to give back to Him the woman He created and to let Him love me into the person He made me to be. I am learning that resistance is futile in the arms of the Saviour – and why would I want to resist anyway, when what He has, who He is and what He can do is so much greater than I could ask or imagine?!

Treasure #4: Hope

Hope has been my battle cry over the last four years. Very quickly I realised that if I wanted to survive this tricky time, I had to choose to fix my eyes on Jesus: the one who pierces darkness with His light. There have been so many times over the last few years when giving up has felt like the best option for us. We have regrouped on many occasions and asked ourselves whether we should simply accept defeat and find a new dream. And without fail, every time that we have got to this place, a verse of HOPE has sprung up in a text message, a sign outside a church, a sermon on a Sunday, and many other places. I have studied and soaked up the many verses on hope in the Bible and they are all rooted in the One for whom nothing is impossible. So how can we not then be expectant? Father God has been teaching me how to hold despair and hope in tension and to always choose the latter; how to keep my eyes fixed on all that He is capable of; how to believe for what we can’t see in front of us but to have the faith for the impossible; how to trust in the more that He has in store. God always has another move – and this is the hope we cling to, the gold which sparkles despite the dross.

Treasure #5: Prayer

Many years ago a friend prophesied over us that we were a couple of faith and that we would be endurance pray-ers We were newly married and they sounded like great qualities. Never did I consider how these two gifts would be honed and put into practice in this time! I have always loved to pray and prayer has become a constant conversation as well as those specific moments in a quiet time. Sometimes when I get alone with my Daddy, I talk more than I should. Sometimes I find myself stuck on repeat. Sometimes the words dry up and all I have to offer is the groans of my Spirit. Sometimes I have no words at all and find myself needing the words of another close heart to pray for me. Always, always I am learning how to pray. Prayer is as vital as my heart beating and developing my prayer life in this time has been one of my favourite treasures. These days there are verses and pictures, prophecies and song lyrics pinned up all over the walls of our nursery bedroom, our prayer room. Prayer is stepping into His presence and being heard and healed. Prayer is putting God back on the throne of our lives. Prayer is allowing Him to be King. Prayer is intimacy, vulnerability, repentance and restoration. Prayer is urgent, fiery and passionate, but it’s also gentle, quiet and uncertain. Prayer is worth the effort even when we wonder whether our requests and offers of thanks have been caught by heaven, for God has shown me on too many occasions now that He is definitely listening!

Treasure #6: Choosing joy for those whose answer has come before yours

Over the years, as I have sat in the waiting room of infertility, a steady stream of courageous friends have passed through. And as we have sat and waited together for a while, the one issue that has come up more than any other is how to be joyful for someone else’s pregnancy. It seems to be one of the toughest challenges of them all: celebrating with someone who has what you long for. Even now, after all this time and with so many opportunities for practice under my belt, I am amazed at how the words “I’m pregnant” still sting. I still find it tricky to choose wholehearted joy without a tinge of jealousy. And yet those times when I have triumphed, when I have whooped with delight over a friend’s scan photo or held a baby shower, bought beautiful gifts or gladly held a newborn and marvelled at their beauty, I know that I am sowing into my own future. Each time we choose to rejoice with those who are rejoicing, we bless those that God loves and we hear the echo from the future of what’s to come for ourselves. And in doing so, I also feel I am sticking two fingers up at my enemies, Fear and Doubt, and letting them know in no uncertain terms that love is stronger and I will not give in to the anxiety that my time will never come. This jewel has been earned with grit and sacrifice, with tears and transformation. It is a pearl of great price and it is a beauty.

Treasure #7: Who I am in Him

Isn’t this one the biggest wrestle for us all? Every single day we’re labelled, defined and pushed into boxes. The question we ask someone when we meet them for the first time is so often, “What do you do?”. Moreover, deep within each of us is a desire to stick a label on ourselves, to say “This is who I am. This is what I do”. Having purpose makes us feel good, needed and seen. Over the last few years my CV has recorded a wide-ranging scattering of different roles, none of which really represent me. I had hoped to add to this the position of mother and would quite happily have let that define me if it hadn’t evaded me. So what a wonderful privilege to have found myself in a long period of life where rather than being pigeon-holed, God has brought me before Himself and asked me to explore with Him how He sees me. Isn’t it wonderful that Father God simply says to us, “Do you know who you are?”. In heaven when He created us He didn’t slap a sticker on our chest and categorise us by our family, social position or talents. In God, there is a huge expanse of freedom to explore who we are in Him. This particular treasure changes everything. This beautiful gem is the one where the deepest transformation is taking place. Like a precious diamond being cut, the process is painful as the unnecessary is cut away, and yet the final product will be stunning.