Category: infertility

if winter offers no answers

IMG_6099I lay down on the concrete, cat-like in finding the perfect spot for sunning in late January’s taste of spring. Ridley joins in as he perches beside me, scanning gaps between fence posts for signs of passerby activity.

My soul needed this weekend, as I am sure yours did, too.

In no time at all, the coats and gloves will stow away for the majority of the year. Tulips and daffodils will be the forerunners of Spring’s arrival, shooting through crunchy grass to trumpet her arrival.

After today, I expect Spring will hit the snooze button and fall back asleep for another six weeks, but her 65 degree stretch-and-yawn this weekend gives me just the hope I need – the reminder that winter doesn’t last for forever.

We all want that reassurance when we find ourselves in a season we would rather not remain in. Just a glimmer of what’s coming to give us strength to endure the winter for a little while more.

So what do you do when you don’t sense that glimmer, when the cold and gray envelopes you with no promise of letting go?

How do you find hope when none is offered? How do you live in the tension of what you are trusting is next and the reality of where you are right now?

I’ve struggled to write about this because I honestly don’t have the answer.

I’ve pondered and processed how to fight with hope against the cynicism of “it’s never going to happen” or “this is the way life will always be,” while also surrendering my heart to “not my will but Yours be done.”

And the best answer I have come up with is that it’s not a black and white thing, which is hard for me to accept – but which I am noticing the Lord wants to remind me of more frequently these days.

I am a self-aware legalist, thriving on rule-following and clear-coated ethics and knowing without a doubt that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing. I am Nicodemus in John 3, asking the Christ for the 1-2-3’s on how to ensure my rightness with Him, finding the idea of “being born again” too odd and unattainable.

How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?

How can I trust You completely with my desires but protect against hurt? What is the secret to avoiding depression, grief, misplaced hope? How do I wholeheartedly follow You where I don’t think I want to go? How do I communicate honestly, tell You what I want, without being demanding or selfish or resistant to Your plan?

I am learning that my perspective, like Nicodemus’s, is wrong.

I so badly want to handle life “the right way” or “the way I should” that I miss the gift of God’s grace. I falsely think that spiritual maturity means growing to need God less and less the way we grow apart from our earthly parents – Look, Mom and Dad, I’m all grown up and filing my taxes without your help! However, I once heard someone say that spiritual maturity actually means that we grow to acknowledge our need for God more and more. It’s not about being able to stand on our own two feet but, instead, frequently falling in God’s arms and allowing Him to be our stable place, our rock.

He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. (Psalm 62:2)

I am not shaken because of Him, not because of what I in myself am capable of.

I find my assurance not in how well I follow a checklist but in how well I know Him and accept His love for me.

So back to having hope but not being devastated in getting my hopes up.
To living in the tension of God’s goodness but God’s unexplainable purposes.
To how I am “supposed to” handle this spiritual and emotional season of winter.

I am humbly recognizing my need to let go of looking for the answers to my questions and instead look to the truth of Who God is, regardless of my circumstances. Not that He isn’t a God with answers, but sometimes He asks us to trust without the explanation we are looking for.

And He wants us to acknowledge that we are a mess and that we need His help, because, the truth is, we don’t handle life the right way. While I am feeling lost right now, I am taking comfort that He is present as I sort through what I don’t understand. His grace covers my continual shortcomings, my frequently incorrect thinking. His grace covers my pain and my lack of faith.

I am so grateful for this weekend, but I know that Spring doesn’t always show herself in January. When she doesn’t, when she remains in hiding, it doesn’t mean that she is no longer coming. It simply means we must continue to faithfully wait, trusting a Creator Who sets purposes in motion even if they are first buried beneath the surface of a frosty ground.

Posted on by Samantha Barnes 0

when you can’t skim over life

As a writer, there are two hard things I have found to be true. The first is that I can’t just write here about something that sounds good and spiritual and meaningful – I have to actually live it first.

The second is that as I, just like you, live through my own lessons and learn (often the hard way), I personally cannot process what I am experiencing until I write about it. Eric can normally start to tell when I haven’t written in awhile, because I complain about feeling “off” but I don’t know why. The way God has seemed to wire me to process by writing is something I love, but it also requires courage. Writing something down makes it feel more real, exposing pain and unfinished stories in which I could feel overwhelmed but instead am challenged to respond with truth about Who God is.

Very rarely do we as humans willingly embrace pain. We love the short cut and the easy way and the smart-enough-to-plan-ahead.

But the more I read the Bible, and the more I read authors who help me to read the Bible differently, I see pain laced in-between so many of the narratives. Where I once focused on the miracle at hand and the way God showed up, I am now slowing down the happily-ever-after I so love to celebrate and instead identifying with the characters, recognizing their pain in ways I have previously just skimmed through.

It’s so much easier to summarize the past than it is to live in the process.

Take Hannah’s story, for example. 1 Samuel 1 tells us, “Elkanah had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.” How much life is actually built into that blunt statement! We know the whole story – that God is going to show up and provide a son who will be instrumental in the shaping of Israel’s history. Knowing the whole story can cause us to keep reading to get to the good stuff: the angel’s promise, the answered prayers, the boy who would later audibly hear God’s call. But Hannah didn’t have that advantage. Day in, day out, Hannah lived through this harsh and constant comparison, uncertain of her future and of her God’s plan.

The death of Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother, is another happy ending we can gloss over too quickly. The whole story is in John 11 but basically Mary and Martha send a messenger to Jesus to ask Him to come heal their brother, who is sick. Jesus somewhat cryptically responds, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” He then waits before going to visit this family, and by that time it is seemingly too late. Mary and Martha have been mourning their brother’s death for four days. What do you think those four days were like for Mary and Martha? If you have had a loved one pass away, what were the first few days like for you?

When Jesus finally shows up, Martha runs out to greet him, but Mary doesn’t leave the house. When someone comes to tell her that Jesus is calling for her, she runs to Him, falls at His feet, and wails, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

We know Jesus is about to do something great. But for the past four days, I bet Mary was lost in grief. She knew Jesus’ authority and power, yet she and Martha waited and waited and He didn’t show up.

We don’t get to read ahead in the story of our lives to see how God is going to act or what He is doing ultimately for His praise from our lives. We have to live each day in uncertainty of the future, certain only that life doesn’t always go the way we hope it will. There is an ultimate happily ever after when Jesus comes back for good, but until then we are surrounded by brokenness.

The sweet thing I am noticing in the midst of the pain is the way that pain draws a person into deeper intimacy with God – and, in my recent studies, especially in examples of women in Scripture. We don’t read a lot from the perspective of women in the Bible, but often in the times that we do, there’s a desperation present in their need for God to show up. We get to see Hannah praying so intensely that the priest Eli thinks she is drunk. We see Mary fall at Jesus’ feet and audibly question what He is doing. At the end of Genesis 29 we are privy to Leah’s heart as she names her sons to reflect her own pain of being unloved – and as they reflect her transition over the years from craving her husband’s affirmation to being able to praise God despite her marriage reality.

It’s a beautiful picture of the Gospel, our desperate need for God and His grace to meet us in our lack.

IMG_6075

In When Life and Beliefs Collide, Carolyn Custis James writes (referencing Mary’s interaction with Jesus after Lazarus’s death):

Jesus does not stand above or outside of Mary’s pain, much less urge her to snap out of it. He is neither philosophical nor patronizing… He acknowledges her sorrow and validates her suffering by entering himself into the full measure of her distress without reserve. Surely Jesus’ behavior should prevent us from ever thinking good theology makes us impervious to our pain or indifferent to the suffering of others… Good theology ­– in Jesus and in us – coexists with broken hearts, shattered lives, and unimaginable pain.

Jesus is with us in pain. He doesn’t chide us for being overwhelmed with sadness as we walk through the hard seasons of life. Faith in Him doesn’t mean that we are able to endure trials personally unaffected by what’s happening; faith is experiencing the grit of life and crying out against it yet still choosing to cling to Him in the midst of the unexplained.

In another book, The Gospel of Ruth, James comments, “God uses suffering to open our eyes to see more of him than we would under rosier conditions.” How my heart longs for my own eyes to be opened in such a way – to not skim over pain in hopes that it will be over soon, but to walk each step looking to see more of God through my sadness than maybe I could if everything went the way I wanted it to.

One of the blessings as I am walking through the unmet desire of pregnancy and a baby has been the reality that I can’t share my story or even how I am doing right now in that skimmed-over fashion I might normally use. It’s easy to tell others how God has worked in my life in the past now that I can connect the dots and see what He was doing. In this moment, though, I don’t see the full picture. I don’t have the promise of a pretty bow to tie it all together. What I do have is the confidence that He is present, even in the midst of sorrow, and I am grateful for a platform that allows me to put what I believe about God to work. I pray that the way I am daily living in this season, though imperfect, is an encouragement to others who will one day – or who, even now – walk through their own trials and broken places.

This unavoidable brokenness is a reality that we live in the process, but we can and must cling to truth in the midst of the day to day: He is with me. He is for my good. He is for His glory. And those truths are worth more than just being skimmed over.

Posted on by Samantha Barnes 0

the story isn’t over yet

Have you ever had the thought, “What if this is the way things will always be?”

So often, especially when we find ourselves in a season of waiting, we start to think things will never change. Like a week of rain and gray skies causes us to forget how a clear, sunny day feels on our skin. Like the way fog settled in over Mount Rushmore just before my friends and I arrived, made us wonder if the carved rock faces actually existed behind all those clouds. Obstructed or incomplete views have a way of causing us to doubt that the picture will ever be whole.

Misplaced hope keeps us thinking that things won’t be better until our circumstances change. Discouragement, if left unchecked, can lead to a paralysis – an inability to look up from the ground we are staring at as we walk. And when we lose both hope and the ability to think about more than what’s directly in front of us, we might think the story is over.

I remember exactly where I was when I saw the Facebook Messenger notification.

Eric and I had just landed in Seattle after leaving Juneau early in the morning, on our way home from the Cru Summer Mission we were staffing this past summer. I was waiting with our luggage outside the bathrooms and checking my phone after having it turned off for the flight. I was startled to see a message notification from an elementary and junior high classmate whom I had not spoken to probably since 2003 or 2004. Moreover, we weren’t necessarily good friends. In a small school, you were “friends” with everyone, but this friendship involved a lot of turmoil and hurt.

Any time I share my story with new friends or with college students, a prominent area in my life where I explain God’s hand at work is my struggle with healthy friendships in my growing up years. I felt very lonely in junior high and high school (due to many circumstances, not just this one relationship), and some dramatic seasons in our junior high class of 20 or so students led to personal struggles with insecurity for the next several years. However, I also share in my story that God used these times of isolation to draw me closer to Him. I felt like I couldn’t depend on the people around me, but I learned that God was constant and loving and faithful. He helped me to develop an identity apart from people, and I learned to fight the thoughts of insecurity. My parents prayed with me all through high school that God would prepare good, spiritually-encouraging friends in college, and He blessed me in incredible ways in this area once I stepped foot onto the University of Arkansas campus.

However, the story is never over.

This friend was contacting me to apologize – something I never would have expected. She shared with me how God had worked in her life over the past several years and how He had kept me on her heart and she felt like she needed to ask for my forgiveness. She worried that she would be opening old wounds by contacting me, but really felt like she needed to reach out to me.

My breath caught in my throat as I read her words. What kind of amazing maturity and life change does it take for someone to apologize almost 15 years later?!

God had worked in me years beforehand to help me let go of the pain and use the story for His glory, to connect to other women who also struggle with friendships and letting go of hurt, so I shared with her how God had used the situation in my own life for development and in others’ lives for His glory. I also apologized for ways I most likely handled it the wrong way, letting jealousy get the best of me — and just like that, I had a new friend.

Now, I have a new facet of my story to share with others: God is always at work in the redemption process.

We can’t always see what is going on in the other side of the story. God was reaching this friend in one way with her bullying and He was reaching me in another way with my insecurity – and, honestly, He was pruning out some self-righteousness as well. He was at work in both of us – but we weren’t at a place to see that yet. Now, though, we both have the joy of seeing a new perspective in God’s faithfulness to use our mistakes for good.

Let this encourage you, friend: Your story isn’t over yet.

Whether you are wrestling with pain from someone close to you, or recovering from the death of a loved one, or walking through discouraging job situation, or waiting for God’s provision in a spouse or a baby – this isn’t the way things will always be.

Not that you will get exactly what you want. Not that life circumstances will change to line up with our plans. But our hope is not in the change in our circumstances but in God’s faithfulness to continually redeem this broken world for His purposes. We can trust that even after 15 years, He can bring clarity to the story and He can open up new understandings in which our only response is to fall at His feet and praise Him for how good He is.

He is still changing you and me, and often His method is to use our life circumstances to refine us. Psalm 66:10-12 says,

For You, God, tested us; You refined us as silver is refined. You lured us into a trap; You placed burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but You brought us out to abundance.

He is at work to bring us into the abundance we experience when our hope is fulfilled in Him. He is perfecting us through each situation (James 1:2-4), and even when it feels like we don’t know where He is or how He could be present in the situation, “He knows the way that I take; when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold” (Job 23:10).

Wherever you are today, don’t give up. Your story isn’t over yet.

Posted on by Samantha Barnes 0

joy in advent’s dependency

We cut down a Christmas tree and decorated it two weekends ago. I decked out our new mantle, as well, with red and black plaid ribbon woven into a cheap fake garland (ribbon added to hopefully make it look less scrawny). Christmas music is a background soundtrack each evening, and in that sense I feel “ready” for the holiday.

FullSizeRender (1)

In a deeper sense, though, I am ready for advent.

Advent feels sweeter to me this year, and I don’t know why, other than crediting the Lord for preparing my heart for this season. In the past, I have loved the idea of being intentional to celebrate Advent with devotionals and candles and liturgies. And yet I always look back on December wondering why it wasn’t as spiritually enlightening as I wanted it to be.

But this year, I find myself longing to move from idea to experience, to savor Christ in a season all about the longing and the wait.

The longing for what is coming but is not here yet.

As I dive into Scripture this month, I more clearly notice the yearning and the groaning of Israel for redemption, which has been promised throughout the Old Testament. A Redeemer to bring peace to a nation whose history has been riddled with conflict and exile and rebuilding and darkness. A Rescuer to provide salvation. A Righteous Ruler to restore what has been broken.

In Advent, we focus on the coming of Christ, waiting for the celebration of Christmas as the Israelites waited for Jesus’ birth, then as they (unknowingly) waited for Jesus’ death. We also find ourselves still waiting for Jesus’ return and the total fulfillment of this broken world being redeemed.

Advent has been fulfilled and yet – in another sense – has yet to be finished.

And as we wait for the redemption of this world, we experience hurt and sorrow and unmet desires. John Piper said, “God prepares a person to receive Christ by stirring up a longing for consolation and redemption that can come only from Christ.” It’s easy to look around at the world around us and recognize that things aren’t as they should be, and the hard yet beautiful thing about this is that it draws us to a deeper place of aching for Christ’s return and rescue.

Something I am appreciating about waiting is that it forces me into an awareness of my dependency and my lack of control.

In waiting, we declare a dependency on something or someone else.

Waiting takes place when we have a goal or destination but something is preventing us from getting there. Whether it is waiting in traffic on I-49 after work or waiting for a new job or waiting to get married or waiting for your marriage to get better, there is some factor outside of our influence that causes a delay.

{This is going to get personal.}

We are waiting to get pregnant. Have been “trying” for eight-ish months at this point. I quote-unquote due to the odd terminology of the verb “try” for the desire to start a family. From our experience, so far, I am realizing that it is less about trying and more about giving God an opportunity to work, because trying indicates a level of control I have realized we don’t actually have.

While I have hinted and briefly mentioned examples here previously, I haven’t wanted to incite sympathy for this current path we are walking. I have wanted to avoid people responding to my words with advice on what we should change to make conception easier, or in response have you experience a saddened emotion when you think about the Barneses. Because, as it is, I feel joyful when I think about what God is doing. And I love even getting to celebrate with friends who are getting pregnant.

Because, while it honestly is in the front of my mind a lot, our story is much bigger than that desire.

During Advent, as I have reflected on waiting and longing and the lack of control, I have experienced an incredible peace with our circumstances. Emmanuel, God with us, has felt so tangible to me. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t experienced sadness. In fact, for someone who is way more “thinking” than “feeling,” the sadness has been one of the hardest parts for me to manage. I have always thought that, if I trusted God, my emotions would agree, and I wouldn’t be sad.

But here I am, trusting God fully, yet more prone to weepiness than I ever have been. I normally have to understand something in my head before it reaches my heart, and this I don’t understand. Thankfully, I have enough “feeling” friends in my life who have helped me process through this and have validated me, relieving a fear I think I have unconsciously had in the past that feelings can’t be trusted.

In Advent, I am understanding the phrase used in Luke 2:25 where it says Simeon was waiting for “the consolation of Israel.” I am longing for the comfort, like John Piper said, that only Jesus can give. While I don’t expect God to always do what I want, I have experienced His consolation as He walks with me through every trial, every situation – including the unmet desires of my heart to start a family.

As we wait for our circumstances to change – and as we ultimately wait for Christ’s return – God walks with us through the wait. He reminds us that He is trustworthy and He is faithful to His character. It took several hundred years before the prophecy of Christ was fulfilled, so we know God has His own timetable, but we also know that He sustained the nation of Israel during that time. He will sustain you, too.

And while He may not answer your prayers in the way you want Him to, He will answer. He will show up. And He will use you in His grand story to make His name great.

So as you walk through this month of anticipation for Christmas and all that Christ’s coming means, think about what you are currently waiting for in your own life – then confess to God that you relinquish control to Him, because you ultimately can’t solve it anyway. Allow your wait to draw you into a sweeter dependency on Him, and expect Him to be present with you as you wait.

Posted on by Samantha Barnes 2

willing to remain in the fog

It’s a perfect fall morning for the porch swing, a jacket, and a cup of hot tea.

I suppose that most mornings in this house have felt perfect for enjoying the front porch, ever since we moved in mid-April. The dog most always joins me here, sunning himself on the concrete or taking careful watch for lizards. Here is my favorite writing spot. Honestly, I started a blog back in college just to write for myself. I have found that, as a writer, I write to process and discover and hear from God. I hit “publish” in case God wants to use these words to encourage someone else, but the main reason I write is for what it produces in my own life. I learn as I see the words scrawl across the page, connecting my head to what’s going on in my heart.

However, the past week or so, every time I have attempted to write, I have felt paralyzed by something unknown. I haven’t felt like myself, perhaps due to not being able to translate all that has been going on in my head into written words. I’ve been distracted, which is why this was originally written pen to paper – a notebook leaves no opportunity for social media or comparing what others have written to my own meager space in this corner of the internet.

I have felt like I am in a sort of a fog that is not clearing — and frankly, it’s frustrating.

I know I won’t always be able to see down the road and envision what’s ahead. But it’s been difficult not being able to clearly look back at where I’ve been, either. The past can at least give some clarity that I have moved forward, that progress has been made or growth has occurred. But even that feels like a blur to me right now.

I can feel myself struggling, wrestling with the Lord, begging Him to clear the fog.

If I am in a season of waiting, I at least want to know what the purpose is. I want to figure out how to make the most of it and how to enjoy it.

What do you have for me, Lord?
What should I be doing?

“Just wait,” He tells me.
“Stop trying to figure it out. Stop squirming. Be that contented weaned child in Psalm 131.”

Life feels hazy for me right now. Maybe you are there, too. One of my college girls recently realized that her plans for after graduation needed to change, though not for a clear replacement or compelling purpose. Her future feels more uncertain than ever as even graduating on time seems like less of a possibility. She struggling, too, to process the “whys” and the “what nows.”

We like to have answers, and if we don’t have answers we at least like to be in the problem-solving process.

But maybe God is calling us to just be in the fog. To acknowledge the lack of clarity and the fear of not being able to see in any direction, and to be okay with that.

Maybe God uses the fog to keep us present.

Without increased vision, we can’t compare our surroundings to that of someone else, or even to our past self. When we can’t see, we can’t wish we were further ahead because we don’t even know what it looks like yet.

The fog forces me to be “all here.” It reminds me that I can’t change my surroundings, and it increases my trust for all that I cannot see.

And, when I stop to just be present, I realize how beautiful the fog is. It seems to be God’s way of making the present feel more magical, and I find it more enjoyable to not see what’s ahead when I look at it from that perspective. I can see myself in a fairy tale story, and I can then recognize the ability of the Author is more important than the character’s understanding of the plot. The Author will get her there in the best way, because He is the One crafting the story.

There’s beauty in the unknown.
Don’t miss it.

Posted on by Samantha Barnes 0