Have you ever been in a stage of life that someone around you just couldn’t wait to be in? All you wanted to do was warn them “enjoy where you are at, ____ has its hard times too”? Or the more fatalistic remark of, ”be careful what you wish for”? I have heard (and said myself) these warnings from married people to single people, parents to their friends without kids, old people to young, etc. It’s funny how we love to romanticize and dream about other people’s lives (on both sides) and we get so caught up in comparison that we become frustrated and discontent with whatever season we are in.

I am definitely guilty of that when I see all my friends and family who have children. It is so easy to compare myself to them, to wish for what they have. I am always struck by how quickly those thoughts of comparison take root and start to suck me dry. First they take my peace, then my joy, then my love, and then my hope. How quickly a thought of discontent can spiral downward into despair when I feed into it.

You will grow what you dwell on. Don’t allow those thoughts to grow roots in your heart.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”

– Jesus (Luke 12:34 ESV)

What I love about Jesus is how totally unaffected he is by the pressure of the crowd and people’s expectations of him. I think I love this so much because people-pleasing is a great weakness of mine. I also am intensely competitive which is opposite of what we see of the life of Jesus and how he interacted with people around him. Jesus shows us through his life how thankfulness combats this pull in our hearts to compare, compete, and strive for people’s good opinions. When we are thankful we have to lay down our pride and thinking we accomplished things on our own or lay down our sense of being entitled to something. When I am thankful, I am choosing to see life and everything in it as a gift rather that what is owed. I begin to see beauty in the small things. I see the blessing in my strengths (and yes, even my weaknesses, though its hard for me to say that) and in how God has already worked in my life.

Thankfulness is getting our eyes off of ourselves and others and onto God.

Without God I would have had no hope in the season of infertility. It would’ve broken me already.

With God, I have learned to not only have hope but to be thankful for all I am learning in this season. That doesn’t mean it is easy! My goodness, just the other day I cried angry tears because of God answering prayers of a friend – I was so jealous that God gave them what they asked for and here I am still waiting. That’s terrible, I know, but that’s real. I am thankful that God is compassionate and walks through those ugly emotions with me. I am thankful that He made us complex beings who can feel more than one emotion at a time. By this I mean that we can be joyful and thankful and still be saddened by a situation we are in. I am thankful for all I am learning about God and myself during this time. I love all the adventures (and sleep) I can have while not having kids and I can still be sad and mourn my childless state. However, I cannot be stuck in a spiral of comparison and bitterness and walk in thankfulness or hope. Either my god is what I want in life (children, power, fame, money, popluarity, acceptance, knowledge) OR God is my god. You will serve what you worship and you worship what you dwell on, what you value.

Today I am choosing to fight the poison of comparison with the simplicity of taking my eyes off myself and looking to God in thankfulness.

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I think one of the most effective lies that we believe when we are going through hard times is that we are alone. It is why we run to social media and cling to anything that gives us a sense of belonging.

”Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you”

Isaiah 43:1b-2a (emphasis mine).

There have been many times that I have felt alone. Sometimes it was due to my own choices and actions – suffering consequences of being a stubborn, rebellious young woman. Other times it was due to just life being life. I never planned on having trouble having children. Going on social media can drop me deep into the comparison trap – seeing friends, family, and strangers always celebrating pregnancies and births month after month while all I get is heartache. It is a gut wrenching sorrow and it makes you feel so isolated and alone. I think “Why do they get such happiness and I feel forgotten by God?”

I think we all have areas of our lives like this, an area of isolation and feeling forgotten.

The thing is, feeling can often lie. This doesn’t mean that feeling don’t matter, just that they do not represent truth.

During this past year I have been so encouraged by the fact that Jesus meets people right where they are at: in the mess, in the struggle, in the loneliness, and in the tears and sobs of sorrow. Jesus showed us during his life that He, who is fully God, was willing to get down into the dirt and be with us. I think I have often fallen into the thinking that God is just a lifevest or parachute that you only need when you are in a crisis and is only there for rescue. But he is so much more! He truly is a friend who never leaves us (even if you’re being rotten like I often am when I’m hurt). I don’t think I realized the power of simply being present until I have gone through the heartache of infertility. Even well meaning people trying to help can be so hurtful – sometimes you just need someone to say “I am here and I’m so sorry your hurting”.

Jesus does not have to fix everything wrong in your life to be a loving God.

I know that I am deeply loved an cared for by God even when month after month I grieve. No matter what you are going through -even if you personally don’t know anyone else going through the exact same situation, know that God sees you and He hears you. I don’t pretend to know the plans of God and I would be lying if I said I was never anger or doubted but I have to keep coming back to what I believe to be true. The truth is God loves me, he never leaves me, he sits beside me as I sorrow, he knows my future and I can trust him when I don’t make sense of this world and things don’t seem fair.

“Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.” – Deuteronomy 31:8

Over the past 3 years I have been going through a time of heartbreak dealing with infertility. As I realized something that I thought would just “happen” was not happening I didn’t know what to do. I was faced with the jolting, yet obvious, fact that life is out of my control.

What do I do now?

I am tired of the fake social media presentation of pretending we have it all together, that everything is great. But I am also tired of the pop culture response to a victim mentality – wallowing in our sadness as our new complete identity. There has got to be a better way. How do you go through sad things in life in a way that you grow from it?

That is what this blog will attempt to discuss. I want to be a voice encouraging you when life doesn’t happen the way you expected or planned. That it is ok to mourn the sad things in life. That it is beautiful to be real and honest with where you are at. But, I also want to remember that there is HOPE!

To be candid: everything I write here will be influenced by my faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Anything remotely wise will be things I have learned from either the Bible or wise men and women of faith who learned things from the Bible. You will find nothing ground breaking, nothing new here. Just the same fight for hope in a broken world that has been waged for thousands of years.

You do not have to have life all figured out and together for it to be wonderful. I don’t want to only thrive once I reach a certain finish line. I want to thrive in the good and the bad. I want to flourish along the journey of life.