I’m sure my regular readers have noticed that I’m not writing as frequently as I normally do. It’s just that I don’t have much to say these days. I have a lot on my mind, but for some reason I have been unable to fully express my thoughts and emotions. Let me do a quick recap for you on the past 2 years of my life. My husband, Choi, and I started trying to conceive using the natural family planning method we had been using to avoid pregnancy called the Creighton Model. We quickly noticed something was “off” in my charts. I never really had symptoms of fertility, so I decided to start using ovulation predictor kits along with my charting, and sure enough, I wasn’t ovulating. After 6 months of never getting a positive surge, I went to see my OB-GYN. She did an exam and ran some tests and decided to put me on Clomid. While the Clomid did make me ovulate, it also gave me awful side effects and caused me to stop producing fertile mucus, which naturally decreased my chances of conceiving. Despite our setbacks, we did miraculously conceive a baby last March, but I miscarried mere weeks later. After 6 months on Clomid and a few other tests, my doctor referred me to a Reproductive Endocrinologist. Long story short, after much monitoring and some new medications, I still wasn’t pregnant and we still weren’t sure exactly what was wrong. My RE finally discovered I produce antisperm antibodies, which means my immune system attacks sperm before they can pass through the cervix. So, the RE told us our best chances (in fact, one of the nurses said our *only chances) of getting pregnant would be through IUI. We had a few failed cycles of IUI, the last being back in November, so we have now moved on to trying alternative medicines. I started consuming maca root powder on a daily basis a few months ago, and it has helped me ovulate regularly without any medications. Now I am on a search for a way to correct my antisperm antibodies problem. (To be continued…)
Anyway, in the midst of all this, we started praying that God would show us what our next step in life should be. We got so caught up in the devastation of infertility that we started to neglect the calling we believe God had for us. I have known I would help Vietnamese people since I was just 12 years old (at that time, I had never even met a Vietnamese person nor did I know a thing about the U.S. being part of a war there). I met my husband, who is from Vietnam, when I was 14, and we have been best friends and partners in life ever since. He, too, wanted to return to his homeland to help the people there. In fact, he always thought he would return to the village his family lives in. The same year we started trying to conceive, we were in the preliminary stages of planning our move to Vietnam. We were praying about when we would move, we were researching the needs in the village we had planned to move to, and we had even made some phone calls and were saving the money for our journey overseas. But God never opened a door for us to go. Our hearts were already weak from our struggle with infertility and our deep desire to become parents, but this was too much. It truly shattered us. So we spent 6 months praying about what God wanted us to do. Where were we to go? What were we to do? Surely God had not changed a calling he had placed on my heart at such a young age. What did He want from us?
Much to our surprise, we had a vision of us opening a non-profit in St. Louis that would offer help to both Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S. as well as to street children in Vietnam (which is where we had planned on focusing our efforts if we had moved to Vietnam). In fact, I kept having dreams about this ministry, and it was all we could think about for months. Neither of us had ever imagined in a million years that we would ever move back to the St. Louis area. Our hearts were in Vietnam. But, a door opened, and that door led us to the Midwest. Choi had a kind of temporary job to go to when we arrived in Illinois (we moved in with my parents who live just across the river from St. Louis, which was also supposed to be temporary), so we really thought the time was right, God was going to take care of us, and He was going to do great things through us. Unfortunately, AFTER we arrived in Illinois, the place we thought Choi would be working at while he looked for a more permanent job fell through–business was slower than usual for this time of year, so they couldn’t afford to have him work there. We were definitely shocked, but we were so certain that we had done the right thing in moving here that we believed he would find a new job quickly. But he didn’t. We have now been without an income for almost 5 months. Our savings are almost completely gone, the job outlook remains bleak, and we are getting very worried.
Here’s the confusion: We prayed so long about this move and truly believed in our hearts that this was the right thing to do. We had a vision! What happened to that??? Was that not from God? Was that our dream? How can that be since we never wanted to stay in the U.S.? It must have been from God. But if that’s the case, then why hasn’t He provided Choi with a good job? What have we done wrong to deserve all the suffering we have endured over the last year and a half? No baby, no job, no home of our own, no purpose in life at all.
This is why I haven’t been writing much lately. I am in such a state of sadness and confusion that I don’t know what to say. And without an income, nothing exciting really goes on in our lives anymore. My parents live way out from the city, so we can’t go out together, we can’t go out and make new friends, we can’t even do volunteer work, because just driving back and forth to get to my in-law’s house, the grocery store, our church, etc. uses so much of our gas and our savings have evaporated so fast that we don’t want to go anywhere unless we absolutely have to. The most exciting thing we do is ride bikes together with our dog running alongside us 2 times a day. Not to mention, this is supposed to be a blog about my journey through infertility, and right now, that’s the least of my worries. Of course I cry all the time, desperately wishing I could be a mother (and yes, I often suffer from facebook jealousy), but at this point, I cry more for an income than for a baby. How can we expect a baby when God won’t even provide my husband with a job?! It’s so discouraging. It’s like we’re going backwards rather than forward in life.
All that to say, this weekend God did speak to me. I still don’t understand why He brought us here without providing a job, and I am still unsure if we are doing the right thing or not, but I do believe He gave me a message of hope this weekend. Friday morning, I woke up thinking about the Israelites. Man, there journey to the Promised Land was filled with struggle. They often wondered where God was and why He wasn’t making things easier for them, yet in the end, it all worked out. God’s chosen people did eventually reach the Promised Land, and despite a very tumultuous history, God continued to care for His people. Later that morning, I got an email from my mom. She wrote, “I was reading Exodus 17 where the people were thirsty because there was no water. They were experiencing a great need – they had a very REAL problem – but they were right where God had led them. You are here now and believe you and Choi are following the path God put you on – and that is probably the case. The fact that you are having problems right now doesn’t mean you aren’t right smack in the middle of God’s will for you. God must have a plan to deliver you, so hold on tight.” I decided to look up the passage for myself:
From the desert of Sin the whole Israelite community journeyed by stages, as the LORD directed, and encamped at Rephidim. Here there was no water for the people to drink. They quarreled, therefore, with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to a test?”
Here, then, in their thirst for water, the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “Why did you ever make us leave Egypt? Was it just to have us die here of thirst with our children and our livestock?” ….. The place was called Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?”
In the end, God did provide the people with water from an unlikely source–He commanded Moses to strike a rock and water came out from it “in abundance” for them. I definitely relate to the Israelites. I have been asking, “Is the LORD in our midst or not?” In fact, just last week I told my husband that it seems like God is playing a sick joke on us. Miscarriage, infertility, no income, no friends (at least not in our new home yet). After our miscarriage, people kept telling us, ‘Don’t worry! God will give you another child.’ I’m still waiting for that to happen. Then, when I was diagnosed with infertility, people kept saying that if we had enough faith, God would give us a child. I don’t know how much more faith we could have had when we went against what we thought we would do for years and instead moved to St. Louis with no guarantees. Yet, things have gotten worse, not better. Now we have no kids AND no income! And no friends to hang out with. 😦
I know we can relate to the Israelites, but I just hope our story will end as well as theirs did. I pray that God will gives us the “water” we’ve been praying for and that He will use us to fulfill the vision He put on our hearts. The Psalm from this morning’s mass (which I also randomly came across Friday after reading about the Israelites needing water) says, “Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb! May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy! He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” When the Israelites did finally arrive in the Promised Land, times were hard. They were still struggling amid depressing circumstances, but they prayed and hoped that God would once again bless them, and He did. May the same be true for us. If history teaches us anything, then it’s that God loves to be the prince in shining armor who rushes in at our weakest moments to lift us up. Right now I am sowing in tears, but I trust that eventually (even though it may not be anytime soon), I will reap with shouts of joy. And I cannot wait for that day to come! Good will surely come from this time of hardship, and when it does, I will be shouting for joy everywhere I go.
This Luminous Road I Travel 