Death of a dream, Pt. 1

Mike and I were married in 1993.  I grew up wanting and planning and preparing for children so after 3 years of marriage and "trying", we began to walk more formally the path that I recorded in my journal as "the death of a dream."  I have to admit, I have a different perspective with hindsight than I did at the time...now I can see how God was directing our path to delights in Him and in life that I had never imagined.  BUT, at the time, I felt broken and disheartened, to put it mildly.  We both went through an infertility workup and were given options to consider, most of which were either discounted ethically or financially, some of which we tried.  That took one sentence to write, but it took about two years to live.  King David had a different scenario than me when he wrote Psalm 38 (obviously), but I borrowed some of his words as I cried out to the Lord in that season:  "I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long...I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.  Lord, my desire is before You; and my sighing is not hidden from You.  My heart pants, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me.  My loved ones and my friends stand aloof from my plague, and my relatives stand afar off" (Psalm 38:6-11).

There were wrestlings unlike any I had known to that point in my life...What now?  If not children, what do we do, where do we go from here?  My life seemed shattered.  I felt very alone as people all around me multiplied like rabbits. I fought anger over teenage girls getting pregnant in backseats of cars who kill their babies when I couldn't get pregnant and wanted to so badly...I wrongly charged God of injustice. Confusion and weightiness of heart was the fog I walked in for awhile, but God in His mercy began to lift the fog and help me begin to see more clearly His hand of love in this.  As horrible as they were in many ways, I wouldn't trade those days.  When God takes you through refining fires, He knows exactly what He is doing...He is worthy to be trusted at all times.  Quotes and thoughts from that season will be the focus of the next few posts.  Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.