“Even if…”

Before I say anything, I just want to point out that this talks about my faith a lot. I just want to set an honest background to what I am going to say. There have been countless numbers of moments in our journey where I have questioned and doubted God. There have been days that have been so dark that I really couldn’t see how a God who loved me would allow this to happen, so does He really exist? Ultimately I do believe He is good and loves me.

We are about a week and a half away from our Egg Collection and last night we had a beautiful Zoom with my family. For a couple of weeks, every week, my family have been getting together with us over Zoom to pray for us. As a side note to what this post is actually about, for those of you going through this, or even going through anything traumatic, family and friends who you can let into your pain, who you can be honest with, who you can turn to on your darkest days and just cry down the phone to…. You need them. Without my family, I don’t think I’d still be here. I think I would have given up and quit this journey. For them to give up their time to pray for us means more than they will ever know! So find yourself some people who you love and who you trust, and if you’re the praying kind, people who will pray for you.

Last week when we were on our Zoom with my family, our wonderful and beautiful sister-in-law challenged us on our “What if…?” attitude;

What if this fails?

What if it never works?

What if we can never have biological children?

What if this doesn’t work out the way we want it to?

What if I have to take even more time off work to try and have a child?

What if we find out there is a problem with my egg quality?

What if we have to have egg or sperm donors?

What if we have to start paying for our treatment?

What if people ‘feel sorry’ for us?

What if… what if… what if…?

Now this is a natural response, particularly for women, to think about Every. Single. Outcome. Possible… EVER… And it is definitely something that I do. I am sure I have worked out just about every single scenario that could happen, even though I know that probably the one I haven’t thought of is what will happen.

As Christians, we believe and trust in something bigger than us. We trust that God can step into a situation and change it with just a word. But we know that that doesn’t always happen, not because He doesn’t love us or He isn’t listening, but sadly because we live in an imperfect world made imperfect by humans.

And that is really hard to swallow when you’re in a situation like this. Because you know God could change it – He could’ve allowed us to get pregnant in our first month of TTC! – but sometimes He doesn’t, and in these times, He allows us to grow and know more about who He is. If He simply changed everything as soon as we asked, we wouldn’t learn to trust Him and we would only want Him in our lives for the things we want. But when things are tough, we turn to Him for more than material things. We turn to Him for comfort, for love, for encouragement and to carry us through our darkest days. I know some people may read this and think, “You are mad… you are talking utter rubbish.” And that’s fine, I know that what I say might sound crazy but it brings me comfort. On the journey I am walking, what I need is comfort and I find that in my faith.

So anyway, our sister-in-law challenged us that we shouldn’t cling onto our “What if..?” attitude but that that we need an “Even if…” attitude.

Even if this fails, God is still good.

Even if this fails, God has not failed us.

Even if this doesn’t work out the way we want it, we still trust who He says he is.

Even if this doesn’t go to our plan, we are still loved.

Even if… we trust that God has a good plan for our lives.

And that in itself is hard to say. But it is something we are both trying to say instead. We do believe that God is good and even if this doesn’t work the way we want it to, we believe He will still be good.

I love that this can be used for those who aren’t Christian.

Even if this fails, I will be ok.

Even if this fails, we still have each other.

Even if this fails, I will still be loved.

Even if this fails, I have so much else to be thankful for.