Oh God

We decided for the first time since we've moved into our new house to go to church this morning. My parents and Mr.Right's mother will be spending Christmas with us and we're planning on going to a Christmas Eve service. So, we went to check out one of the big churches in a town nearby to us.

It is a lovely church, very large and very lively with lots of people milling around the coffee hour between services. I like it. So much so that I'm going to let slide the presence of an electric guitar and drumset in the church and the 'contemporary' opening 'hymn.' (I like rock and pop music. Just not in my church service.)

But little did we know we were in for an infertility double whammy during the service. First, a really, incredibly, unbelievably brave guy got up to give 'Minute Witness.' And proceeded to talk about the infertility challenges he and his wife had faced; a 12 week scan where the nurse couldn't find a heartbeat...at least initially; and the birth, which was to be induced but during which she started bleeding profusely and they had to do what sounded like an absolutely frantic, emergency c-section (can you believe that the doctor actually turned to this father-to-be and said, 'I've never seen this much blood' ?!? What doctor says that?)

I managed to not start to completely bawl during this very moving talk (he was crying.) But I couldn't look at Mr.Right and couldn't even remotely think about reaching out for his hand (and he didn't reach for mine), for fear that I would totally dissolve into tears.

Ok, so we regain our composure a bit during the offerings and doxology and such....and then on to the scriptural lesson and sermon.

Yes, you guessed it: it was a passage from Luke about Elizabeth. You remember her, right? Mother of John the Baptist. INFERTILE!! And in the ur-urban myth, gets pregnant at an advanced (very, supposedly) maternal age.

Cue tears again as the minister talks about Elizabeth and her husband and the fact that infertility at that time would have been looked on as a severe personal shortcoming.

Gah!!!

Despite all of this, I was surprisingly moved by the sermon (and not just moved to tears.) The sermon was mostly about faith and how some people struggle to have faith while for others it seems to come easily. And about how, in the minister's opinion, doubt is not the opposite of faith. Honest doubt is not in contradiction with having faith.

I think this is kind of a parallel to my seemingly contradictory (and confusing to Mr.Right) ability to be so pessimistic about our chances (e.g. with this one embryo of probably questionable quality given the length of stims, my crappy egg situation, etc.) and still believe that we will succeed one day. I mean, I wouldn't be talking donor eggs if I didn't believe (a.k.a. have faith) that we will one day have a child.

So, there, I've gotten all religious/spiritual on you (and, believe me, I'm not horribly religious - see superficial thinking about 'traditional' vs. 'contemporary' church services above). It was a bit of a sucker punch, the fact that two parts of today's service touched so directly on our situation, but I actually came away from it all today thinking that maybe this is what I need. A different way to get some perspective. That's what religion is, right? Or, at least, can be. Another venue for reminding yourself that there is a bigger universe out there than just the one within which you are intensely focused - in my case the universe of infertility.