When you’re trying to conceive, Timing is an ugly word.
Well, maybe not at first, but by the time you are diagnosed “infertile”, it’s a word that signifies your consistently failed efforts. We obsess about it, we fret about, we read about it, we second-guess about it; we just can’t stop thinking about it. Time passes us by as we wait for the right time.
Timing is all about plans and schedules. For us, it’s all about waiting for that perfect 48 hour window in which we can reach again for the Desire of our heart.
But the thing about time is, while we always seem to think it’s under our control, it never truly is. Time belongs to God. He created it; He perpetuates it; He planned out every moment of it; He’s unbounded by it. Time can’t be mastered or controlled or bottled up. It can’t be bent to our own will, or made to conform to our plans. It trudges on, with us or without us, as it has since the first moment of its existence.
As humans, we live our lives subjected to time, and those of us struggling against infertility feel it slipping through our fingers with each failed attempt. We begin to wonder, then, why God’s timing doesn’t seem to match our own. “How much longer, Lord, until you fulfill my longing? When will I realize the desire of my heart? Why don’t You, the Master of time, make it mine?” Month after month, the questions erode away our patience and hope until we are left with bitterness and despair as our only companions.
As a Christian, we believe that God has a plan for every moment of our short time on earth; but when His plans and our plans don’t seem to coincide, we can’t help but feel that He’s refused to answer our most pressing request. We grow impatient and we grow weary. We grow angry, and we refuse to listen to that still, small voice that’s whispering, “just wait”.
God always fulfills the desire of our hearts, but sometimes it’s not in the way we think it should be. I've never given birth to a child, but I have three beautiful children in my home who bring joy to my heart each time they call me Mommy. They didn’t come to me in the way I had planned for them to, but they came nonetheless. God didn’t use my timing, but His own. He’s really good at changing our best-laid plans into something better than we ever imagined.
God promised in Psalm 37:4 to give us the desires of our heart. I made sure I reminded Him of that frequently while we were trying to conceive. “You promised, Lord” I would say, “And you are not a man that you should lie, so You have to keep Your promise.” To me, that meant a pregnancy and a healthy baby, but God saw something deeper in my heart, something not even I could yet recognize. He saw the true desire of my heart—a desire I didn’t even know existed.
That’s not to say that my heart didn’t long to be a mother. Most certainly it did, and that longing was God-ordained. The confusion came in, not because what I wanted was wrong, but because I was looking to the fulfillment of that desire as the ultimate source of my joy and purpose. Having a child was A desire of my heart, but it wasn’t THE desire.
Today, I realize that the deepest desire of my heart is to serve God in the way he created me to. As weird as it might sound to say, I am beginning to be grateful to Him for my infertility because of all that it has opened up to me, not only in my own life, but in the life of others who are hurting. My infertility brought me to a deeper relationship with God than I think I would have had if I had been fertile. I don't think God created me to be infertile, but, in knowing the limitations this sin-infested world would place on my body, he lovingly crafted a plan for my life around it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
His timing is perfect.
