In the "in-between"

I’m not going to lie - I’ve never once heard anyone say: “My God, I LOVE the in-between! I LOVE the place of tension, struggle, growth & building muscles.” If you’re that magical unicorn who loves the middle-land, please share your sparkle dust with me. If you’re among the normal ones like me, the in-between takes work.

In some ways, I feel like we’re mastering corners of the in-between. In others, we’re still rocking back and forth in our cozy white jackets. By year 3 of marriage, I thought our home would be filled with 2-3 tiny little sets of dirty feet, scurrying busily around cheerio and Lego-covered floors. But our present reality is a 2nd bedroom full of laundry, 2 sets of furry feet and a case of unexplained infertility.

If you’ve followed our Youtube channel, we kind of left people on a cliff-hanger. It was unintentional - our vision changed right about the time everything kind of came to a head. So we thought it would be appropriate, before any other blogging, to give you an update on where we’re at with future little people.

What we’re incredibly thankful for is that every single fertility, wellness and health test came back positive. Every hormonal level in my body was perfect, every internal and outer body part was functioning properly and every stage of my cycle was operating appropriately. Every level in Jonathan’s body was where it was supposed to be & operating as it was intended to. I’ll confess - there was a part of us that struggled with that. We imagine it would be hard for anyone having never been on this journey to understand but - you almost WANT something to be wrong so that there’s something you can FIX so you can get what you want. But we know that reality is so not true, either. We know not every ‘problem’ can be fixed and there are SO many women struggling with a known fertility issue that still can’t conceive.

The options provided to us following our ‘unexplained infertility’ diagnosis don’t offer much confidence or support. IUI (intrauterine Insemination) for a woman under 35 has a 10 - 20 percent chance of pregnancy with each IUI. The peak IUI effect is around 3 to 4 cycles of IUI. IUI is not a covered procedure under medical insurance, which means every bit of the procedure is out of pocket. The average cost of each IUI procedure is around $895, with prices varying significantly depending on the clinic you use and whether or not you need to use fertility drugs or sperm donation.

IVF (In vitro Fertilization) has a 20-35% effective rate per cycle, but the likelihood of getting pregnant decreases with each attempted round, while prices increase. Like IUI, the peak effective rate is around the 3rd attempt. IVF is a procedure also not covered by insurance, resulting in approximately $12,000-$15,000 dollars out of pocket per attempt, which does not always cover additional charges such as fertility drugs, varying clinic prices, sperm or egg storage, etc.

That feeling you feel in your chest right now… yeah. We’ve felt that, too. I still remember sitting in the Fertility Doctor’s office, hearing the figures read off to me like the disclosures at the end of a Car Dealership commercial and thinking: “I’ve got to look out this window because if I look her in her eyes, I’ll never be able to stop the tears.” The truth is - it did feel impossible that day. And it’s felt impossible almost every day afterwards. You expect to be able to produce what is supposed to be a biological normality and instead, you find yourself incapable and you’re thrust into an ‘in-between’ of several sorts. How you see your body, how you see yourself, how you see your future, how you see your present… even your past is subject to “maybe if i hadnt done that” or “is this because i did that?” or “if only i had done this…”.

I can say, proudly, that we’ve made it through some hard processing. I’ve made it through a 3-day stint of not getting out of bed because I was grieving. J has made it through tearful confessions of feeling like a failure for not being able to give us both what we so desperately want. We’ve made it through the aisles of baby stuff at the store and taking teen-friends to the doctors for ultrasound photos. We’ve made it through without ever blaming each other and without permitting each other to blame ourselves.

So what in-betweens are we in, presently? With the low success rates and high costs of IUI and IVF, we dont feel peace about proceeding with those options. Adoption in the far-future is always on the table. But present day solutions - well, there are none at present. We’re exploring the possibility of surrogacy to see what options may be there. But nothing is instant or guaranteed. So we’ve been giving ourselves a lot of grace in the tension of the in-between. We’ve been growing muscles in the realms of trust and perseverance. We want to be people who live our lives free of cynicism, hardened hearts and disbelief. If there’s anything we want to die with, it’s a legacy of people we’ve left behind us with more hope, encouragement and strength. So we’ve been using this tension to explore GOD, explore ourselves and explore hope in the midst of disappointment.

We’ve learned how to be deeper friends with God during this process. The most common voice throughout this journey has tried, loudly, to convince us that GOD doesnt love us, is overlooking us, is withholding from us and doesn’t have the same promises for us as we have. But we’ve learned that friendship cant be like a gumball machine. We cant approach our friendship with GOD as ‘we’re giving you this so you have to give us that.” We can’t approach God with cause and effect - ‘this equals that and that equals this’. If we’re truly going to be friends of and with God, we do life WITH Him. We don’t demand life FROM Him. And so we’ve been regularly inviting Him into the stages of this process with us. We’ve been sharing our good days and sharing our bad days with Him. We’ve been holding His hand and climbing in His lap. We’ve been asking to see what He sees and we’ve been intentional to repeat what He speaks to us in this tension.

The in-between is the place most people want to avoid. It’s the ‘valley of dry bones’ - where everything looks empty and desolate. But I’ve made it a mission to dig, here, in this land. If I’m going to spend time here, I’m going to dig deep wells because I know others are coming after me. More will pass through this space and when they get here, I want them to see the footprints of the ones who came before them. I want them to hydrate themselves from the pools of tears I’ve shed. I want them to find shade in the monuments I’ve built in remembrance of all God’s done in me and for me in this process. I want them to find hope at the alters I built each time I chose to sacrifice disappointment instead of God’s character.

The thing about the in-between is that you may never have all the answers to make it make sense. That’s a really large and really tough pill to swallow, sometimes. But I can attest from having been in this place for 3 years (and actually longer… one day I’ll share that story) that God never leaves your side. He never gets angry at your questions. He never gets annoyed with your tears. He never sighs, telling you to “hurry it up, already!” in your grieving or faith building processes. He’s tender. He’s strong, but He’s tender. He surrounds you in Himself & He holds every bit of you, closely - your anger, your doubts, your fears, your resentments, your struggles, your peace, your “what if’s” and your “why”s. He isn’t afraid of any of it.

It feels weird to say….

I had to stop & really think before I wrote this - to make sure that I REALLY meant it. I found that I did…

I’m so glad that He hasn’t rescued us from this. I’m glad He hasn’t ‘snapped His fingers’ and just made it all happen for us. Having a child is what we want, yes. But at the cost of forfeiting the intimate friendship we’ve built with Him through this process - no.

If you’re in an in-between…. we see you.

We feel you.

We know what similar journeys those deserts take.

You’re doing amazing. Don’t rush it. We know it’s hard not to. But soak it all up. “The other side” is coming, soon. You’ll feast and you’ll rest and you’ll get renewed. But while you’re here… in this stage… learn how to set your table. Learn how to feast in the midst of the valleys. Someone is coming behind you & what you do in these valleys builds cities, brick by brick.