Struggling to Conceive, Part Three: Conceiving of Community

Naturally, I am an introvert.

           

People rarely believe me when I say this, but it’s true. Over the years and through several different endeavors (I was a rodeo queen at one point in the past), I have acquired the skill of being an extrovert. This is called being a “learned extrovert.” I can demonstrate a lot of the typical signs, but when it comes down to it, I need time alone to recharge. True extroverts don’t require this; they need people time to feel recharged.

            

This makes building a community a challenge for me. It’s not that I don’t like people; I do. But I have very few close friends, and I pick and choose my time amongst others carefully, otherwise I end up feeling overwrought and drained.

            

A wonderful community of people earmarked my high school years. I was blessed to get plugged into a fantastic Christian high school, which in turn plugged me into a great youth group at a fabulous church. While I had grown up in one church, surrounded by people who loved and cared for me, when I began to attend Turning Point Christian Center with my friends from school, it was the first time I felt that I was cultivating my own community.

            

I spent five or six deeply fulfilling years at this church, where I was mentored, my talents were fostered, and my faith deepened.

            

My community became a deeply engrained part of who I was and how I conceived of myself.

            

Then I moved to Wyoming.

            

And I found myself without a church community.

            

I tried a few places in Laramie while I was in college, but nothing felt quite right. I couldn’t find the community I was looking for.

            

Eventually, I stopped looking.

            

Then I found a different kind of community and stayed plugged in there for a while.

            

Guilt and sin made me ashamed enough to keep me from seeking out another Spiritual community.

            

But God is so faithful, and when I ended my relationship with my college sweetheart, I felt so free and so desirous of having that community again. Hubster and I met shortly after that (like less than two weeks later), and we jointly decided to hunt for a church together, since Hubster hadn’t found a church community that he really loved since moving back home from Oklahoma.

            

It was divine intervention that we landed at Cornerstone Community Church in Riverton. It wasn’t the church that we initially planned to visit that Sunday morning, but we ended up there on a whim, because Hubster knew who the pastor was, and because we had mixed up times.

            

We have been going there ever since, and that was 3.5 years ago.

            

It’s become our Spiritual community, and what a wonderful part of our life it is. Pastor M married us (just 9 months after we met and started attending), and he and his wife have come alongside to mentor and love us. One of Hubster’s best childhood friends (T) started coming to church with us just after our wedding and his son was born; since then, he and his wife (H) have accepted Christ and are now regular fixtures at church themselves.

            

We are blessed beyond measure by our church community.

            

So why did it take me 16 months to finally talk to Pastor M about our struggle to conceive a baby?

            

That’s a really good question.

            

T and H knew about our struggle because they are some of our closest friends, and an older couple in the church (E and R, who have adopted us) knew as well, but that was it.

            

I hadn’t been able to bring myself to talk about it with anyone else.

            

There had been too many pregnant women in the past two years, too many baby showers. There were too many young families with little shavers running around.

            

It terrified me to think of anyone knowing, because I didn’t want to become “those people.”

            

Horror filled me any time I thought about what people might say: “Oh, poor R-Lib and Hubster…they’re such nice people, but they can’t have a baby” or “It’s a shame; they would make such great parents.”

            

Worse yet, I hated to think of any of those recently pregnant women pitying my empty womb and me.

            

So I said nothing.

            

It wasn’t until the middle of May, on Mother’s Day, that I finally told Pastor M.

            

As is his way, Pastor M preached a wonderfully sensitive and thoughtfully message on Mother’s Day, one which acknowledged all the women in the congregation that might have lost a baby or longed to be a mother and had not been able to fulfill that desire.

            

It left me sobbing in our row, Hubster’s arm around me, whispering reassurance.

            

H came over and hugged me ferociously, which is the way she loves people—ferociously. Openly. I love that about her. My “Wyoming mom,” E, came over and hugged me too, whispering in my ear that she had been and would continue to pray. She said that God had me covered, despite my grief.

            

Pastor M came over too, full of concern. I couldn’t say anything without bursting into tears, so I told him that I would email him soon while Hubster calmly assured him that I wasn’t upset with him or anything to do with church. Pastor M is one of the most sensitive and empathetic people I know. I love that about him.

            

I emailed him that night.

            

I finally told him about our struggle to conceive.

            

Pastor M was kind and gracious in his response, as has H and E been, caring and sympathetic to our situation. He thanked me for my courage in telling him, and wrote, "I am confident that God will give you a voice someday to speak into the lives of young women going through exactly what you are going though. Our tragedies are His triumph. What the enemy intends for evil, God uses for a glorious end...I appreciated so much the reasons why you've kept quiet about [your fertility struggles], especially in a church full of babies. My heart goes out to you guys. There is so much emotional baggage that comes along with this difficult journey you are on, and I think you both are navigating it beautifully. Keep going!" 

            

His words were such an encouragement to me.  

            

It was shortly after this that I decided that it was time to start sharing my experiences—because as awful as all this feels, I have to believe that Pastor M is right. God uses our stories as powerful testimonies to His greatness.

            

I realized on Mother’s Day that I was not alone as I struggled through this, and that leaning on my community was a wonderful and safe resting place. My community was a place from which I could draw strength and support.

            

This concept of community was a new revelation for me.

            

I have always been pretty private, and I prefer to hold my most intense emotions close to the vest. I am prone to extreme swings—I experience high highs and low lows, and I don’t like to show others that swing. It’s pride, I think, that often drives me to try to cover my feelings.

            

From the time I was a little girl, I have memories of being told to “stop being so sensitive.” Yet when I was in college, my writing professor, who is one of my great mentors, began calling me her “thick-skinned girl” because of how well I handled critique in writer’s group.

            

HA!

            

My mom thought that was funny when she heard it.

            

I found it interesting that I could be perceived as such by someone. My conclusion was this: I may have come across as thick-skinned during writer’s group, but it didn’t mean that I didn’t go home and cry over a story that someone didn’t like. I was just determined that no one know.

           

I think I carried that same idea into this fertility struggle. Pride kept me from speaking up because I was ashamed to be struggling with something I couldn’t control or change. Pride kept me from saying anything because I didn’t want people to know the absolutely devastation I was feeling over the situation.

            

Yet I have found that sharing with my community has been eye-opening, healing, and rewarding.

            

Romans 12 talks about the body of believers, and how we are all critical: “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to the other…be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keeping your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality” (12:4-5, 10-13, NIV).

           

I am part of the body of Christ, and so I need not be ashamed of myself among other members of the body. On the contrary, to be “joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” I need other believers to help support me.

            

This was made even more clear to me about two weeks ago, when one of the newer women in the church was talking with Hubster, E, R, and myself at a church function. K is expecting her second baby girl in a few months, and already has a precious daughter, B, who is 18 months old.

           

The first time K left B in the nursery last year when they were first coming to church, I was on nursery duty. K was very worried about leaving B, as B hadn’t been away from her mama much. I took B with a smile and assured K that I would buzz her pager if we needed anything at all. B did great in the nursery after some initial tears, and K was delighted when she picked up her little girl an hour and a half later.

            

That was months ago, but K brought it up during that conversation at the church function. “It’s awesome to have great people involved here,” she said, looking at me. “You and Hubster come to things like the Easter Egg Hunt and work in the nursery even though you don’t have kids. That means so much that you are willing to invest in my kids like that.”

           

I nearly broke down into tears on the spot.

            

I had no idea that anyone noticed or cared that I worked in the nursery (aside from our nursery coordinator), and certainly never imagined that my doing so would mean anything to anyone.

            

But hearing that, from a mother to a childless woman, was like balm to my soul. Her words affirmed and encouraged me, reminding me that I have a place in our community, just as Paul said in Romans.

            

We may not have started a family yet, but we are still part of a family, and what a blessing that is to our lives.

            

I am not an island. I am not suffering through fertility struggles alone, and I am not alone while I struggle.

            

Conceiving of community taught me that.