A question of faith

I want to make this card optional out of concern to not offend on this Christmas eve. If you would rather not see a religious image used in this context, you can choose to skip this card.



So far in my life, there has been nothing that has tested my faith more than going through IVF. I've struggle with my own pessimism and anger enough to know that blind trust does not come easy for me. I've seen the power of prayer and faith in my own family and yet I've never had to see where they fit in my own life until now.

I felt that on this very important eve, it is relevant to talk about faith and hope and what it means in the context of IVF for me. From the outside it is very easy to look at IVF as purely a scientific life experiment. I am sure some people might even disapprove of science invading the territory of baby-making, but I think any of us doing IVF know that it would be very foolish and naive to think that the doctors have a God-like panacea for our infertility. If that were the case, we would all be pregnant right now. Clearly no matter how hard the doctors try to figure out why we can't get pregnant, there is a vast expanse of question marks that we know are unanswerable. You can have the most perfect embryos and they won't implant, or you'll have insanely complicated problems and you'll somehow get pregnant. There is no rhyme or reason to it. 

So after my many many tantrums over this past year about how unfair it is that I've been chosen to suffer in this way, I've worn myself out to a point of submission. What I mean is that I've submitted to the fact that I don't have control over this. This year I've had a love-hate relationship with faith. I've felt faithful that I would have a successful pregnancy and then been devastatingly disappointed. But then when darkness seeps in and you've reached the basement of being, what brings light back in is that very same faith. 

This kind of spiritual strength is unique to every individual, but whatever you believe in you can try to build a foundation to survive this. If your house is blown away by a hurricane and you begin to rebuild, the first thing you address is infrastructure. So right now for me my infrastructure is being rebuilt on hope and faith that someday this journey will end. It's a constant evolving process for me but I think these sorts of issues have to brew to the surface for you to grow and to gain perspective. 

So as much as this card can be seen as irreverent, it is equally a testament to how complicated this whole thing is. It's riddled with questions and evokes so many emotions about our existence that I needed to express it in this format. I can't say that I now know exactly what to believe in, but I can say the time has finally come to make friends with faith. This day marks the eve of a birth and I take that to mean so many things as I move forward to 2008.  Most importantly it means the coming of a rebirth for myself, just as much as it means the hope and faith of the birth of my future child.