Trust

I’ve found that my infertility puts my faith in a precarious position.  I’ve always held the view, deep inside, that every facet of my life is touched by God’s hand.  Don’t get me wrong: I love God and I know He loves me.  That was never in question; in fact, it is a part of what has made this so disconcerting.  From the moment I heard the word “unexplained” come out of the doctor’s mouth, I felt there WAS an explanation: God’s hand. 

Naturally, then comes the question, “Why, God?”  I could write a book on the times I’ve asked this and the variety of answers I’ve imagined He might give.  The “answers” to “why” in my mind and heart have evolved over time, as has my sanity level.  At first, I couldn’t fathom any sensible explanation, but now I can see so many reasons “why,” many of which do make things easier to live with.  But there has been one thought as to “why” that has nagged at me relentlessly: did God decide He couldn’t trust me with this?

I’ve always been the super-responsible, get-it-done and get-it-done-well type.  Assign me the hardest class with a difficult professor and I’ll find a way to ace it.  Put a challenging student in my class and I’ll find a way to tame him (or I’ll at least keep a smile on my face while I try).  Ask me to teach at school all day, then teach at church that night, and I’ll have the lesson plans laid out, ready-to-go and give it my all.  There was no reason to think I couldn’t have two or three kids and keep balancing everything else on my plate…isn’t that what they call “having it all?” 

So, in addition to the heartbreak and confusion of infertility, quite frankly, I was pissed off.  Why would God “trust” seemingly everyone else with children and not entrust me with my own?  What had I done, or not done, to fall out of His favor when it came to motherhood?  Am I too much?  Not enough? Just not quite fit for it? 

Until just recently it hit me.  Perhaps it isn’t that I’m NOT fit for motherhood, but instead that I AM fit for so much else, so many opportunities that I would have overlooked or missed altogether had things gone according to my plan.  What would my life look like had I gotten what I thought I deserved?  I’m by no means discounting how amazing it would have been had it gone that way…but at what cost?  Friends I never would have made, students I never would have taught, a marriage less proven, a faith less tested, a heart untouched by this experience and those it has brought into my life… all in all, a shallower version of myself…

It isn’t that He doesn’t trust me.  It’s that He trusts me with something else, something different, something just as important…the truest version of myself.  He does, in fact, trust me and He expects me to make the most of the life HE has planned for me.  Not the one I had planned for myself.

How often do we really get what we expect?  When it comes to our faith, our relationships, our families, our jobs, our LIVES…do things really ever turn out like we plan?  It’s time that we stopped asking, “Why?” and started asking, “Why not?” and “Where do we go from here?”  …and it’s time that we truly trusted Him with the rest.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  -Luke 12:48