Faith and Infertility
By Melissa Merrill
Church Magazines
Infertility can be heartbreaking. Four couples share how they maintained faith and hope.
Read additional experiences from other couples who dealt with infertility.
Infertility:
it was the last thing Brenda Horrocks ever expected to hear from her
doctor. She and her husband, Brad, had been married for four years, and
although she had experienced complications with her menstrual cycle from
the time she was a teenager, doctors had told her and Brad that with “a
little help,” they would be able to have a baby. “A little help turned
into a lot of help,” Brenda says, and after multiple fertility
treatments over several years, the Horrockses were told that the
likelihood of their being able to conceive was extremely small.
Infertility is not uncommon—some 15 percent of couples in the United States have difficulty conceiving a child;
1
other countries throughout the world show similar figures.
In 40 percent of instances, the wife is infertile. In another 40
percent, the problem rests with the husband. In 10 percent of cases,
both are infertile, and in the remaining 10 percent, the cause is
unknown.
2
In the context of the Church, where the
family is celebrated as the fundamental unit of society,
3
not having children can be an especially difficult challenge.
Yet as
Brad and Brenda and many others can attest, God does not leave His
children alone in their trials. “Never give up,” Brad recommends.
“There’s always hope. Heavenly Father always has something in store for
us. We have found that over and over again.”
Here, the
Horrockses and three other couples who have dealt with the challenges of
infertility—Dave and Angie Belnap, Phil and Valerie Hochheiser, and
Curtis and Melody Linton—share how they saw the Lord’s hand guiding them
through their challenges.
Dealing with Grief
Brenda’s grief at the diagnosis was so overwhelming that she began questioning her mission in life, she says.
“I felt
lost for a long time. I felt I had no purpose. That’s the ultimate goal,
isn’t it, to get married and have a family? I still knew I was a
daughter of God, but I hated that I couldn’t be a co-creator with Him. I
felt broken, like I wasn’t a real woman.”
Brenda
tried “swimming through” her grief for several months and even years. At
one point, it became so severe that she felt prompted to seek
professional counseling.
“I
realized the grief was inhibiting my progression,” she says. She asked
Heavenly Father to guide her in a search for the right counselor and
began meeting with one who was able to offer the help Brenda needed.
“As I
went to my appointments and continued to do my homework [usually
assigned reading], my heart was being prepared for healing,” Brenda
recalls. “Many of my fears and pains started to subside, and a new
person was emerging.”
Brenda
notes that while some well-meaning people tried to assist by suggesting
what might be wrong with her or what she could try, that didn’t help. “I
just needed people to buoy me up as I struggled and to acknowledge that
what I was going through was difficult.”
Angie
Belnap and her husband, Dave, learned after four years of marriage that
they most likely wouldn’t be able to conceive. Angie recalls going
through all of the stages of grief but finding herself returning over
and over to the anger stage.
“I
remember wondering how something that was so important in life could be
denied me,” she says. “My feelings of hurt and what seemed to me to be
spiritual abandonment manifested themselves through anger. I was very
angry. Angry at myself. Angry at my husband. Angry at God.”
But Angie started working through her grief by focusing on aspects of her life she could
control rather than on those she couldn’t. Angie, who worked as a
third-grade teacher, looked for ways she could improve her skills at
work. She also read a lot—“there was always a book on my nightstand,”
she recalls—and pursued other self-improvement projects. “I couldn’t
change the infertility, but I could progress in other areas of my life,”
she says.
She also
found it helpful to keep a journal. “I didn’t always feel that I could
talk to people about what I was going through, but I could get my
feelings ‘out there’ by writing them down. That helped a lot.”
Debunking Spiritual Myths
Angie’s
husband, Dave, grew up with four sisters and two brothers and always
expected to have a large family of his own. However, when years passed
without any children for him and Angie, Dave began to wonder if it were a
consequence of inadequate spirituality.
“We
tried to stay positive,” Dave says, “but it was hard. I knew the
importance of starting a family, but because we weren’t able to have
biological children, I felt like I was being punished or short-changed.”
Like
Dave, many people facing infertility look for the reason behind the
struggle and sometimes blame themselves. Such thoughts and feelings can
sting even more when others make well-intended but hurtful comments,
often laced with misguided beliefs.
For
instance, Melody Linton recalls sitting in testimony meeting and hearing
new mothers say things like, “God trusted me enough to bless me with
this baby.”
“I can
understand why they said it,” Melody admits. “It’s a fair statement. But
in my situation without a child, I couldn’t help but think, ‘God
doesn’t trust me.’
“I don’t
know that I felt angry at Heavenly Father, but I felt forsaken by Him,”
she continues. “I felt so left out. Why were all these other women
getting to experience pregnancy? I had tried to live my life worthily
and do things I knew to be correct. So why wasn’t it happening for me?”
Eventually, Melody found solace in the writings of Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) on adversity.
4
“The tables turned for me,” she says. “I began to think, ‘Why not
me?’ I’m strong enough to handle this.” She knew that with the support
of her husband, Curtis, and in the strength of the Lord, she could face
her challenges.
Brenda
points out that it’s important to continue to trust in the Lord, even
when what is happening isn’t what we want. “For a while, I thought if I
had enough faith, I would be cured,” she says. “But sometimes having
faith means trusting in and listening to the Lord even when we are not cured. What we want won’t always match what He has planned for us.”
She
recalls a Sunday School lesson in which a bishopric member shared an
important message about faith—one she’s clung to ever since. He said,
“When someone has an ailment or an illness and they are healed as the
result of a blessing, their faith is being strengthened. But for those
who aren’t healed but continue faithful, their faith is being perfected.
The first is a faith-promoting experience. The second is
faith-perfecting.”
Turning to—Not Away from—Each Other
Infertility
can cause a lot of couples to reevaluate their plans for their lives
and in some cases, their very relationships. When Curtis and Melody’s
doctor suggested a particular fertility treatment—one of their last
options—Melody was ready to move ahead, while Curtis had significant
reservations. At this crossroads, Curtis recalls, he retreated deeper
within himself and escaped by exercising and working more.
Melody,
meanwhile, felt stagnant. “While we were trying different procedures, I
felt productive and proactive, and that brought a tremendous sense of
hope,” she says. “But when we were stalling and nothing was moving
forward, that killed me.”
The
couple had worked hard for years to encourage each other in their
education, careers, and other interests. This had carried over into
their infertility challenges as well, such as when Curtis went to doctor
appointments with Melody or she supported him as he sought refuge in
bike rides and other physical activity.
“Trying
to support Melody is what had saved me through all of this,” he says.
But as Melody sunk deeper into sadness, Curtis felt powerless in knowing
how to help her. They were, it seemed, at an impasse.
That
changed, Melody says, when she ultimately realized that they needed to
be united as a couple. While she did not share her husband’s
reservations about the proposed procedure, she could respect them. “One
no meant two no’s,” she says. Together, they began exploring other
options.
Phil and
Valerie Hochheiser discovered that when the stresses of infertility
were too much—especially because, like the Lintons, they came to stages
of understanding at different times—they could find relief in focusing
on their marriage.
For
instance, varying the routine gave the couple something besides
fertility testing and treatments to think about. Phil says it was
helpful to break away by going to the movies or taking a walk. He and
Valerie also “took a couple of trips to put everything behind us for a
bit. Otherwise, infertility could have run our days and nights,” he
says.
To
further strengthen their relationship, the Hochheisers wrote each other
notes, went on dates, made anniversaries or other dates special by
splurging on a hotel room, made efforts to look attractive for each
other, sent flowers, and started saying “I love you” more often. “It’s
easy when you’re feeling depressed to let some of these areas slide—or
to not try anything at all—but by making a conscious effort, we were
able to handle things with a better sense of well-being and unity,”
Valerie says.
Physical
intimacy also played an important role, Valerie adds. “Intimacy in
marriage has several ‘functions’—procreation, yes, but also bonding and
unifying a couple in their marriage. Going through infertility
reaffirmed in my mind the importance of intimacy in our marriage.”
That stronger marriage, in turn, brought blessings of its own.
“It
helped me realize amid a lot of unknowns that I was really blessed to
have a husband who is good to me, who loves me, and who was willing to
work through this together,” Valerie says. “It didn’t mean that we got
rid of the ups and downs. It didn’t mean that there weren’t times that
were scary. But we’ve learned so much and grown much closer because of
what we’ve been through.”
Serving Others
Phil and
Valerie readily acknowledge that it took more than turning toward each
other, important as that was. They also needed to turn outward to others
in the healing process.
Valerie
remembers finding joy in her service in the Young Women organization.
Focusing on those she served helped her deal with her own challenges,
and occasionally, she even found personal solutions in the process.
“I
remember one particular lesson teaching about having an eternal
perspective. We discussed how different our own view is from Heavenly
Father’s. For some reason, that particular lesson—while I was in the
middle of serving others—had a big impact on me. It helped me see a
little bit more clearly that my struggles were only temporary ones.”
Phil, too, had significant experiences reaching out to others. He remembers finding—and later sharing—
Alma 26:27:
“Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back,
behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the
Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give
unto you success.”
“I
identified with the ‘when our hearts were depressed,’ phrase,” says
Phil. “Dealing with infertility is such an up-and-down cycle, and you
feel that way a lot of the time. But I learned to ‘bear with patience’
my afflictions and, as Ammon and his brethren were instructed to do,
serve others. So that’s what we did. We found ways to reach out to
others and lift them up. We didn’t yet know what the ‘success’ would be,
whether it would be pregnancy or
adoption or something else, but we trusted that it would happen.”
Reaching Out to a Support Network
Because
of infertility’s personal nature, some couples may decide not to talk
about it with other people. The Hochheisers, for instance, waited until
Valerie was about to undergo surgery before they brought it up to their
families.
“It was
hard for my family, my mom in particular, to have not been informed all
along,” Valerie recalls. “She felt I hadn’t wanted to include her and
let her be my support. But we were struggling to figure things out
ourselves. It would have been really hard to answer questions when we
weren’t yet sure what we were dealing with.” Moreover, they didn’t want
to trouble others with their struggles.
Of
course, people handle unexpected situations differently, Phil points
out. “Later on, I realized the biggest help was having a strong support
group outside of the two of us—people who could see the whole picture,
or even someone who had been through what we were experiencing.”
Once they started talking to other people, Valerie and Phil realized they weren’t alone.
“There are people out there; there are support groups, both in person and online,” Phil concludes. “Look for help.”
Curtis
and Melody found some of their greatest strength in such support groups,
specifically Families Supporting Adoption through LDS Family Services.
Although they were nervous about going to their first meeting, when they
walked into the room, Melody says, “I saw in every woman’s eyes what I
felt in my heart. I felt safe and knew that I could share what I was
experiencing.”
“Within
the support group,” Curtis adds, “we were Curtis and Melody dealing with
this challenge of infertility, not infertility in the form of Curtis
and Melody.” That realization, he says, was paramount.
“There’s
nothing in the scriptures or anywhere in the gospel that teaches us to
suffer in silence,” Curtis continues. “That’s a cultural thing. When you
suffer in silence, you suffer more deeply. We went through periods
where we were waiting for someone to take the first step to us. Be
willing to approach others first. Share your story; you’ll find that
others will often open up after that.”
Looking to the Lord
Eventually,
the paths of the Belnaps, Hochheisers, Horrockses, and Lintons led them
all to adoption. And while their children have brought great joy to
each couple, healing, they say, comes from the Lord—not from adopting or
conceiving.
“I
finally realized that infertility wasn’t a punishment,” Angie says.
“Once I was past the point of anger and bitterness, I was willing to
hear the Spirit and receive direction about what we were supposed to do.
Of course, that comes at different points for everyone. Infertility was
my refiner’s fire. My faith was strengthened through those difficult
years.”
“I had
never really thought about adoption, but when Dave and I had been
married almost five years, we moved into a ward where we met a couple
who had adopted, and we started asking them questions and learning about
the process. In receiving direction from the Lord that adoption was the
path we were to pursue, I felt physical and spiritual weights lifted
from my shoulders. The realization of God’s plan for our family gave me
peace.”
“One of
the gospel principles I’ve learned to appreciate through our experience
is that Heavenly Father has a plan for each of us,” Dave adds.
“Sometimes we get caught up in the one-size-fits-all mentality, and we
feel that our lives should look like other people’s lives. But that’s
really not true. Everyone has different trials, and Heavenly Father is
aware of those. If we are humble enough to follow the plan He has for
us, we’ll be happy.”
Valerie
Hochheiser agrees that relying on and trusting in the Lord is crucial.
“I learned that we had to do everything in our power but then ultimately
turn it over to Him,” she says. “Sometimes that means letting Him tell
us which direction to go. Other times it’s a matter of choosing a
direction and letting Him confirm the decision.
“I think
that was part of our learning process,” she continues. “I remember at
one point telling Heavenly Father that we no longer knew what to pray
for. We could pray for this to work or that to work, but mostly we just
wanted to be ready for the blessings that Heavenly Father was ready to
send us.”
Seeking Heavenly Father’s comfort and guidance will help us make the best decisions regardless of our circumstances.
“I have
learned to trust in Him, to follow the Spirit, and to feel at peace
because God’s plan is the one that will benefit me the most,” Brad says.
“There’s more to life than we can imagine.”
Brenda
agrees. “His gifts are the best gifts,” she says. “He loves us so much.
What I would have planned for our life would pale in comparison to what
He has given us. We need to trust and know that He will give to us
immeasurably. What He has in mind for His children is better than
anything we could ever design.”
For additional information on this topic see Ana Nelson Shaw,
“Being Sensitive to Couples without Children,” Ensign, Aug. 2000, 61. You can also visit the Counseling and Resources section of
ldsfamilyservices.org.
