I am currently reading A Long Obedience In The Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society. The author is Eugene H. Peterson, who might be recognized by those in Christian circles as the translator of The Message Bible. The book looks specifically at the Psalms of Ascent that were likely sung by the Israelites as they made their pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Each chapter discusses a different topic of discipleship as expressed by a specific Psalm.
Chapter 12 of the book is entitled "Hope" and examines Psalm 130, which reads:
Help, GOD-the bottom has fallen out of my life!
Master, hear my cry for help!
Listen hard! Open your ears!
Listen to my cries for mercy.
If you, GOD, kept records on wrongdoings,
who would stand a chance?
As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit,
and that's why you're worshiped.
I pray to GOD- my life a prayer-
and wait for what He'll say and do.
My life's on the line before God, my Lord,
waiting and watching till morning,
waiting and watching till morning.
Oh Israel, wait and watch for GOD-
with GOD's arrival comes love,
with GOD's arrival comes generous redemption.
No doubt about it- He'll redeem Israel,
buy back Israel from captivity to sin.
Although not intended for the infertile, these words echo the cries and the tears shed by the infertile, like me, who just don't understand how this struggle fits with God's plan. And I remain "waiting and watching" until a morning I can no longer even imagine any more.
The chapter also starts off with the following quote on hope from Thornton Wilder:
Hope is a projection of the imagination; so is despair. Despair all too readily embraces the ills it foresees; hope is an energy and arouses the mind to explore every possibility to combat them . . . In response to hope the imagination is aroused to picture every possible issue, to try every door, to fit together even the most heterogeneous pieces in the puzzle. After the solution has been found it is difficult to recall the steps taken-so many of them are just below the level of consciousness.
Oh, how these words plucked the strings of my understanding. The inexplicable rising of hope in the infertile- the hope that raises its head even under the most impossible of circumstances. The hope that makes us want to try anything, to never give up the quest despite how tired and depleted it leaves us. The author describes hope, later in the chapter, in this way:
Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. . . . And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. . . .It is imagination put in the harness of faith.
This description of hope inspires me to not dwell in the land of the hopeless infertile. I can be hopeful. Being hopeful doesn't have to mean being unrealistic; being hopeful doesn't mean having to be repeatedly dashed by yet another unsuccessful cycle; being hopeful doesn't mean not seeking medical assistance; being hopeful doesn't mean worrying and scurrying; and, being hopeful doesn't mean not imagining a future that includes a child.
The chapter raises a tangential point that made bells go off in my head. It finally explained all of the "advice" given to the infertile. The author details how our culture has rejected suffering. He explains it so much better than I can:
[I]t is difficult to find anyone in our culture who will respect us when we suffer. We live in a time when everyone's goal is to be perpetually healthy and constantly happy. If any one of us fails to live up to the standards that are advertised as normative, we are labeled as a problem to be solved, and a host of well-intentioned people rush to try out various cures on us. Or we are looked on as an enigma to be unraveled, in which case we are subjected to endless discussions, our lives examined by researchers zealous for the clue that will account for our lack of health or happiness. Ivan Illich, in an interview, said: "You know, there is an American myth that denies suffering and the sense of pain. It acts as if they should not be, and hence it devalues the experience of suffering. But this myth denies our encounter with reality."
Is this not the experience of the infertile who repeatedly hears all of the "relax" and "it will happen" comments or the "have you tried this or that?" Why do these comments hurt? Because the intent of such responses is to deny the infertile's suffering. Our experience is not the the normative and must be either denied or justified away.
When we suffer we attract counselors as money attracts thieves. Everybody has an idea of what we did wrong to get ourselves into such trouble and a prescription for what we can do to get out of it. We are flooded first with sympathy and then with advice, and when we don't come around quickly we are abandoned as a hopeless case.
Does that not mirror how our society treats us the infertile? We are pushed to the outside either by our own need to retreat from the pain of our reality or simply by our failure to belong to the normative fertile world.
Psalm 130 "does not exhort us to put up with suffering; it does not explain it or explain it away." This is what the infertile is seeking. It is a "powerful demonstration that our place in the depths [of our suffering] is not out of bounds from God." And that is where hope comes back in.
The chapter ends with a a reminder from a George MacDonald novel: "those who work well in the depths more easily understand the heights, for indeed in their true nature they are one and the same." I have dwelled in the depths and it has prepared me for the heights. Meanwhile, I am watching and waiting. With hope.
4 comments:
Nothing wrong at all with long posts. It gives me more to read.
It sounds like a good book. I am dying for reading material because all my books are still in boxes.
This is such a thoughtful and well-expressed post. I really enjoyed reading it. You have much wisdom to share.
By the way, I tagged you! See my blog for the rules!
Thank you so much for this post. I happened upon your blog at a very hopeless time in my struggle with infertility and it gave me hope. I especially like the last quote and wrote it down for my journal.
I know we check in with each other in another place on a frequent basis, but I love reading your blog because I get a better idea of the lovely and thoughtful person you are. I am praying that this summer you get to experience those heights that all of us infertiles seek. I say we're all long overdue.
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