I want control...or do I?

I keep asking myself what I did wrong. How could I get an infection? I take care of myself. I was exercising during this pregnancy and eating healthfully. I took my prenatals religiously. I don't do drugs, drink while pregnant, or sleep around...How is it that I got an infection?

Of course, I'll never know. The doctor doesn't even know. Only God knows. And it all comes back to this, that God is in control. I'm the typical oldest child, bossy, my-way-or-the-highway type of person. Ask my 3 year-old, he'll tell you! I want to think that there is something that I did to cause this, so that I can make sure that it doesn't happen again. And this is a trap. It sounds good though, doesn't it? I would love to find the answers so that I could protect myself from ever going through this again. But the truth of the matter is, that I should be glad that I'm not in control. How awful would it be to have to watch every move I made during the next pregnancy?

Then there's the issue of IVF (which was what we had to do after 2 years of infertility in order to conceive Chase). At first I really wrestled with this choice, wondering if I was taking things into my own hands. And then it dawned on me, that I could not create life. Who did I think I was? I could try the IVF treatment, but whether or not a baby was the result, was ultimately in God's hands. Did you know, they can inject a sperm straight into an egg and it still may not fertilize? God is in control...and that leaves me free to live! It leaves my husband and I free to pursue IVF treatment if we can't conceive on our own. It leaves me free to be pregnant again and not worry about anything that is out of my hands such as losing my next pregnancy in the same manner that I lost this one.

On my grief boards, I remember reading awhile ago that a girl was told by the "positive thinking" crowd, that if she'd thought positively while she was pregnant, her baby wouldn't have died. How ludicrous is that? But that statement gets at the crux of the problem with that philosophy. If my thinking can change a situation, then it's my fault when bad things happen to me. In my 2 years of infertility the most frustrating thing that people said to me to "help" was "you just need to relax and it'll happen". Because if I relax the sperm will swim in the right direction, right? Right. Wrong! I'm not in control! I could relax until I was a Zen master and I may not be as stressed about my situation, but the act of relaxing would not help me get pregnant. And it's freeing to me to know that my lack of relaxation techniques did not cause our infertility. What a burden that was to bear! To think that it was all my fault that we couldn't have another baby.

Thankfully, Jesus never told the blind man that if he'd just thought positively when he started losing his eyesight, he wouldn't have lost it. No. The man needed healing and Jesus knew that. Remember? It wasn't his fault, or his parents fault, but it was so that the Glory of God could be revealed. His blindness was not something he or his parents caused. None of them were in control.

This doesn't mean I'm going to flush my pre-natal vitamins down the toilet or anything. I'll take the precautions that I know to take, but in doing that, I may be left, even after doing everything right, without a baby. And that's a good thing, because it wasn't in my hands. If I could actually control the outcome of my life with my own actions, it would be a very scary place to be. And if tragedy occurred...How would I be able to move past the grief with all of the guilt I would feel knowing that I HAD been in control. Thank you Lord, for being sovereign. Thank you Lord, that I am not. Thank you Lord, that I can face a new day and maybe eventually another pregnancy knowing that it is in Your hands.

And that is why, I am working really hard at this point to move past the question of where I contracted that infection. Because it's not a good thing for us to be in control.