Feeling for the Queens

Don’t you sometimes wonder what women did “back in the day” when they couldn’t get pregnant? I’ve been reading a lot lately about the wives on Henry VIII – their main problem was that they couldn’t produce male heirs (um, his problem, ironically!) and can you imagine only being useful for your ability to produce children and being infertile? And not even knowing that there were options for treatment? How about just the ability to POAS and find out (more or less) immediately? Suddenly, I am very grateful to be living in such an era that HPTs and OB/GYNs and REs are readily available.

In an email I sent my sister recently, I spelled out a “spiritual conundrum” I had been thinking about. I’ll share it below:

I came up against a bit of a spiritual conundrum recently – L (my SIL) who refuses to chart her cycle (and recently went 2 months without getting her period only to find out that she is NOT in fact pregnant) or do much research on the subject told Mr Moose that in light of their unstable financial future (they are thinking of going into business of their own, leaving his father to run the family business since Pops won't sell out to L's hubby and won't keep his fingers out of their business even though he doesn't want to participate in the chores of it, etc) that maybe God is trying to tell them it's not the right time to get pregnant. Okay. Fine. I understand and truly believe that God's timing isn't our timing. But I also believe that (though this sounds way more disrespectful than intended) God helps those who help themselves. It's like that joke about the guy who prays to God to let him win the lottery every day for 7 years. At the end of 7 years, he's praying and pleading with God and God finally says, audibly, "Herman. Buy. A Ticket."
I struggle with the dichotomy that God controls everything and yet good, loving, Christian people can't get pregnant, are infertile. And if you can, shouldn't you do everything you possibly can to make sure you're standing in your own way? Or should you take it on faith that if you're meant to get pregnant, you will tests and charts or not?
Obviously, I've been thinking heavy thoughts at work lately.

I’ve been very thoughtful (as in full of thoughts) about these topics lately – it’s a very passionate subject for me. I once read a series of books that said that “God is weird and we are tweaked. We can never understand how God thinks because we are not God. But every time we do something that is selfless and God-like we become a little more ‘weird’ and learn more about Him.”