Walking With God in the Valley

When couples are experiencing infertility, Matthew R. Bo says there are a lot of lies were tempted to believe this. Everybody's too busy.

It's inconvenient to hard. Nobody really cares that the deceptions that are deep, they had identified as named as deceptions is the truth. God loves us and he intends for his church to be a community of love and self giving and when couples are going through infertility begin to seat and begin to feel it.

They themselves find themselves getting back.

This is family life to our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson on Bob Lapine.

It's important for couples as we experience infertility to remind ourselves of what the Bible says is true, and then to believe those truths by faith talk more about that today.

Stay with us and welcome to family life today. Thanks for joining us. We are spending time in the valley of the shadow this week and I know when you think about Psalm 23 words as though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil when you talk about the subject of infertility. You don't think I'm walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but there's a very real sense that this is a deathlike experience. Month in and month out for couples who are longing for kids. Every time a woman start your cycle again.

There is a death that just happened that's very true. I would just leading a Bible study this past spa and their eight women and three were struggling with infertility and a pain in the room that was so present every single week was hard and it was really hard because then there was another woman that was pregnant and so they were celebrating her, but there's also this pain that they're bearing that there always wondering will that ever be me and it's interesting to think because I'm with those husbands and I gotta be honest, often those husbands are quiet. They're not coming to a group in talking about it. They're just hiding and yet the pain is just as real. You almost have to draw it out of them the same and was going on and usually they're knocking to go there and less and less. There really desperate so it's it's a quiet pain in that dark valley well and this is a question I've got for our guest will introduce to our listers today Matthew Arvo joining us again on family life to a welcome back. Matthew Matthew two is a professor of Christian ethics at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Matthew and his wife have been married since 2007. They have a two boys and 1/3 child on the way back you written a book called walking through infertility in in your investigation of the subject as you talk to people in this experience do men and women process and deal with infertility in different ways. Absolutely women in general are more open to talking about their experience with other women, particularly if the other woman has had that experience herself. Men are very very unlikely to talk about the experience and there are all kinds of interesting cultural reasons for that. One of the more interesting ones because it's common is there is this feeling.

I worry about virility and of this lot long-standing cultural assumption that masculinity is bound up with virility and that's a lot who we are as a gendered person is bound up in Christ. Yes first yeah and it says nothing about me as a man whether I'm able to have children.

It's interesting then you know this whole area of the sexual perform. Still joke about it you know it's it's that we joke about and it's a cover-up because were afraid to talk about, especially when there's pain that they go so what you say to a man whose unwilling to talk about yeah it's it admittedly can be difficult to know from you guys banished way and I was going on because conversations typically is and about the sorts of subjects, but one thing you can do I think is if if there's enough closeness and you said you have enough of a sense of their ordinary day-to-day life. Asking questions that connect cokes that are lesser like a challenge, less sort of right to the point like hey are you is your problem at work more inviting them to talk around it and then been encircling in closer to the nature of the hurt of the nature of the difficulties that make sense to you in a way also never leaves the possibility of pride of suspicion is to be weird about discussing how they feel about anything.

Depending on the circumstances, but this one in particular, I think there's a real worry about judgment why I note Dave Wilson well enough to know that you have a problem asking very direct, bold, no sequester.

He was saying that you are nosy that she is still I am not I can hedging you ever struggle with this. I imagine you with a guide to sin, almost matter-of-factly but you thought this through carefully, but say so, are you an electronic kids if you need struggles in that area you would ask it on a level that invites a guide to be open and to have a conversation I would and I messing us right around that I I I like on.

Sometimes this scary places he with strangers. It's it maybe easier with a stranger than a close friend but yeah I would want to go there but I some if you think I'm bold this woman sit over here just snarking here that I was that was not in the lab that was us. I have seen her in our kitchen and I can give you an example, but there was one time I had a buddy over as she walked by him and say market and a bike you do not ask a man anything near that kind of question and she was still take a risk and do that but something I responded yeah back in my younger days. There were a lot of filters going on and hope that I've learned a little bit that yeah, that trail and here's a reason and and I love this about her is she is not good at small talk right Iago party. I conduct everybody in the room about nothing process for you name it music movies. She had like that he wanted to go deep and say let's have off an internally life-changing conversation with a stranger.

Our friend and so that's why she'll take that risk and I say well I know people and when I know what they're going through and their pain and likes too short to talk about Saha. In fact, let's get to the real stuff, things that I'm thinking right now is as a married couple is your struggling with this topic. I'm imagining that would be hard to even talk to each other does not have to come into play that you've heard never even your brother and your sister-in-law absolutely also surveys the reasons but the thing I think I hear most about is not just the breakdowns of communication, but then island noticed becoming their own independent universes and it doesn't take very long before the other person almost becomes like an object of resentment and there's not even a sense of how to begin talking anymore. And at that point, things are very dangerous and on very tumultuous ground.

Hopefully if the if this couples in the church. The pastors are alerted that their problems and or maybe they can intervene but what I what I tend to see with couples and hear from couples is the sense of profound isolation of not even knowing how to begin to have this for hurtful difficult conversation without it becoming about the blame about fault about explanations and it's really difficult to forebear Dave and Anna to be able to finish the sentence for very easily. The natural drift in every marriage is what I'm about to think about isolation, especially in this circumstance.

If we were experiencing this for me to come to you Dave and to say how are you feeling tell me the things that you're feeling right now about all that's going on with us to him. Welcome to our date on a day and I'm not kidding. I'm a doctor yet. I come home every day from work and great at communicating.

She loves sales. I tell Sears was gone on and she just loves it, and then will validate and shall say, let's talk about us and I wish I just clam up. Does he say I don't talk about that now he just fumbles as we are in good time wondering if this circumstance. If the couples really struggling. Would it be bad for one of either the husband or the wife to say anyhow right like tell me truthfully what are you going through what's going on in your mind, how are you feeling is that a bad question to add that's essential that that's the kind of question that the couple needs at that moment a mess like a life buoy no. If were talking about their total isolation opening up in an initial way just in an invitation to communicate about how things are going. What you feeling that moment and then just the actual externalizing of the feeling I'm feeling angry. I'm really angry I'm really upset. I feel like you don't care all the stuff that the other person. The court didn't know the person no idea that they felt this way and I would guess it's not only just with your spouse. A guy I would say to the men out there. You need a guy in women, you need a woman that you can feel safe enough with. I can remember when ancestor was struggling and ended up dying from lung cancer and and was down taking care of her often out of her home number buddy coming over, and this is months in and were literally in my driveway shooting baskets and yellow bags like that that opened up my heart. He's not look me in the face were just shooting balls and he just said to me goes how you I broke down just that question from a trusted friend with no judgment really no agenda. I'm your friend I'm here how you doing I just a member sitting on my driveway and then I'm like I'm struggling.

This is really hard watching my sister-in-law die.

Much of my wife's best friend. But having a friend there. I just was a every guy you need that guy and why did I have that guy I pursued him years ago, he pursued me was and I waited, I went after it and it's got those in baba Noah has in life is I get to go after the guy, so I would say the men out there, and the women. Hopefully, your spouse, but need to be somebody else to talk about the role of those people in your life.

How important is community as you're walking through the valley you spend a lot of space in the book on this because I think it is essential for the church to have that sort of enfolding love and compassion for the couple is going through that now. It may not always be known for reasons we we can talk about have talked about but you always know that a couple going through that. But when a couple has trusted friends and that even if the marriage itself is fraught, they at least have this to lean on the can lean on these people and they have distorted this disorder.

Net that will uphold them in their difficulty. If they do not have that community.

If they've say withdrawn themselves. The church then the isolation becomes compounded and not only did I have each other that no one in a maybe a family member or some other friends in college and who knows, but that but that the church is a community of reciprocity and that night as it is mentioned in the book and I have really do mean it that the church also needs infertile couples NEEDS infertile couples infertile couples and single people write married couples and that's the nature the church were burnt very eclectic crew and it turns out that there's heaps of people in the church that want to be there for people a lot of people that really do have open hearts of love and they want to come right alongside them in statistics. The more recent ones suggest that about one in 10 couples will experience some form of infertility. So when you take stock of your own church, and you can get a pretty good idea about how many couples in the church but have.

I'm thinking of friends I know who I know have struggled with this issue and the thing that's always been in the back of my mind when I see them.

I mean it. It's almost like a little buzzer goes off. The thing that I know about them is there dealing with infertility, but you don't want every time you see them saved so you happen was going on for you. I was what's this pump like how do you know to try to be a comfort and a friend. How do you know when to bring it up how to bring it up if to bring about how how do you gauge that was somebody as a congregant that is non-pastoral staff say that you need to have that trust. There at least is the familiarity and accepting venue matters and adjust how many years of listening in and where are you have a sense of space that, but went RSA for pastors, though a pastor that is shepherding their flock. Well knows which couples have had that before, and they also know who to introduce to who and I don't delve known about this couple as they just experience it first miscarried and they know that this other couple also experience miscarried you're talking that's good pastoral ministry themselves have to say everything there is a bit miscarried, but they know that there's love there. That's what I was wondering like if you've gone through this ministry that God could be calling you into anything. As a pastor either ministry that you can pull people in who are really struggling. I think that would be beautiful Pat if I was just as a pastor. Thank you honey. So often, a couple or personal consummate, and they think on the person they need to talk to and as I hear their story like it could be infertility. I'm doing exactly said only. I've got a couple and they look at me like no no no no I want you and only reason you're saying as I just heard me speak, they can connect in some way. And yet when they follow through and go counter me with this couple, guess what I hear later that was the perfect you know. Thank you for put me there and I'm like yeah you wouldn't believe me. But that is the body of Christ. That is what God has put us altogether to do to minister to one another so that been your experience yeah yeah that happened absolutely yeah and there can be the accommodation to in conversation that unit open yourself up to receive from people and that that feels really risky, given what's going through. Keep imploring and keep praying for them and it's there. Another is that there is a place in the human heart to receive know the love that another person is everybody wants to be loved and to receive love and out. They don't want no I want to close himself off to this other stuff going on so that like when you read the passage about this was sticking with it is coming back dropping back to just in a week. We've done this before we just taken people ice cream minute going to come in is one reason I never said and I got a bring the Häagen-Dazs not hello okay that's here's an interesting thing I've watched in the church, not just as a pastor, but even grown up around it is the church can be the place where people hide the most… So bad to think that's true, but I think I read years ago in a book years ago that I think was Chuck's wind was writing.

He said the church should be more like a bar, and I'll get your attention like what, no worries, he says you go to barista down besides Ami don't know very well. You start sharing your problems and they go have been due that we go to church. We hide right here is perfect. Nobody else's infertile there's a way of struggling and you should be a place where we can go and find comfort as we share so I mean, what would you say to the person that's that's hiding or keeping it to himself. How would you encourage them to say you've gotta take the risk that is the one thing it says there are people in your church who have or are right now experience which are experiencing they been on the same degree. Maybe not with the same sort of shape and contours, but they've had that experience that had familiarity with it and you are not a stranger to them. Your case is not so different that there is nothing that can be said in the nothing be done for you right and one of the key truces injured and is worth repeating again and again, you're not alone. You don't have to be alone. There is a God who loves you and is present to you at all times with open heart and open arms and you have many in your community who have open arms. If if you'll let them write if you let them in that I would just keep reminding this are basic truths which are easy to switch off in her head in our hearts that nobody really cares this everybody's too busy. It's inconvenient, it's too hard.

But that does those are those are deceptions that are deep in it. They can be sustained, but they had to be identified as named as deceptions is the truth is that God loves us and he intends for his church to be a community of love and self giving and when when couples are going through infertility begin to seat and begin to feel it. They themselves find themselves getting back right.

It almost immediately giving of their gifts to others and and being fully participating in the life of the church to those that do the kind the truth that began to very basic ones that that Paul talks about his epistles and Jesus talks about how we are community together.

Yes, there are risks God is with us. Yet when you said that I thought of the verse that you just articulated without actually quoting it, but it's the other side.

It's the couple that may be in infertile couple comes to us as were struggling and you been through it. I don't know if you put this in the book or not, but a second Corinthians 1. Three Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort here is, who comforts us in all of our afflictions so that we may be all the comfort those who are in any affliction, so it's like me when I'm when God's met me in the middle.

My thank God wants to use that in the future. I've been there I've experienced God in the middle of it.

How can I help somebody else see that God is there with them yet interrelated. You same things really like is really the passage I think of Paul's words in Romans 12, to rejoice with those rejoicing that articulated of members of the community that rejoice with those. Rejoice and weep with those who weep and work were sometimes pretty good about rejoicing when that wicket was to come here Ms. on that, depending on our hearts, but weeping with those we can be really really tough and committed. But that's very often exactly what a couple of his expensive toys will hang out provide Bible drill. I'm thinking Galatia is what comes to mind for me is bear one another's burdens I listed, and so fulfill the law of Christ. What's the law of Christ love God, love your neighbor how you fulfill that bear one another's burdens. So if you got a friend who's got a burden when you bear that your loving God and your loving your neighbor which is the whole of the law will address this person that's not involved in a church that is in a Bible study that really doesn't have any close friends that can bear their burden with how do we address then and what are their first steps out. I would say in that case I would offer the very almost silly and being so elementary rudimentary, but I would say I would say this wake up and have your coffee and get dressed and walk out your door and go to a place where you know somebody this be a community of faith that is the main idea here going to go go to your local church go to go it if it's your friend, your coworkers place. Some of the following Facebook go somewhere and have a conversation with someone and look in their eyes and have a Human touch that would know those all seem like very very silly sequential steps, but for someone who is in the depth of the difficulty the very basic thing of getting out about getting cleaned up and getting out the door and doing all the things you have to do is a person to get to the place where people are. That can feel like itself this huge obstacle, but just to break it down like that. Take those few steps and get to other people who will see you who will see you and they will touch and they will invite you if you do all that and you go to place and they don't see you and there's plenty of other places that that will plenty of place out there who will and will who will gather you right in and and that's the truth hold onto because that's what the body of Christ is.

It is a people who bear with one another in their wounds and difficulties because we are all appointed Matthew I have to ask you this before we let you go.

The issues of in vitro fertilization reproductive technologies couples were struggling with infertility. There there wrestling with is this okay is this biblical can I do this multiple fertilized eggs how they process that you know that Christians come to different answers on that so just give us guidance in terms of how we can think rightly and make up our own minds and be responsive to your own conscience and and this is is a big section of the letter for the book and I will say everything I do there but just refer listeners to to that section, but them little very often happen after a couple is been infertile for a year and 1/2 to 2 years is they'll begin to seek the help of a clinician, and the fertility expert will give them advice what to do and usually the advice is noninvasive, see some blood tests and on what your exercise regimen. How stressful his work and when to do is analyses and you break it down sometimes those little very minor lifestyle changes really do like helping couples end up with our couples. That doesn't work, they're very healthy that on stress they try these things. So then you can upscale the level of intervention and as you get further along at a couple may become eligible candidates for artificial reproductive technologies. That's where the ethics of treatment become a little thornier treat to have them in the book. One is called IUI and the others what IVF I don't have any strong personal qualms with IUI. It's very common treatment. What is intrauterine insemination.

Okay, so that's where the sperm is deposited within the woman's own reproductive organs.

It is the egg is not externalized IVF differs in that the specimen sperm and egg or externalizing lab fertilization takes place there. There are more risks involved there and I call them moral risks and hazards in the book that I am cautioning against IVF in the book, and I do so I try to do so when I am now an pastorally sensitive way because I realized that there are eclectic experiences and some couples are different places along the path and that that experience so but it's big, it's because of the risks that I end up cautioning against that we often have a sense of what will happen if we do a thing specially comes the medicine. What a confidence in medicine, but there can be unintended consequences. Once a path is taken I can bring some of those up in the book for letting couples know this is the sort out here. Here's how this process works. Here's what you're kinda committing to. But it's it's a long process and it's important I think is you been talking as a theme in her discussion to keep communication open and I think it's important for a couple to have clear boundaries and limits of what their wanting to do or will do, and they may proceed along with the specialist they may get their advice, but they may also say that were not going to do that, even though it's may be medically advised. Infertility has the kind of shoe of disease is not a disease, darkly speaking when couples go through that, the reasons for it sometimes are not even medically known weasel how we don't know about why couples are infertile to extraordinary given advance medical science so support the couples have those sense of limits. God is indeed the giver of life. There were the main ideas I have in the book is that some infertility isn't judgment or an indictment, but maybe one way to think of it as God just giving you a different Libyan family.

It's a participating as life, mission, and I think that bigger picture of how we are family of God eclectic as we are different, as we are. We don't live up to some American model of the family. American picture of a family boat on this biblical and Christian, and one which is faithful to what God said about us as individuals and as couples as family and what we can see we living from those trues then I think we begin to see how our commitments.

We proceed with that sort of thing to listen to them. We talked about the fact that your brother and his wife experienced infertility then experienced a stillbirth after they conceived what's her family today. Update us as a Patrick and Jennifer have adopted a sibling group. Amos and Anna twins. Colton is four and then they have a daughter who was born around the time that the book came together how biological direct biological daughter.

Ellie saw a family of four family of four and my brother Patrick and his wife are great parents and they are shepherding their children well and I'm abs. I'm so proud of them done great and you know I would sooner wrap up the conversation with what's I felt like on every page of your book you started to begin, say, here's the central idea which you just articulated. It's the it's the fact that God's there any may have a different way for you to do family and I thought as I read that in and you just said it. I thought that's true for infertile true for fertile. It's true for people are struggling and financial issues, health issues, relationship issues, you name it. The question we struggle with God. Are you here you see me, what you doing in your book so clearly throughout the theme is he really is there and I would just say to our listener who's gone through that dark valley. Even though I walk through the valley thou art with me and I know you can't feel at times I've been there.

You question it.

The truth is, even if you feel or don't feel that God really is still there. He's walking probably carrying you and nobody knows the future. We don't know if you will have a baby or not, but we do know God is there he will carry you, he will actually use it in some redemptive way. If you trusted trusted that's a very clear message from the book walking through infertility which we got our family life. Today, resource Center, Matthew. Thank you for being with us. Thanks is a great letter.

If our listeners are interested in the copy of the book, they can go to family life to.com and ordered from us online or they can call one 800 FL to date order.

Again, the website family life to a.com or call one 800 FL today that's 1-800-358-6329 to get a copy of the book walking through infertility by our guest today Matthew Arvo on the subject of infertility that we talked about today is a tough but real issue for so many, and of the person family like David Robbins is with us today you you understand a little bit about the toughness of this and indeed you the thread to the whole conversation today that was encouraging to me was that relationship is the environment through which help and comfort come to those who need it the most. It reminded me of what Henry cloud said the body of Christ, God's people are God's plan a for our growth and transformation.

So often I think we beg God to intervene in some supernatural, miraculous way. When his people with God spirit put inside them is God's greatest provision for us that he's giving to us right now. If people in your church or in your neighborhood are struggling in life. Do they have the relational foundation and relational security to come to you. Who do you have people who you can run to when hardships that are guaranteed to, complexes of life that compound do we have those people we can run to.

I think the place that starts is going deeper with the community that we are around today and I suggested a day, perhaps a great place to start is simply extending hospitality, bringing over some ice cream because no one turns away ice cream.

There is something about loving God and loving others, pretty central to what Jesus taught us is in the flesh is the foundation. Thank you, David. What we hope you have a great weekend.

Hope you and your family are able to worship together in your local church this week and hope we don't take that for granted right after all we've been through this spring. Hope you can join us back on Monday as well were to talk about love. What is the foundation of real love. What's real love, all about how give you little spoiler here. It's not what the Hallmark Channel is okay.

The Bible has something much deeper for us to understand and experience will talk more about that Monday hope you can be with us for that.

I want to thank our engineer today.

Keith Lynch along with our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts Dave and Ann Wilson unpopular P and have a great week and will see you Monday for another edition of family life today. Family life to the production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry help for today hope for tomorrow