There's a hole in my soul

The retreat center.  St. John XXIII, pray for us!

The IF retreat that Rebecca organized was this past weekend.  It was just what I needed. I've been having a pretty rough past month or so, and the retreat was able to put a lot into perspective.  More people attended than last year, and something about seeing all of them in one room together was healing in itself.  In real life, I've only ever been in the same room as a handful of other IF ladies.  Having a whole room full of others carrying the same cross was a huge reminder that I am not alone.  It really hit home when one of the presenters (who was infertile) asked everyone whose life had been impacted by infertility to raise his/her hand; everyone's hand went up.  That visual alone was powerful.  Being able to see their reactions (i.e., tears) during the presentations was reassuring that I'm not just being too sensitive when I feel the pain of IF.  The pain is real and profound and even though everyone has a slightly different perspective, it is very much a shared experience.

very comfortable room where I did not spend much time

The presentations were excellent, but like last year, I got the most out of talking to the other retreatants.  It's rare to have time for fellowship with others who can relate to what I'm going through.  The IF blogs and the IF Fac.ebook group are great, but it's just so nice to sit and chat with people in person (says the shy phlegmatic).  Not having to put on a fake smile and pretend everything is fine with people I just met was rather refreshing.  Several of us stayed up rather late talking.  I figured I could sleep when I got home.  :)

One priest gave us a blessing with
a relic of Sts. Joachim and Anne.

While the retreat did shine a big spotlight on the pain of IF, it also encouraged me to try to move beyond the pain.  Often, when you're sitting at home on CD1, for example, the sadness is so great that all you do is turn inward.  That is the big problem with pain of any kind.  When your focus is only on yourself and what is making you miserable, it's harder to attempt to see the bigger picture of what God might want for you or your life.  The priests who attended the retreat struck a good balance between acknowledging the suffering of IF and challenging us to accept this cross and discern how to move forward in the circumstances we find ourselves.  They also reminded us that if we pray for very specific things, we run the risk of expecting God's will to match our will, a lesson that has been hard for me to learn over the past few years.

The retreat did help me to have an epiphany of sorts.  For a long time, I have had a question swimming around in my head that I could not answer.  I had studied St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body (beginner level) before I met DH.  It definitely deepened my desire for children.  There is so much more to TOB than having children, but that's a practical part of what I took away from it.  Since we started experiencing IF, I could never really mesh TOB with IF.  Granted, it has been a long time since I delved into the specifics of TOB, it kind of bothered me that I couldn't answer this question:  In light of TOB, how do you view IF?  No answer anyone gave me satisfied me, including my stab at an answer (that IF is a tragedy).

Here's my train of thought as a non-theologian:  The Trinity is a communion of persons.  God loves the Son, and the love between them is so powerful that it becomes a third person, the Holy Spirit. Marriage images the Trinity.  But if the marriage experiences IF, there is no third person.  According to that analogy I described, marriage with IF seems to not image the Trinity, at least in the physical sense, and that's why I came to the conclusion that IF is a tragedy.  I realize all analogies of the Trinity fall short in some way, but it doesn't feel so good to think of your marriage as some broken image of the Trinity.

But finally I think I have an answer that satisfies me:  The main way marriage images the Trinity is in the self-gift of the spouses.  Yes, in the majority of marriages that self-gift results in (biological) children.  But focusing on the presence (or absence in our case) of children as the main sign misses the foundation of self-gift that all marriages are built on.  I might be the only person that was hung up on this, but I'm really glad going to the retreat was able to shed light on this.

One of the presenting couples played the song below for us.  While it's not about IF. there were two parts of the song that really hit me.

"There's a hole in my soul. I can't fill it. I can't fill it.
There's a hole in my soul. Can you fill it? Can you fill it?"

For a long time, there has been a child-sized hole in my soul.  It's still there, but I'm slowly learning to fill it with God and all the other blessings in my life.  It's definitely a work in progress.  :)

"You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve,

And I have always buried them deep beneath the ground."

This describes DH and me in regard to emotions about IF.  I don't hide what I'm feeling, and he is more likely to keep his hidden inside.  I think going through IF is helping both of us understand the other better in this area.

"Flaws" by Bastille

I've been listening to it almost non-stop since the weekend.  Such a good song.  :)

There will be the same IF retreat in Omaha in March.  I highly recommend going if you're in the area...or even if you're not.  Quite a few of the retreatants from this past weekend drove five or six or more hours in order to attend, and I'm guessing they would all say it was worth the drive.  :)