I get people asking me every once in a while why we don’t have children. They come out with all those theories about why I don’t have them yet. I think the thing about those theories is that none of them really help me deal with it. What helps me deal with it is when I start asking myself, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” and “What are the best things that I can do with my life, since I can’t have kids?”

When I look back at my seven years of childless marriage, I feel that my greatest accomplishment that came out of that was that I wrote a book “Isaiah Insights to Teenage Temptations” (which is now posted online here… http://scriptorium-blogorium.freehostia.com/Site/Preface.html) and the spiritual growth and change that came out of that writing process has made a huge difference in my life! I don’t know that I would have been able to do that at all if I had little munchkins running around.

Someday when I’m resurrected I will be able to have lots of children, but in the meantime, I think that if people invited me over to play with their kids, that would be more comforting than any theory they could offer.

One of the reasons I haven’t wanted to do IVF is that I don’t know if I could bear it if it didn’t work; I don’t think I could stand to get my hopes elevated and then crushed in that way.

One of these days some of us should put our heads together and write a book on infertility–in fact, come to think of it, I think Janet of FMH has (or at one point had) such a project underway.

And I know they mean well, but they can’t know what’s right for me and my husband and what the Lord has intended for us.

Thanks to Ziff for the comparison to just world theory; it’s a very apt one. I think religious contexts are (for obvious reasons) particularly fertile grounds.

Glenn, one of the bishops you definitely didn’t know; he was a great guy, actually, extremely kind and thoughtful, just very conservative on gender roles. The other, who was our bishop when we were in a different ward but the same stake as your family, you might have known. I had a harder time with him. In the same conversation in which he told me it was pointless to return to school he also told my husband and me that he thought we ought to have a baby that year. We looked at each other and said, “That would be nice!” But it went completely over his head.

jessawhy’s story about her home teacher attributing her liberal political ideas to her youth and rebellion; yeah, I’ve had that experience as well. My family tend to be Democrats, while my husband’s tend to be Republicans. My bother- and sister-in-law once told us we were Democrats only because we were students, and once we graduated and entered the “real world” we’d get over it.

As we’ve discussed around here before, (http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2007/12/29/the-stages-of-faith/),
we all have a tendency to posit ourselves and our current conclusions about the world as the endpoint of others’ spiritual, emotional, and political trajectories and to see others as merely less well developed versions of ourselves. I think that accepting the sacred mystery of others involves resisting such notions.

Kaimi, are the herbs chocolate-covered? That’s how I know that foods are true. If they have chocolate in them, they are true.

I’m glad many of you liked the theodicy machine. Personally I imagine each theodicy machine is as unique as its owner–mine is modeled on the printing press, although Ziff’s lawnmower and blender parts and KLC’s wheat grinder parts and ESO’s homework machine suggest the inevitable invention of the manly Theodicy 2.0: Job’s Comforters, with fifteen speeds and optional GA quote and scripture inserters. I also very much like mel’s suggestion that some Relief Society theodicy machines are kept in the craft room so that the products can be thematically coordinated to season and tragedy.

Glenn’s going to invent the Theodicy software that will allow it to be carried about on a PDA

And I loved Mel’s story about her friend who got irritated about petty things after her mother’s death. I sometimes imagine that’s how God sees things, beneath all the grumpy, petty, crazy, annoying behavior that we all sometimes indulge in there’s always a story. At least that’s how I try to imagine it.

I wish I could wear my story on my sleeve so people would know the “oh, that’s why she . . . ” for my crazy or annoying behavior.

Me too.

Mommom said,

I just wish that the fact that I had those experience were a guarantee that I would always pause a second or two before speaking so everything I say would always be the way I meant to say it.

Me too on that one as well. I think that’s the difficult gap between self and other I’m trying to bridge here–so I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the theodicy machine’s outputs on some issues; how can I translate that into not pointing my own theodicy machine at other people on other issues I haven’t personally experienced?

And that’s where Mark’s comment comes in.

In many ways, it is presumptuous to say “I understand” to anybody. And yet, I also hope that there are some experiences which reinforce our common humanity.

I wonder about this tension as well; in what sense precisely are our experiences unique, and in what sense they are also part of our common inheritance as fallen human beings. I guess the answer is always both. But you make an excellent point: without that commonality to our experiences we wouldn’t be able to feel for each other in any sense at all.

Ethesis, thanks for your always kind words. It’s comforting to hear about your wife’s similar experience going through graduate school. Thanks as well to KLC, ESO, Jacob J, cchrissyy, Glenn, and Zillah for stopping by. Steve, yep, definitely, I’d love to compare notes.

jesswhy, I’m glad you liked the post, although I should probably point you to an embarrassing past exchange or two so that you can see how unheroic my blogging sometimes is.

You pose an excellent question, one I’ve thought about off and on for years without coming to any good conclusions.

So what’s the take-home lesson? Perhaps you, and others, can give some guidance about what you would like to hear, or what some people have said that you have appreciated. When I’ve had friends tell me about their very difficult trials, I am sometimes speechless, and totally say the wrong thing because I don’t know the right thing. I know that listening is the best answer, but sometimes I think I have to say something, anything, to help them feel better.
Perhaps that’s the problem. Maybe I think I can make them feel better when I really can’t. So I shouldn’t try.

To some extent we’re all bound by ourselves, our own frames of reference and desires. Personally I don’t tend to like advice or explanations; I prefer listening and attempts to understand. But something else I’ve sometimes wondered when people do provide advice or explanations is that perhaps that’s the kind of thing they themselves would want in such circumstances. IN some ways the only answer to such dilemmas is the time and effort and commitment of investing in long-term relationships with people so that we come to know them and their needs.

But I think your final point about simply giving people space to feel sorrow is crucial. Sometimes when I’ve felt really bad, particularly at church I’ve found that people can’t allow that; they want to fix things, make them better, when I simply want the reality and difficulty of the problem to be acknowledged. I don’t expect anyone at church or anywhere else to fix my problems; they’re my problems, and some of them are up to me to fix, and some of them simply have to be endured. I think the culture is changing, but for some people the acknowledgment of sorrow and intractable difficulty is already a sign of defeat, and so they tend to get very anxious when confronted with difficulty and get out their theodicy machines to console themselves in my presence.

The really hard part, though, is resisting the temptation to do the same myself, or trying to understand when I myself have been less than compassionate and charitable or more worried about managing my own feelings than about actually extending myself to someone else.

Your questions are excellent, and those are the best answers I can muster. But I think working out how to love one another as the gospel requires is a lifelong process, and we all make many, many missteps. Learning to overlook one another’s missteps and developing the moral imagination to posit a story behind the annoying act is also part of that.

Like ESO and Ann I’d like a red flag that alerts me when I’m about to say something insensitive. In fact, I’d like to be able to exchange my theodicy machine for a red flag.

I learned from a great parenting teacher that God speaks in the pause between when we receive data and when we react. Like Mommom I hope I can embrace the pause more.

And having been through my own trials and struggles, some universally horrific and others too embarrassing to share because of how silly they are, I am trying to remember that there is a story behind every face and action – I wish I could wear my story on my sleeve so people would know the “oh, that’s why she . . . ” for my crazy or annoying behavior.

I have a friend who at first just seemed petty to me because she was very wrapped up in what was “fair” – she would complain that everyone chipped in different amounts for the teachers gift but then they still all got to sign the card, etc, etc. I felt like it was negative and annoying, but really liked her despite it. About 6 months into our relationship, I found out her mother had long before died of breast cancer and her reaction was how unfair she felt it was that she did not have a mother for crucial moments of her life. Knowing this, I am so much more tolerant and understanding of her motives and I no longer find it annoying. Imagine how much better we would treat each other if we knew “the story” about everyone, or if we didn’t, we silently made up a good one in its place.

Thanks Eve for reminding me that everyone is a sacred mystery.

it is the nature of life that tragedy rarely comes with a clear theological explanation (and even more rarely are theological explanations revealed to the neighbors; strangely enough God seems to reveal the meaning of experiences to those whose experiences they are). And so we ourselves cruelly devise explanations of others’ tragedies in order to keep ourselves safe from them.

Indeed. I’ve seen a lot of that, I’m not sure it was really a fertility rant so much as a good discussion of how people react to trial and affliction by increasing it for others.

We had lots of experience with all sorts of comments. It was hard to hide what our family was going through, sometimes. And I completely agree that many people wanted to help fix things or try to come up with a logical reason why this was happening to us – thus also creating a reason why it couldn’t happen to them (though they may not have realized they were doing that). I also understand the need to do that.

I do believe people can understand basic emotion. They know what fear feels like. They know what it feels like to feel sad, overwhelmed, thankful, determined – the list goes on. The key is finding when they were sad or fearful and the Lord helped give them strength to face it. Then they understand, at least enough. Even if they don’t understand the experience.

Notice I didn’t say specifically what we went through It sometimes takes a bit more for me to reveal that now. Simply because I also don’t wish to always be wearing my trials on my sleeve so to speak. Maybe that reveals more than I’d like

I just wish that the fact that I had those experience were a guarantee that I would always pause a second or two before speaking so everything I say would always be the way I meant to say it.