To Guys on Father’s Day
As a man, the idea of not being able to have kids and become a father was never on my radar. In fact, it was the opposite for many years after my wife, Kelley, and I got married. I was actually trying hard to NOT have kids until I thought we “were ready,” and I had all my ducks lined up in a row.
I had already mapped out my family plan in high school. I would go off to college, get married after graduating, and go to dental school. Then after I finished school and had “more time” and “more money,” I would start having kids and become a father.
For a while, things went according to plan. Until they didn’t.
God is the best planner
Toward the end of my time in dental school, Kelley and I decided we wanted to start trying to grow our family. (Side note: Even if you don’t have children, you and your wife are still a family. Don’t think you must have kids to be a family.) As we tried to become pregnant with no success, this came as a big kick in the gut to the planner side of me.
Months passed, then years, with fertility specialists, surgeries, treatments, multiple miscarriages, and lots of sadness, frustration, and anger along the way. For years we felt isolated and alone, like we were the only ones around us going through this. We were jealous of our friends who had no trouble getting pregnant. It was a dark time.
The truth is, the hard times might be easier for us to understand if our pain could be traced back to our own sinful choices or those of others. But struggles can fall upon us that we have had no hand in at all.
I don’t believe Kelley or I did something wrong that kept us from getting pregnant or caused us to lose our babies to miscarriage.
So what was all this pain for? One thing I do know is God is faithful not to wound us at random. Even in the most difficult times, we can trust that the parts of His will we don’t want are the very things He will use to accomplish his eternal plan. He is crafting, shaping, and planning at a much deeper level than we can see.
Lessons while waiting for fatherhood
Guys who are reading this: I want to share with you some of what I observed in the middle of this season of longing to become a father. This relates to both men going through infertility, and men who have not gone through it. So men, listen up.
You can’t fix it
First, I had to realize that this is not something I could just “fix.” This is really hard to accept as a man, especially one that has made his career out of fixing teeth. I couldn’t fix our situation or my wife’s crazy roller coaster of emotions. I just had to accept that the situation was hard and to love my wife well through it.
I had to accept that I was not in control and needed to completely rely on God’s strength to sustain us. I know many of us have heard the saying “God will never give you more than you can handle.” Well, that isn’t found anywhere in the Bible. Instead, I believe that God will often allow more than we can handle ourselves, but He’ll never allow more than HE can handle. This made it easier to face the obstacles we encountered because I was able to accept this was something so big that I couldn’t muscle through it on my own no matter how hard I tried. It was actually freeing once I accepted this.
Let other people in
Isolation was another issue that I struggled with, especially since I didn’t really know any other men going through this at the beginning of our infertility journey. I thought I needed to be strong, for her and for us, and that I could just muscle through it. But just because I didn’t know other men specifically dealing with this didn’t mean I shouldn’t reach out to other men I was close to for support. In fact it would have been better to involve men who weren’t going through this and were in a better place emotionally, even if they were already fathers and I was not. Regardless of how strong I thought I was, I would have gained more support if I would have had other men in my life fighting for me and encouraging me along the way. So, men, fight the temptation to isolate yourselves and let other people in.
Think before you joke
Another thing I noticed was how many stupid things men say to other men about this topic just to try to be funny or fill awkward silence. Comments like “Well, at least you’re having fun practicing!” are really not helpful or funny. They can be hurtful to men who may have been trying to get pregnant for years, and to be honest, are probably not having much fun because sex has become mechanical. For some people, this process has taken such a toll on their intimacy that it has deeply affected their entire marriage. So to all you men who haven’t dealt with infertility, please filter your comments with sensitivity.
Reach out for help or to help
However, I don’t want you to think this means that we don’t want you to talk to us about it or to just avoid us altogether because you are scared of saying something dumb. Please reach out to your guy friends that you might have heard are in this difficult season. At first we might act like we don’t want to talk about it much and just play it cool. But I would encourage you to dig a little deeper and ask more questions. It’s healthy for us to have someone other than our wives to talk to, even if we haven’t reached our breaking point yet.
Since this is so unnatural for us to talk about this kind of stuff, we probably aren’t going to reach out to you first, although we know we should. As men, we can be prideful and don’t want to seem weak or like we don’t have things under control. So please, even if you don’t fully understand what we’re going through, still come to us and just let us know you are there if we ever want to talk and that you are praying for us. That will be a great start.
Father’s Day hurts too
Infertility isn’t just a woman’s issue. Father’s Day can hurt for us men like Mother’s Day hurts for our wives. We need to realize that 1 in 8 men are affected by infertility, regardless of whether or not there are medical issues involved with one or the other spouse. Simply knowing there are other men around us who have got our back tends to help soften the blow.
So this year, especially on Father’s Day, choose to either look for those men in your life and let them into your world, or be that man that your buddy needs whether he acts like he needs it or not. The effort will go a long way, I can assure you.
