Something is Trying to Be Born

Yesterday, my wife shared on Facebook that:

"Over three years ago, we underwent In Vitro Fertilization en route to getting pregnant with our twins. Three embryos remained after that cycle and were 'cryopreserved'. Four months ago, after much prayer, we donated those embryos to a couple who has been trying for a very long time to have a baby. Today, they will attempt to transfer one of them. We pray that the embryo takes hold and that a new life begins."

These embryos were created in September 2007 when our twins (Rebecca and Hope) were conceived. At that time Laurie and I decided to preserve them until we determined our future family plans. After much soul searching, we decided we didn’t want to use the remaining embryos ourselves. So the next question we had to answer was: If we’re not going to use them ourselves then what do we do with them? These embryos had sacred value to us and we did not want to simply discard them. We contemplated donating the embryos for scientific research, but as we prayed and sought the Lord’s guidance, we decided that what we really wanted to do was donate them to another couple.

There was a growing sense within us that we wanted to give another couple the gift of hope. Such a gift would be particularly fitting since the infant daughter we lost was named Hope.

Thus began a long quest to find a couple we felt would be suitable to receive our embryos. After several years, a couple of false hopes, and more than a few unpredicted twists and turns along the way, we donated them to Mike and Kathleen in Michigan. With that decision, our own fertility journey ended, but we enter into an exciting new possibility with this other couple. A friendship has already been formed and we are hoping and praying that the connection between our two families grows deeper over time.

In some ways we feel we’ve already done a very good thing just by giving these embryos away. We’ve given Mike and Kathleen hope that they did not have previously. But we also admit that we have the audacity to ask for more. We hope this is just the beginning of the goodness God has in store.

If our own fertility journey has taught us anything, it is that the outcome of all this rests not with us but with God. Nevertheless, we continue to pray and we ask you our friends and family to continue "bombard heaven with your prayers" that a child will result from the gift of these embryos. A new baby always brings with it hope and promise, but it would be especially meaningful in this specific case. It would be some real goodness coming out of the convergence of two difficult and, at times, painful journeys to forge a family.