Anger: Infertility’s Fire Starter
Well, it’s not that this picture would cause you anger, it’s the crazy infertility journey we experience, huh? This is my friend and contributing author to DUBL, Hannah Bunker. She has a comedic side to her as you can tell. Recently she wrote our HOPE M&M, Anger: Infertility’s Fire Starter, a little blurb about what our participants might-have-missed at our monthly infertility support group meeting. Hannah is a gifted writer! You can read more about Hannah at www.HannahBunker.com. Make sure to subscribe to her blog, Waiting for Grace you’ll relate to her candidness and be drawn to Christ by her love for Him.
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Praying for you, have a blessed week!
Love y’all!
Lesli
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Anger: Infertility’s Fire Starter
by Hannah Bunker
I’m a red head. Do you know what that means? If not, then now is the time for me to tell you that the stereo type for redheads is that we have a fiery temper. I’m not proud to say, but I fit into that stereo type. I’m a genuinely mellow person most of the time with a kind heart and a love for people, but one thing can set me off and I’ll be the feistiest little spit-fire you will have ever met. I have a habit to be quick to anger, a quality that I regularly ask the Holy Spirit to take control of in my life.
In this month’s HOPE meeting we addressed the “Anger” chapter of Beth Forbus’s book, Surviving Infertility. The first question we addressed is “Is it okay to be angry?” When we read John 2:15-16 it tells the story of how Jesus got angry in the temple because merchants were turning his Father’s house into a market. This is evidence that Jesus had a moment of anger. Not a long-lasting relationship with it, a moment. Just because we get angry, doesn’t mean that we are sinning. However, that moment of anger has the ability to open the door to allowing the enemy to kill, steal, and destroy from us.
Anger is an emotion that we all have become very familiar with in struggling through infertility. Before anything, we must continue to pray for the Holy Spirit to help us become slow to anger. But when we do feel angry, we must stop, check our hearts, and allow God to heal these emotions before allowing the enemy to take over.
My husband, Aaron, is a marriage counselor. One of the major points he always stresses to couples is that, besides in the instance of infidelity, no marriage ever ends in divorce because he or she didn’t do the dishes that one time. The path to divorce is a process that started with unresolved anger, which eventually grew into bitterness, and ends in a hardened heart towards your spouse. Anger evolves into bitterness when it isn’t dealt with and dissolved. Then, bitterness turns into a hardened heart.
How does this relate to infertility? Well, haven’t we all been angry at God at some point for making us go through this journey? I know I have. For me, my redheaded spit fire anger has raged when the fertility treatment hasn’t worked and I get a bill in the mail for that treatment. Or when I hear of a friend’s quick pregnancy. My anger towards these things could easily become the flint for the fire of bitterness – bitterness toward my pregnant friends which could eventually ruin precious relationships and a hardened heart toward God because he hasn’t allowed me to become a mom in my timing. But one thing that I have to realize is that I have a choice to make when I’m angry; I can let it rule my life and eventually turn into bitterness that eats away my life. Or I can do as Colossians 3:8 says and “put aside anger, wrath, and malice.”
When we become angry remember, Jesus knows what it’s like to feel angry. In Hebrews 4:15 it says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” So when we feel that rage of anger, Jesus is right there with us, empathizing, because he felt anger in the temple. Beth explains it perfectly at the end of the chapter; “Jesus knows anger can destroy you, and he wants to help you put anger away from you before it becomes sin. Commit your struggle with anger to the One who loves you most and understands all the emotions that are involved in your desire for a baby.”