The post on Praying
Here is the post I promised on praying. If you feel you may be offended by this post then please stop reading now, these are MY thoughts on the subject and I welcome any others.
Firstly a bit of background – When I was younger I went to church every single Sunday without fail, I knew the Bible backwards and could quote out of the Bible. My parents were not especially religious so as I grew older I seemed to find other things to occupy my mind. My hubby comes from a religious family and he often spoke to me about praying. I started praying again and just speaking to the Lord and I did find a lot of peace doing this. Hubby and I don’t go to church but I have yet to find a church that I like. I DO NOT like the happy clappy type church and neither does my hubby. I find the sermons a lot better and after all that is why we go to church – to hear the sermons, not sing for 45 minutes with a rock band?? I actually love going to church, it fills me with a lot of peace and happiness.
Anyway back to the topic. What I just don’t understand is often people tell me to pray about our situation, which obviously I do. After I got my BFP I prayed like crazy that everything would work out, every single day I prayed and spoke to the Lord. But maybe I didn’t do it right? Maybe the Lord didn’t like what I was saying or He just decided that it wasn’t meant to be? There is a verse in the Bible Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. So where did I go wrong? I don’t understand.
A good friend of mine is very religious. She was also going through fertility treatment and I actually thought that she would get a BFP “because she has a better relationship with the Lord and prays better than me”. As soon as that thought crossed my mind I realised how ridiculous it sounds but I actually believed it. Well she ended up getting a BFN and I actually ended up more confused! So prayer doesn’t work? That’s the message Im getting.
Then I see on forums of someone who has recently gotten a BFP and they said they just prayed about it or meditated for 28 days on a Bible verse. It actually makes me so mad. So why does praying work for them and not me?
During my second IVF I prayed A LOT and ended up with a BFP, I became very close to the Lord during this time then came the m/c and the third IVF BFN. Now Ive sort of stopped again. I want to be close to the Lord as I said above it makes me happy and peaceful but again maybe Im not being heard or doing it wrong or what??
Which brings me back to “maybe its not my time yet”, maybe this is a message from the Lord to say this to me and Im not listening? Or maybe the Lord doesn’t care? Do I do another IVF and have it fail and then know its definitely not my time or do another IVF and it succeeds and then I know it was my time. So how do I know when my time will be? All very confusing I realise that.
Just one last thing on the topic of religion and IVF – Ive always been a bit uncomfortable with the whole “playing God”, making decisions on which embryos to discard, choosing a sperm to inject into an egg aswell as “conceiving” without both parents being present ie not coming together in marriage and out of love conceiving a baby. Ive since decided that surely if this was against the will of the Lord that he would have not allowed even one baby to be born this way and also considering that this technology is around for us to use, He has given the knowledge to our doctors. Why He has given us IF in the first place is, I suppose, another story altogether.
wheresmy2lines 
Very interesting topic. I’m battling the same as you, when there is good in my life I find it easier to be thankful than when there is bad.Having said that I often think that having a BFP or a BFN actually have very little to do with God and how we pray to him. Because saying that would mean that we believe that some people are more worthy than others and I do NOT believe that. God intended for us all to “go fourth and multiply” and so I don’t even know if IF is part of God’s plan for us.
I HATE it when infertile couples who get a BFP say they are blessed because its sends a message to all of us who have yet to receive our BFP that we are not as worthy of the blessing as they are. In addition, I’ve also learnt that sometimes a plan is layed out for our lives and no amount of praying will change it. If that were true and we could change our path by praying I would not have lost 6 babies along the way, because God know’s I went on my knees with every BFP and thanked him and asked him to protect my baby and every single one of them died anyway and I do NOT believe that its God’s will for innocent babies to die. So Dee, I know I’m probably just confusing you further. I don’t think there is a clear answer to this question but I agree, no amount of praying or not praying is going to give us our BFP’s and living breathing babies.
This is a great thought provoking post Dee.
In my opinion we go to church to fellowship with other Christians, to be fed in our relationship with God through the word (sermon) and to show Him praise. I don’t think that there is a right way or a wrong way to pray. Some people do the whole “old english” form of prayer and some people do the more informal “conversation with God” form of prayer. Much along the same lines I don’t think that some people pray harder than others or better than others.
What I do think is that no matter how you pray or how “hard” you pray, your prayers are heard. They might not be answered the way WE want them to be answered or when we want them answered but they are HEARD. And they are granted. We just don’t know when. I think prayer is tightly entwined with faith. I have been taught that faith is the substance of things unseen and not understood. When we pray we link ourselves closer to God in the spiritual realm so that in His time we are able to see the things we cannot see in the human realm.
I also think that the thing about prayer is that we as humans want prayer to work for us in a human way. We are not always willing to let it work for us in a spiritual way cos it surpasses our understanding. So we think our prayers are not being heard and are not being answered when they are – just not as we understand or want them to be…
I wish I could understand why it takes time for our prayers to be answered. And I wish I could undertand why some people’s prayers get answered before others. But I know that I need to exercise my faith that my prayer is heard and it is answered. Just not yet. (And i know without a shadow of a doubt that this is easier said than done by far!)
I hope I made sense – I am going to think about this a lot more over the weekend I can see…
Thanks for this post!
xxx
Sorry, I wrote a book!!!
Hey my dear friend,
Just reading your post also just makes me start to think & wonder and then i start questioning God! This is a topic which could cause huge debates and honestly i don’t believe there is right and wrong way to pray. I believe it is between you and God and the unique relationship you have with Him as an individual.
Friend, I know so many people would say to me maybe this is how God is trying to GRAB your attention to make you realise that without him we are lost. WEll maybe it is but then i questioned well God is not a cruel God so why would he do such a thing to me? why has he not done this to that one and this person etc and then i would get the answer God has a different plan for each and everyone of us and its in HIS timing not ours and we may not see it now but we will in the right time. This really BUGs me and makes me angry but maybe like you say it is in His timming and yes maybe its not your time but really we are dam human beings and when we want something so badly NO ONE but NO ONE will put a stop to it even if we fail we will stand up and do it again and again until we get what we want and then maybe only then we will look back and say shit maybe it was not my time but hell we will never know unless we fight for it and once we WIN we then be able to look back and re look at all these questions and then we will probably have the answers but right now do what your heart says and what you find peace with friend.
Love
Robz
So i don’t know my dear friend all i can say is that hold on to what you know and carry on believing i know its hard but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel just for you Dee!
Keep smiling.
Love
me
Not sure what went wrong at the bottom of my post but hey its friday!
I am so glad to see that someone else is thinking these things as well. I grew up in a religious family, but have not been to church on a regular basis in years. I do miss it, but mostly for the fellowship….I don’t have any interest in hearing that God has a plan for me, or that perhaps, “God doesn’t need me as a parent.” (Really heard that one–I find it hard to believe that God wants the 19 year old pregnant, homeless, heroin addict that I saw in clinic last year to be a parent, but not me.)
What it boils down to is: we don’t know what works. Some people get pregnant when they pray about it, some don’t. Some get pregnant with acupuncture, some don’t. It is not an exact science. All we can do is do what is best for us and makes us feel the best about our situation.
Thinking about you, glad I have someone to go through IVF with in January 🙂
a
Hi there, I stumbled across your blog from Nix’s blog….
I am Monz.
I heard one saying the other day that I just want to share with you.
“God always answers our prayers, but the answer isn’t always yes…”
May you be blessed
I don’t think there is anything wrong with your prayers. Maybe you are just not looking for the answers in the right way – and I think that’s the biggest mystery about God. He speaks to us, but we don’t always know how to listen correctly. And He probably means for it to be that way, or else we wouldn’t need faith.
Good luck.
I used to get really tangled in this question… and then one day a friend said to me “but remember, prayer is a creative act before God” meaning prayers are more a reflection on an indivduals beliefs and personality at the time they pray, rather than on the character of God. It doesn’t answer the questions about how prayer works – what God does with it once he hears it – but that has become less important to me now. It did stop me getting angry at all the people who are so constantly “blessed” while I feel “cursed”. And it made my one word prayers- a four letter word – as valid as any prayer of thanksgiving.
It’s easy to feel close to God when things are going right.
And it is hard to find him anywhere when the pain is unbearable.
Accepting that is the greatest act of faith that there is. (in my view)
Via la Creme…
God is good, no matter what. When things don’t go the way we want them to, He is still good. And He is still hearing our prayers. Just because we don’t get what we want when we want it (a big lesson I continue to learn) doesn’t meant that God doesn’t hear our prayers. I believe that God answers all prayers. Sometimes He says Yes, sometimes He says No and sometimes He says Not yet, I have something much better in mind. It is up to us to listen and move toward His will. I wish you peace.