This post was written by Mark and Kendra Rohl. Mark is an elder and worship leader at Life Connection Church in Phoenix AZ and Kendra sings on the Our Rising Sound band. They tell the story below of their struggles to start their own family by having children of their own.
Beginning a family
It was the best of times it was the worst of times. Those words ring true for us as we have headed down the path towards parenthood. The last three and a half years have been filled with anticipation, hope, heartbreak, loss, joy and redemption and the story is still being written. The decision to start a family is a scary and exciting decision for any young couple and we were no exception. After 4 years of marriage we felt God was leading us to be fruitful and multiply and we wanted to be obedient to the Lord of course so try we did! The first few months were exciting and with every twinge of nausea we thought we were pregnant. Then a few more months went by but without much concern, everyone told us to just be patient, try eating peanut butter or oysters or any number of strange magic fertility enhancing foods (it’s really quite fascinating how all of a sudden everyone becomes an expert on the subject and has lots of advice to give on how to make a baby). But we were not worried and continued the old fashioned way with full confidence that at any moment we would be peeing on sticks and seeing pink plus signs.
Approaching the 1 yr mark our hope was turning into frustration so we thought maybe we just weren’t timing things right or taking the right vitamins so we got the gadgets and gizmos that help you to know your cycles and so forth. I won’t go into all the gory details but for anyone who has tried to make a baby you know the crazy lengths you will go to and try every bizarre thing anyone recommends when you get to the point of desperation. After a few more months of that we decided it was time to head to the docs for a check up and see if anything was causing this seemingly epic delay in procreation.
Doctors start testing
Mark was the first to get tested (wow, the process of that was another interesting moment in our marriage we never thought we would experience) and much to our surprise his tests came back as infertile, what, infertile? How can that be we thought. The doctors said there was no explanation for how this could have happened, no hope for any sort of cure and we spent a while reeling from that blow. We went through the cycle of sadness, then anger, then bitterness and finally landed in fight mode. We weren’t going to give up this easy and we knew God could do a miracle so that is what we prayed for. We had prophetic words about God restoring the seed of life in Mark and we clung to that and had our amazing friends and family praying and interceding for that to take place.
In the meantime, the doctors wanted to test me just to make sure we didn’t have the double whammy of infertility happening, and low and behold we did. After a painful procedure and testing that was more like torture than anything else we discovered that a ruptured appendix when I was in high school caused massive scar tissue to form around my fallopian tubes causing them to be completely blocked. Awesome, we now were faced with both of us being diagnosed as infertile in our 20′s with no hope (according to the docs) of ever conceiving naturally. It’s a strange feeling to have someone tell you that you can’t have children, it feels like some right has been taken from you and it all seems so unjust. There was a period of time when we could barely go out in public because of the seemingly innumerable amounts of pregnant teens walking around looking pissed and disgusted at the gift of life inside of them.
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