Carrying the Cross of Infertility in Marriage - Our talk at the Marriage and Family Conference

Wow. What a weekend! The Inaugural Marriage & Family Life conference went so well! We were supposed to have 17 people in our session and ended up with 26.…almost all couples going through infertility. What we shared seemed to really hit home with them as well, as there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Some attendees couldn't even make eye contact with us, but instead sat through the talk with their eyes fixed upwards. From my perspective as a speaker, it was a very touching experience. Husbands holding their wives hands, holding them close…women crying into the chests of their husbands….and then afterwards, women who were strangers going up to each other with tear-stained faces saying “I don’t know you, but I just want to hug you, we’re on this journey too.” And the husbands giving each other man-hugs and saying “Hey man, we’re on this road too, we’re praying for you.” Wow! I felt so blessed to even witness this outpouring of support for eachother. This is what the body of Christ is about. Encouraging one another in hope. And then after the talk, a woman came up to me and said that she and her husband had come from Indianapolis to attend because of my blog and seeing the conference information here. Wow! So I haven’t been blogging to an empty cyber-space, you are all really out there and we are getting to meet eachother. :) lol.

For anyone that is interested, I have an audio version of our talk that I would be happy to share with you. It is about 50 minutes long. I am working to trying to figure out how to post it here (anyone know?) but in the meantime, just email me at syounger@hannahstears.org and I will be happy to send it to you. I have never recorded myself at a speaking engagement before and thus have never had the opportunity to go back and re-consider things that I've said. This time I have had that opportunity and while I have found some things that I would change for the next time I do it (April 25th at St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Arcola, email gramstutoring@yahoo.com if you want to attend), I thought went pretty well. There was only one stick foot-in-mouth moment if you will. For some reason beyond my understanding I mention that my friends and family were not supportive of us in this journey. Even as the words were coming out of my mouth I knew that was not the case and in the audio you hear me correct myself. As I have reflected on what I said versus what I meant, I think what I was trying to express was that many of us on this journey are the only ones we know going through infertility. No one in our family has been affected by it, and none of our friends either. For this reason, although they try to support us as best they can, we still yearn for someone who truly does "get it". This was what I was trying to get at when I boldly stated that "our friends weren't helpful and your family certainly didn't help." Oh jeez...nice...really nice. So just to set the record straight, our friends and family HAVE been supportive as best they know how, and through this blog, Hannah's Tears and our opporutnities to share our story, we have been blessed to know many others of you on this journey. We are thankful to all for their support, love and encouragement. I can boldly state that you all certainly have been a help and comfort to us. :) (Guess this is the danger of public speaking right?) Also, at the end of the talk, there is a song that we played...click here if you'd like to hear the song. It's also the one I posted about a few weeks ago in "Our God is in Control.")

Anyway, if you'd like to have the talk, just email me at syounger@hannahstears.org and I'll send it to you. If you do listen to it, please feel free to share your feedback with me. I would love to know what your found helpful, what you think I could add and if there is anything you would leave out. We are always open to ideas...we are journeying this road together. Blessings everyone!