Redefine Vs. Refine

When we went to the infertility awareness event, they had had breakout sessions that we were able to choose from. One of the sessions that we attended talked about things that change when you are facing infertility. That session made us think a lot about our situation.

When people hear the word “redefine”, it usually has a negative connotation to it. Usually it implies that the first plan didn’t work so it is on to plan B or plan C, no matter what the circumstance is. When someone is faced with something like infertility, are they really redefining things? Plan A was to start our family. That plan has not changed. Our plan is to still start a family. If you look at it more detailed though, our goal was to start a family without medical help. That has changed, but is it really a negative? Definitely not. We are grateful for the available medical help that we can access to help start our family. We did not have to redefine what we were doing, we just refined it. Infertility has helped us refine a lot of different things in our life, rather than redefine it.

One big thing that infertility has helped us to refine, and we have thought a lot about lately, is our definition of family. When you ask most people they will say their definition of family includes parents and children. They may also extend their definition to include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. However, most people’s definition of a family includes children.

There was one couple in the session that said they were told at church that they were not a family because they didn’t have children. Even though many people view it that way, Taylor and I have never thought that. After our wedding our sealer was talking to us and he stated then that we were a new family that had just been formed. We agree with him. We have always thought of our marriage as a little family. We have never thought otherwise, even though some people have a different definition of family. So if we have always thought that, then how has our definition of family been refined?

When we were dating and as we started our marriage we would often talk about how many kids we wanted. We never had an exact number but we knew we wanted a large family. I always joked with Taylor and said 100. We wanted a large family though, with 5 or 6 being the minimum. As we look at it now in the present time, we still want a lot of kids. At the rate it is looking though, it’s looking like it will only be one or two. Looking at the future, we want as many as Heavenly Father will bless us with. That is one way our definition of family has been refined. Our views on our family and how our family will be has changed from the past, to the present, and looking to the future.

Not only has our definition of family been refined in terms of how our own family will look in terms of size, but it has been refined in terms of who is included. If you would have asked us before we were facing infertility, who was included in our family we would have said it was us, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. However, if you ask us now, it would still be those people, but our definition has been refined to include a lot more people.

We have an infertility family. Through this journey we have met a lot more people in the situation and they have become a huge part of our support system and our family. We have ward members and friends that we also consider family. They are a huge support to us. We consider our nursery children family. They bring us so much joy and we look forward to the time we get to spend with them each week. Our definition of family has not been redefined, it has only been refined. We like our new refined definition better than our previous one. It has been made better.

This is just one small example of how our trials are for our own good. We have them to make us better people. They are making us better than what we were before. There are many other things that have been refined through our infertility journey, and we are grateful for it all. It is not always easy to see how you are being refined when going through trials but it gives so much hope when you are able to see small glimpses how things are changing for the better. We look forward to the day when a promise is fulfilled and are able to refine our definition of family once again, and we have a miracle child in our arms.