Infertility is heartbreaking for both men and women. Steve talks with Sheridan Voysey about the journey Sheridan and his wife Merryn went on with infertility. Sheridan has collected stories of people from all over the world who have wanted kids, and had to wait a long time, or haven’t been able to have them at all.
Show Notes:
Find Sheridan: Online | Instagram | Facebook | X
- Book: Praying Through Infertility
- Book: Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings
Transcription:
Steve Sunshine:
We live in a time of unprecedented comfort. We value safety and security, and maybe that’s why it’s so easy for us to be shaken when the straight road we’re on takes a sudden curve and seems to be pointing us in a direction we don’t want to go. Welcome to the Shaken podcast. I’m Steve Sunshine. Your confidence, your mood, your perspective, even your faith may be shaken because of something that’s happened in your life. Jesus told us we’d have trouble in this world, so we’re shaken but not surprised. He also said, “Take heart. I have overcome the world.” In this podcast, you’ll hear honest conversations with people who have or are going through life-altering hard times and have found that God was with them in the midst of it all.
This world, it’s broken. Because of that, sometimes things, were wired to desire good, God-pleasing things are painfully delayed, and sometimes they don’t come at all. In this episode, we’re talking about infertility, and if you’re grieving over not knowing when or if you’ll be able to add kids to your family, I hope you find that this conversation encourages you. But also if you’ve had any kind of dream delayed, deferred, or denied, no matter what it is, this episode is for you too.
My guest is Sheridan Voysey. He’s an Australian living in England, and Sheridan is an author and BBC radio host. He and his wife, Merryn, struggled with infertility for 10 years. His new book is called Praying Through Infertility, and it’s a collection of stories from all over the world where couples have experienced the heartbreak of infertility. Sheridan, thank you for being here. How did you decide to collect all these stories and create this book?
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah, my wife Merryn and I actually went public with our own story of infertility, actually, 10 years ago now, in a book called Resurrection Year, and that was a memoir. The amazing thing, Steve, is that what happens is, when you share your story out into the public with enough candor and humor, but also really being raw about what the emotional and spiritual journey is all like. What happens is, it resonates with so many people, even beyond infertility, and that’s what happened with Resurrection Year. It touched a whole bunch of people for whom they’d gone through all kinds of broken dreams and needed a new beginning.
Now, 10 years later, my publisher approaches me and says, “Look, we would really like to do this book called Praying Through Infertility. It would be a 90-day devotional and it would really help for couples who are just starting off the process but realize actually this is not going to be something that’s going to be probably quickly fixed. Would you be interested in writing that devotional or maybe you and your wife together or something like that?”
Steve, at the time, I had a lot of things on starting a new project and a new charity on adult friendship called Friendship Lab, and I thought my hands were just really full. Then I went away, and I realized that Resurrection Year had put me in contact with people right around the world who had gone through this and had significant experiences. All the contributors have at least 2 years, sometimes up to 10, 15 years, experience of infertility. If we were to make it a collaborative project, then getting their voices from around the world involved would be absolutely fantastic.
That’s what’s happened. Praying Through Infertility has 37 contributors from 9 different countries with a variety of different outcomes to their infertility story. I could never have written this book, Steve, simply because the insights that they bring to the table are something that one person could never bring, and it will connect with so many couples from so many variety of different backgrounds who are going through this most painful of journeys.
Steve Sunshine:
That must’ve been fascinating collecting those stories. How did you find them to be similar or different from yours? I guess everybody’s journey’s got to be a little bit different.
Sheridan Voysey:
They are. That’s the interesting thing is you could say we’re all going through infertility, and yet everybody’s journey is slightly different, and they face slightly different barriers as a result of that. Now, for some people, their journey of infertility is like, say, Merryn’s and mine, where you try everything. We tried IVF, we waited on the adoption and fostering register in Australia for two years or so after eight months of assessment. We invested a lot of time in that, and it just wasn’t working for us. We tried healing prayer, we tried special diets, all of those kinds of things, and nothing worked for us. In the end, we actually pursued life as a childless couple.
Now, for others, they go through a similar experience, but maybe, like some friends of mine who have contributed to the book, that live in Zimbabwe, they have found that the stigma associated with being in an African context and an African religious context means that there’s even more barriers. So for them, the idea is, “Hang on, if you haven’t had children in a culture like ours, we think that maybe you are cursed by God. Maybe there’s some sort of secret sin. Maybe you’re not praying hard enough.” All of these kinds of things, which is just on top of that, given even more barriers for them to get through. So all the experiences are minutely different. All the lessons are beautifully, beautifully powerful of that very fact.
Steve Sunshine:
So what about you and Merryn? When you found out that it was likely or possible that you wouldn’t have children, how did you process that?
Sheridan Voysey:
A couple of different ways. Merryn, my wife wanted to go and just sort a solution out to the problem right away. I, to be honest, Steve, wanted to bury my head. I wanted to turn away from it. I didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to face it. It was just too big a problem, and it would require so much from me. I couldn’t last that long, though, of course, I had to come and face it for the sake of my wife.
So over the next 10 years, we had a variety of different responses. We would have times where we were trying everything possible to solve the problem, and then we would ease back a bit and just say, “Oh gosh, we need a break.” Then we’d go back into it again. When we ultimately… And again, this whole story is told in Resurrection Year rather than Praying Through Infertility. But when we finally… The final turning point for us came at the end of that 10 years, when we had our very last embryo transferred. We’ve decided, by that stage, we’ve given it 10 years. We have tried everything possible. If it doesn’t work on this last embryo, we are moving ahead as a childless couple.
Would you believe, Steve, on that last embryo, we received a phone call that we never expected to receive, which was Emily from the IVF clinic telling us, “You are pregnant.”? And there was jubilation amongst our family and friends that’ve been walking with us for such a long time. Then on Christmas Eve of all days, we had another phone call from Emily saying, “I’m so sorry you are not.” And that was the defining point for us where we crashed down to the ground and then we had to go through a grief process, and that’s how we were able to move forward as a childless couple.
Now, in Praying Through Infertility, a variety of different outcomes are experienced. Some people have children, some people adopt, some people foster, some people have miracles. Some people, like us, have walked forward as childless couples. But you’ve got to go through that healing process. Whichever way, whatever outcome you get, you actually have to process it in some way.
Steve Sunshine:
Is there a way in which that you can recall that in the midst of all of this, while it was hard, that you found that God was there with you and drew some comfort from Him that way?
Sheridan Voysey:
So our spiritual lives went through ups and downs during that 10 years. On the one hand, we would find that God would be with us and was opening up other doors in the midst of our journey. We had wonderful answers to prayer in other aspects of our life. We were able to move to cities for some wonderful ministry opportunities for me, radio opportunities that opened up, launching a national network radio show, wonderful opportunities for my wife Merryn and her area of medical research.
So we saw great answers to prayer and other things. Yet on this area, in this topic, God chose for us, personally, to remain silent on this topic. It would even be the case where we would go away for a retreat, and it felt like the heavens would open and God would be whispering to us about all sorts of things in our life. It’s just like, “Oh, okay, God’s speaking to us. All right. Now, God about the children thing. Are we supposed to move forward or are we supposed to stop the process or what are we supposed to do?” And there was silence. So it’s a bit of a mystery, but this is one aspect of this whole area is that sometimes God has the prerogative and chooses to remain silent to some of us about some of the challenges that we face, including infertility.
Steve Sunshine:
I want to deal with what some people might call the elephant in the room here, and that’s that we’ve got two guys talking about infertility. You make the point that this is not just a problem for women and prospective moms.
Sheridan Voysey:
See, two men talking about infertility, by the way, Steve, is something of a rarity. So while for all other topics, you might say, “Yes, come on, bring some women into the room.” Actually, when it comes to this topic, men hardly ever speak about infertility. A second point to that is that sometimes men are completely ignored in the whole process. There was some research that was done just a few years ago here in the United Kingdom that found that men were routinely ignored from medical personnel, from those people who were in the medical professions that were infertile. Infertility specialists completely ignored because it was seen as a woman’s problem, even, of course, when the problem may well be on the man’s side.
So what happened was that men were found to have really significant issues to their self-esteem, sometimes even to their wealth, to their ability to work, and horrendous effects to them, and yet they weren’t able to be heard because, again, it was seen as a woman’s problem. Look, and even a third point to that, Steve, is that because it’s sometimes perceived only to be a woman’s problem, then men, in certain cultural contexts, and I’m going to talk about British cultural context here where there’s the quote, unquote, “stiff upper lip” mentality. We would have men who would say, “What I’m supposed to do is be strong for my wife and not to show my emotions.”
We actually have somebody in Praying Through Infertility, David Lowry, who specifically talks about his experience there, where he was trying to remain strong for his wife not sharing his emotions. Then finally one day his wife Lizzie burst out and said, “Why is it always me showing the emotion? Why is it only always me crying? What about you? What do you feel?” And that’s when he realized that him showing the stiff upper lip wasn’t actually serving his wife at all. It was actually being detrimental to the marriage. So I think this is what Praying Through Infertility is going to do. It’s going to open up men to be able to talk about these most delicative issues, which, in many cases, they don’t feel free to talk about right now.
Steve Sunshine:
I could see, being that stiff upper lip guy, having my wife say that, and then it’d be like a dam bursting and the emotions all coming out pretty dramatically.
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah, it could be. For some personalities, maybe like yourself, Steve, maybe that would be the case for others. For other men, they’ve never even been able to put words to those emotions, so they don’t even know how to name it. I think Praying Through Infertility will give them a vocabulary.
Steve Sunshine:
Yeah. What are a couple of your favorite stories that you’ve included in the book?
Sheridan Voysey:
Look, there are so many. I think the wonderful thing about drawing from so many different contributors from around the world is that almost no experience of an infertile couple’s journey is unmissed. I think of some really practical guidance from some of the contributors about just what to do with a baby scan reveal party. What do you do when your friend passes around the baby scan and suddenly, what do you do in that situation? What do you do when somebody announces their pregnancy when you haven’t been able to get pregnant for five years and you’re supposed to rejoice with those who rejoice, yet internally you’re just dying a thousand deaths? What do you do? There’s wonderful guidance on that.
One of my favorite stories is by a Filipino writer named Edwin Estioko. I met Edwin actually back in the mid-2000s, and somehow we got talking about this when I was doing a trip over there in the Philippines, and we both shared how we were just on this journey of infertility. Years later, when Praying Through Infertility came about, I made contact with him. The wonderful outcome to his story was that he and his wife also, like my wife and myself, had gone long-term without being able to have any children at all biologically. What he ended up doing was not only adopting a couple of young daughters who became then his daughters, he and his wife ended up also adopting their biological mother, who was young enough to be their sister. So for the last 16 years, they have all lived in one house, he says, in one joyful, noisy house with dogs, cats, and chickens, and as one big, noisy family. That’s one of my favorite stories. What an outcome. I could never have done that.
Steve Sunshine:
That’s beautiful.
Sheridan Voysey:
Isn’t it beautiful?
Steve Sunshine:
It really is. Absolutely. Talk a bit about the importance of grieving. I think sometimes people, whenever anything really hard happens, want to kind of skip over that, but grief is important, isn’t it?
Sheridan Voysey:
It really is. When it comes to infertility, it’s a different kind of grief. It’s what they call floating grief because infertility is a death without a funeral. Every 28 days, something has died, but there’s been no funeral to mark it. There’s no end to the journey, if you like. Unlike other situations, when you lose something else in life, there is a definite endpoint. There’s a line drawn in the sand, and so you can grieve because the thing is gone, it’s lost, the car has been stolen, the ring has been lost. Dare I say it? Maybe the loved one has died. There’s a definite end. With infertility, that doesn’t happen. You don’t have an endpoint until, say, something like menopause hits, which, of course, comes a long time later. So in many cases, you can’t grieve, and yet it’s always ongoing. Every month, you’ve got this grief.
So what you have to do is be able to do those little mini griefs every month, but also, in our case, what were we going to do when we finally said, “For our mental health sake, we’re going to draw an end to our journey after 10 years.”? What do you do? You’ve actually got to have some sort of your own little ritual, your own little ceremony. I know one couple who literally went down to the beach, drew a line in the sand, and on one side of the line prayed, wrote down their broken dreams, which was not having children, and then prayed together and, holding hands, stepped over the line in the sand and said, “Right, we are stepping into God’s new future for us now. Take our lives, Lord, make of it what You will from this moment on.”
Steve Sunshine:
That’s reminiscent, almost, of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, where you’re really submitting your will to God’s will. I would think one of the things that would be hard about, you talked about how the grief never ends. I don’t mean this the way it’s going to sound, but it sounds almost like hope stretches the grief out.
Sheridan Voysey:
Oh, it does.
Steve Sunshine:
If you’re hoping for something that is possible but highly, highly unlikely, I don’t know what to do with that because I wouldn’t say to somebody, “Give up.” I would never do that. But what’s the healthy way to deal with that? And when you draw that line in the sander, you’re just saying, “God can do anything, but we’re truly leaving it to Him, and we’re assuming it’s a no, and we’re okay with that.” That sounds difficult to do.
Sheridan Voysey:
It’s a really tough one. You’ve just put your finger on the great dilemma of this journey in particular actually, and what you’re saying is completely biblical. Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” It’s exactly what you’re talking. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. The longer the hope goes on, sometimes the more sick your heart gets. What’s the second part of that verse, though? But a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.
So one, you have to acknowledge the fact that the longer and longer this goes on, the harder and harder it can be. We had a wonderful home group surrounding us when we were going through this journey. They were wonderful enough to be able to say, “You know what? If you don’t want us to pray for you this Friday night, we are not going to do that.” Because this was the paradox that sometimes we didn’t want to be prayed for because when you got prayed for, what happens? Your expectations and your hope goes up. Then what happens when the next 28 days rolls around? You crash, and you crash even lower.
So sometimes, how do you ask your Christian friends not to pray for you? But good Christian friends will say, “We’re not going to pray for you in the room. We’re not going to stitch you down. We’re not going to gather around, lay hands on you. We’re not going to make a deal. We’re going to pray for you privately. We’re going to support you in your journey with whatever that outcome will be.”
But then, when there does come a time, for some of us, remember, not all statistically, most couples will get something for their journey. If it’s not a child miraculously, just simply naturally, or maybe through adoption, fostering, IVF works, or something, most couples, something will work for a very small percentage of us. Sometimes something won’t. But for those of us who have to draw the journey to an end, then you do have to grieve.
Then what can be really helpful is to do the second part of that verse and have a consolation prize. What’s the secondary dream that you can make you can make true? For us, that was actually moving from Australia to the UK so my wife could have an opportunity to work overseas. She’d always wanted to do that, and she ended up doing that, getting a job at Oxford University and has become a leading medical researcher. So it’s no replacement for a child, but it’s at least a strategy forward to be able to move forward from what can be a very difficult experience.
Steve Sunshine:
A pastor I know talks about dealing with loss, and he says, “Don’t focus on what’s lost. Focus on what’s left.” And in the context, he was talking about losing a child and not letting that cause you to neglect the other two kids you have, for example. But there are other things in life that you can celebrate, like the career that takes you to Oxford. I can totally see that, but it’s not a replacement.
Sheridan Voysey:
It’s holding those two things in balance, isn’t it? It’s to grieve the beautiful little child that you lost as well as cherishing the beautiful little children you still have. It’s being able to do both of those rather than one or the other.
Steve Sunshine:
If somebody were to say to you, “I’ve got a friend who’s a couple that they’re friends of ours that are infertile. How best can I pray for them?” What would you say?
Sheridan Voysey:
Number one, bless you for being concerned and for wanting to find guidance on this. Secondly, I would say the best thing you can do to them for them is when you see them next to say, “This week, how best can I pray for you?” Because that will change. There will be times where they might have an embryo transfer happening if they’re doing IVF, and so that will be the big prayer point. Other times it’ll be, “Oh gosh, I’m not too sure. We don’t know. Just pray for us, Steve. Just pray for us.” And so you can just pray a general prayer of blessing that they would be filled by the Holy Spirit, full of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self-control, and all of those things they need for the difficult journey that they’re going through.
Other times they will say, “Last night there was a baby scan reveal photo. I didn’t even realize what was coming and it got passed around and I just don’t know what to do about it next. Can you pray for me that I could just have wisdom to know how to deal with my friend? I feel like dropping my friend. How could she drop me into that?” It happens. So probably the best prayer is to say to them, “How can I pray for you this week? What do you need?”
Steve Sunshine:
I compare this… I’m going to go back to something you said earlier about it being a grief that keeps on coming. What it reminds me of is the struggle people have with singleness. Your friend gets engaged, and you’re still single.
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah.
Steve Sunshine:
We are supposed to rejoice with those who rejoice. What do you say to people who are struggling with that?
Sheridan Voysey:
There’s a wonderful entry in Praying Through Infertility on just that from Sheila Matthews. She has this great insight into Romans 12 when it talks about rejoicing with those who rejoice. But it also says in the very same context, “Love must be sincere.” And what she draws out of that, not only rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn, love must be sincere. What she drew out of that was the fact that it’s okay to say, “I’m so happy for you. I’m also sad for me.”
Steve, if somebody had told me that 10 years ago, that would’ve been a game changer. Just that one little insight to be able to say, “Oh, we can do both. Wow.” A good friendship, a good brother and sister ship within the fellowship of faith, will be able to handle that, “I’m so happy for you. You’ve gotten what you’ve wanted, and I know how much happiness you must have right now because I’ve been longing for that kind of happiness. But I have to be honest with you, your happiness. At the same time, I’m feeling sad over that, and I’m going to be honest with you. Love must be sincere.”
Steve Sunshine:
Where are you and your wife now on this? Did you find the closure that you needed, or is it still difficult?
Sheridan Voysey:
I liken it to a wound. What happens is, at the beginning, you have a wound, and it’s all open and escaping, and it needs to heal. So what happens is, over time actually, it does heal, and you forget about it. But every now and then somebody will bump into you, and you realize, “Oh, that’s right. I’ve got a wind there, haven’t I?” It still hurts occasionally when it’s bumped into. So that’s what it’s like for us. We found that over time, the time between the tears got longer, and so at first you were crying weekly, and then it would be monthly, and then it would go longer, and then maybe it might be, no, you haven’t cried, maybe for a good year or so about it. It gets longer and longer. So Marin and I have been able to move forward with our lives, and we’re in a really, really good place. God’s given us some amazing projects to work on over this last 10 years. We’ve got some wonderful projects we’re working on for the next 10 years.
Our lack of children has given us a freedom to be able to do all kinds of things that we otherwise would’ve struggled to do. Others may have been able to do it with children. We, particularly me, wouldn’t have been able to do it. So we can see that He’s used that, but none of that is to say, “Oh, we just need to look at the upside.” Because the upside doesn’t always look that great, always look that rosy. You have to grieve. From that, you need to rebuild, and need to find that next purpose for your life, and move forward.
Steve Sunshine:
Excellent. So the book is called Praying Through Infertility, and it’s not just a book. It’s a devotional, 90 days.
Sheridan Voysey:
90-day devotional.
Steve Sunshine:
Talk a little bit about how that’s structured, how it can help, how it’s more than just passively reading and gets you involved.
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah. Thanks to you for that question, because we’ve specifically structured the whole book so that it would really be an accompaniment to a couple who’s going through infertility. Because what happens is that your spiritual life can get rocked by this, particularly if you’re going for a period of time, and yet, “Oh, God, why aren’t You coming through?” Particularly when maybe other couples around you, maybe even who have had difficulties conceiving themselves, suddenly do conceive and others. Before you know it, everybody around you has got kids and you don’t. It can really hurt your spiritual life.
We’ve written all the 37 contributors, myself included. We’ve written the devotional we wish we had when we were going through the journey, or indeed, for some of them who are continuing through the journey, wish they had that right now. So it’s written in the case. I write an introduction which outlines our story, then talks about the need to have accompaniment along the journey, and then basically introduces these 37 contributors as that accompaniment, as that community of people. It’s so hard to find other couples that are going through infertility because nobody wants to talk about it.
Steve Sunshine:
Right.
Sheridan Voysey:
If you don’t talk about it, you don’t identify yourself. If you don’t identify yourself, you can’t connect with other people who are going through it either. So here you’ve got a group of people. Imagine a cafe full of nearly 40 people. They all know what you’re going through. They’re actually quite a bit ahead of the journey than you. They’ve got some tips to share as to how you can best navigate the path ahead. Each one of the devotionals is written by people who know what it’s like. It’s grounded in scripture. It leads to a prayer. Sometimes you go through a season where you just don’t have your own prayers to pray. You can’t string them together. So we’ve got each contributor to write a beautiful prayer at the end, which helps you to pray, can be your prayer when you don’t have the words.
Then a wonderful little, if you like, the whole message in a tweet at the end. Some of those final little messages at the end are just so powerful. In fact, one of the pre-order bonuses is, you get a whole bunch of those, and you can print them out, you can cut them out, you can pop them in your pocket, have one to encourage you every hour if you like, because you need that encouragement along the way. So that’s really how we’ve designed it. A person can read it personally, by themselves. A couple can read it together. A friend can read it with their infertile friend. We’ve tried to make it one of those tools that you can do either yourself or between other people.
Steve Sunshine:
It sounds so important because I can see, especially after having talked with you about it, that this is an invisible pain. In a lot of cases, people don’t know. If you don’t say you’re trying to get pregnant, then why would they know that it’s not working? So this is a great opportunity to see that you’re not alone. One of the reasons I do this podcast is that I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about five years ago and finding out other people have… Not only do other people have Parkinson’s, but lots of other people have had serious health challenges. I’ve run into them, and you’re not glad that they’re going through it, but it does show you, you weren’t singled out. You’re not the only one in the universe that God has chosen to go through suffering.
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah.
Steve Sunshine:
Lots of us have.
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah.
Steve Sunshine:
I hope that is encouraging rather than… That’s not a finger-wagging thing. That’s like where we can all support each other.
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah. What’s the name of the C.S. Lewis film, came out a couple of decades ago?
Steve Sunshine:
Shadowlands.
Sheridan Voysey:
Shadowlands, thank you. There’s a line in Shadowlands. We don’t know if C.S. Lewis himself ever wrote it in a book or anything, but it’s a beautiful line nonetheless. He says, “We read to know we’re not alone.” And by you going public with your journey of Parkinson’s and our contributors going public with their journeys of infertility, you know that you’re not alone. Just that comradery can be so helpful. Especially then, you can share a few lessons and tips. So thank you for doing what you’re doing, Steve. It’s so important.
Steve Sunshine:
Thank you for exactly the same thing. The thing I would close with is that not only you’re not alone, in the sense that other people are going through different sorts of pain or it’s the same kind of pain as you, God doesn’t forsake you in your pain. He wants to meet you in it and walk through with you. Sheridan, thank you so much. It’s been great. The book is called Praying Through Infertility. Okay, so how can somebody pre-order the book?
Sheridan Voysey:
Yeah, prayingthroughinfertility.com is where you can go. Then there’s links there to wherever you are in the world when you’re listening to us as well. In fact, if you get it now, there are some wonderful free bonuses, including something that I really, really believe in. It’s called the Couple’s Discussion Guide. One thing also that is very, very difficult for a couple walking through this journey is just the fact, they put so much pressure on the marriage. Some marriages actually don’t succeed through these kinds of journeys. The reason why there’s just so many pressures, so many decisions to make, sometimes you’re not on the same page. So this discussion guide basically gets you down, sits you down on a couch, and gives you a reason to go through five key areas of tension, but enabling you to just be able to share as much or as little as you need to share in that moment. You can get that as part of the pre-order bonus package.
Steve Sunshine:
We’ll put all the info you need in the show notes, so you can check that out and pre-order the new book. Also, we’ll put in something about the Resurrection Year as well, if that’s something you want to check out.
Sheridan Voysey:
Wonderful.
Steve Sunshine:
Sheridan, thank you very much.
Sheridan Voysey:
Thanks, Steve.
Steve Sunshine:
Thanks for joining us on Shaken. If you’ve been encouraged by what you’ve heard, please like and share this podcast. We’re brand new, so we’re counting on you to help spread the word. Find future episodes of Shaken at purposely.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
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