My story . . . Part 1 of several

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

In the year 2000, I was a thirty-four year old man who was kind of floating along in what most people would call a successful life. I had (and still have) a wonderful wife, Barbara, who was my college sweetheart and definite better half. I had a son, Chad, who was (and still is) a smart, handsome, athletic young man with a strong Christian character. I was working my way up in the Navy, making all of my promotions. I had served in some very prestigious jobs, in particular as an intelligence briefing officer to the Secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. My health was great. I owned a house. I had a nice car and a nice van. I had lots of good friends. I was very active in my church, serving at various times as a deacon, a choir member, and as a preschool Sunday School teacher. What more could I want?

Well, as it turns out, in 2000, I was more miserable than I had ever been in my entire life. The reason? Barbara and I had always desired to have a family of two, three, perhaps even four children. And as we began to try harder and harder to have a second child, we just could not conceive. Finally, we consulted medical help and found that we were having what doctors call unexplained fertility problems. Over the course of several months in 2000, as we went in for various counseling and testing, I found myself growing more and more bitter over the situation. And it started to affect many areas of my life.

For instance, I had long wanted to do a Navy tour overseas, particularly in Europe. Well, in 2000, it happened. Serving in the Norfolk area, I got my next set of orders—to England for a three-year tour. Except, with all of the infertility stuff going on, I suddenly found myself not very excited about going to England. I can still remember a night in early fall of 2000, mowing my lawn and nearly in tears. I was cursing, saying “I don’t want to go to England. I don’t want this house. I don’t want anything. Why am I not able to have another child?”

What made me even more distraught about this was that deep inside, I knew how selfish I was being, and I didn’t like it. What right did I have to be angry? Many couples are unable to have any kids, and I was blessed with Chad (born in 1992 by the way), who to this day is everything a father could ever want in a son. In addition, I claimed to be a Christian, yet I was giving no thought at all to what God might want for my life. My attitude was that God should let me have what I wanted. And I wanted to have another child. In my heart I felt that I would be willing to give up my career, house, cars—all the “stuff” that I had—if only we could conceive again.

Reluctantly, I began to think that maybe moving to England might be “good” in that it would take my mind off of our infertility problems. A change of scenery would let me move on from this chapter in my life. Maybe in the future we could start looking into the possibility of adoption. At any rate, I couldn’t believe that I was once so excited about going to Europe, and now I could care less about it. So, in the fall of 2000, Barb, Chad, and I started the “overseas screening process.” We had our initial required medical examinations, and I began making contact with the officer in England who I would relieve. We started to make preparations for selling our home, too. In late September of 2000, we had our first yard sale to get rid of some of our stuff.


Among other things, we sold almost all of Chad’s baby toys, clothes, portable items (i.e. playpens), and books at the yard sale. There was hardly any baby stuff left.