I was ecstatic. I never thought I’d become a senior pastor so soon. I was a youth pastor who had just been asked to be a candidate for senior pastor at the church I was serving.
The news of the congregational vote bowled my wife, Jan, and me over. Who would have thought our dreams would arrive so soon?
But the dream was reality. Jan and I were given the keys to a huge, old, two-story, red-brick parsonage right in the center of the church parking lot. The main floor had tons of space for entertaining, and upstairs were four bedrooms, including a nursery all decked out, with baby-specific wallpaper and miniature hangers waiting for infant outfits.
We looked around and said to each other, “Great! We’ll fill this place up with kids.” The same thought was on other people’s minds. They dropped little hints: “Isn’t it wonderful—you’re a young couple, you’ve got this big parsonage, all these rooms … “
Translation: “Okay, get going, you two.”
A year went by, then two, then three. No baby, in spite of our trying. Four years, five years …
Young women in the church who’d been married only a year would sometimes phone Jan: “Every month I’m not getting pregnant, and I’m so upset!” She would calmly reply, “Well, guess what—we’ve been married five years, and no results either.”
We weren’t desperate; we assured each other that God would give us a child in his timing. Meanwhile, Jan sang in the choir, led a children’s choir with another woman, hosted a weekly growth group in our home, and often invited the young people to Sunday night blasts in the parsonage.
As I moved into my thirties, and Jan was now 28, people in the church kept mentioning a fertility specialist, the son-in-law of a former pastor, so we scheduled an appointment. On our first visit, Jan and I sat in the waiting room, surrounded by babydom. Every hallway in the office suite was plastered with pictures of smiling infants. There was a special collage of all the children this doctor had helped into the world—baby pictures by the dozen, even some twins.
Following the examination and some testing, we were ushered into an office for a summary. The young, confidant doctor folded his hands and pronounced, “Well, you came to the right place. You’ll definitely have a baby.”
He put Jan on a high dosage of Clomid, assuring her, “I’ve had patients who have taken much less of this, and they’re parents today. You’ll be pregnant any time now.”
To the medications were added charts for tracking morning body temperatures, the request for sperm samples to analyze, and other procedures known all too well by those struggling to conceive.
Meanwhile, Jan’s two sisters were happily having more children—an eventual total of four in the one case, two in the other. Jan and I had talked about someday naming a daughter Julie, in honor of my mother. Finally Jan’s younger sister used the name for her newborn. The implication was obvious.
Over time, the awkward mechanics of trying to conceive began to take their toll. Why was God withholding this special joy from our lives?
“Your tests are back”
Life at the church compounded our stress. Long-standing members were not entirely comfortable with my emphasis on reaching out to new people in need of Christ. Some nasty business meetings ensued; I will never forget the night when, in one sentence, I was called both Jim Jones and Adolf Hitler. Jan was ready to leave after five years, but we stuck it out for two more.
Finally came the decision to try teaching instead, which required a one-year sojourn to Dallas Seminary for further preparation. In Dallas, Jan worked hard at the seminary to pay the bills, and I concentrated on my courses.
When gynecological problems developed, she went to Baylor University Medical Center for a full diagnosis. Along the way, the matter of infertility was thoroughly explored. After more tests, more follow-ups, more discussion, Jan received a phone call at her desk at work.
“Hello, Jan Oudemolen?” said a gruff voice.
“Yes?”
“This is Dr. ______ over at Baylor.”
“Have you found out anything?”
“Yes, uh, your tests are back now,” he announced, “and they show that you can’t have children. In fact, you’ll never have children.”
That was it—he hung up!
Jan said she sat staring at the phone in her hand, almost gasping for breath. Then she ran down the hall crying. I was in class. She pulled me out in the middle of the lecture.
“Jan, what in the world—?”
CFS has no known cause, no known treatment, not even a reliable test to prove its existence.
She choked out the words: “The doctor just called, and … ” She erupted in a paroxysm of tears. “We can’t have a baby! He said we’ll never have a baby! Oh, Bill!”
We held each other and cried. The phone call had been so abrupt—so final. For a moment, I wanted to choke the doctor for his insensitivity. But then the wave of grief swept in. We would never have children. In vitro fertilization, at a minimum price tag of $10,000, was not an option for a seminary couple hardly able to buy gasoline for the car.
Slide toward the shadows
Three months later in March, the alarm clock rang early in our tiny apartment not far from Dallas Theological Seminary. Jan rolled out of bed first and headed for the shower while I lingered in bed, thinking about the day of classes ahead. In less than three months, I would finish my program; we could head for a Bible college teaching post already secured in Denver.
I was still daydreaming when Jan came back from the shower in her robe—and slumped on the edge of the bed. She stared dully at the off-white wall.
“Jan? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” she mumbled.
“Can’t do what?”
“Go to work.” Her voice was strangely flat.
“Do you have a headache?”
Her only answer was a sob. I quickly sat up and wrapped my arms around her. I had never seen her so depleted.
For the next few minutes, I asked questions about her health, but she didn’t seem to have the flu or any other common illness. She was simply, totally exhausted, even after a normal night’s sleep.
I got dressed and drove alone to the campus, my mind spinning. Jan worked as a secretary in the seminary’s New Testament department, so I stopped by her office to say she wouldn’t be coming in. I then headed for class—but as I neared the door, I knew I wouldn’t hear a word. Climbing back in my car, I drove to an empty corner of a supermarket parking lot and began to pray.
The next day Jan was still flat in bed. The third day, I took her to meet with her boss, the department chairman. We hardly knew what to say—just that Jan had suddenly run out of gas and didn’t know what was wrong. He said she could take some time off, but my 30-year-old, ambitious wife had worked the last full day of her life. She never returned to her desk—or to any other full-time employment. She simply could not muster the energy. Back in 1983, doctors had not yet invented the term Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), but we knew something had forever changed.
The woman who had sung and played and counseled and entertained and made an office hum was suddenly reduced to a feeble heap on the bed. The financial hit was immediate. I dropped a couple of classes and got a job grading papers. Desperate, I started cannibalizing my beloved library, taking ten books at a time to sell on consignment at the seminary bookstore. That $60 to $80 bought groceries for the week.
I went to the placement office and found a country church south of Fort Worth that needed a preacher. Somehow we finished seminary and, with borrowed money, made the move to Denver. For the next two years, I taught, and Jan did as little as possible. Migraine headaches swept over her with the force of Diesel earthmovers. Every joint in her body ached. Her loss of energy triggered depression.
In such a state, the issue of a baby slid toward the shadows. We talked about adoption once in a while, but we knew she’d never pass an agency screening. We told each other, however, that God could still work a miracle—maybe a private adoption of some kind.
“We have to keep trusting the Lord,” we told each other.
Mayo hope
While I enjoyed the classroom, it was not my natural home. I dreaded graduation day, when the students I had come to love drove away, to be replaced by a new crop next September. I longed to be involved in people’s lives over the long haul. When Foothills Bible Church in southwest Denver asked me to be its interim pastor, I jumped at the chance and eventually was offered the permanent position.
Jan functioned fairly well the first three years. Then in early 1988, she fell sick, after accompanying me to a conference in Europe. The extreme fatigue seemed in some ways like mononucleosis, but it wasn’t. Every evening she’d get a fever with chills. She couldn’t sleep at night. Every joint in her body ached.
As the sickness wore on, month after month, I started to notice mental confusion. Her short-term memory seemed to evaporate, while the migraine headaches and the depression were unrelenting. Many mornings I picked her up and carried her to the bathroom, then carried her back to bed—and that would be it for the day. A good day was when she, with my help, could manage a shower. We lived like this for more than two years.
One day we went to a neurologist. I sat in the waiting room and was surprised when Jan reappeared in only fifteen minutes with a paper in her hand.
“That was quick!”
“He just asked me two questions and then gave me this prescription for lithium.”
Lithium! Ripping the prescription into tiny pieces, I walked to the desk and said to the receptionist in a steely tone, “My wife has just been insulted by your doctor. If this is the best you have to offer—we are not interested!” as the pieces fluttered down onto her desk. I wanted some doctor somewhere to pronounce, “The name of this condition is ______, and this is how we’re going to fix it.”
Medical journals that year were starting to publish articles about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. We devoured everything we could find. Eighty percent of the sufferers were said to be white women between the ages of 25 and 45. Jan was 36. I carried around a November 12, 1990 Newsweek cover story about CFS in my briefcase for months to show anyone who had a question or comment. The article listed eleven symptoms and said if you had eight or more, and they lasted for six months, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta indicated you had cfs. Jan at one point had all eleven. Even so, she somehow managed to stay in the choir and host a Bible study.
The Foothills congregation listened sympathetically to my prayer requests for Jan, and they understood when I missed a committee meeting to stay with her. But they also doubted I could keep functioning this way for long. By June, two men had pooled enough money to send us to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The evaluation took twelve days.
At the final consultation, the doctor said, “You’ve had all these tests, and the only thing we’ve found is a heart abnormality on the left side. But there are professional athletes with the same defect who are doing fine; this has no connection to your symptoms. The only thing we can suggest is a psychological consultation, and possibly biofeedback.”
Ergo, “We don’t know what your problem is; go somewhere else.”
One person in Rochester gave us hope, a dignified, elderly woman from India. We struck up a conversation with her in a waiting room. As the chat unfolded, Jan said something like, “Along with my fatigue, we’ve never been able to conceive a child, and so maybe there’s a connection. We don’t know.”
The woman’s eyes began to brighten. “No child?” she said with a mysterious air. After a pause, she continued in a solemn tone, “I have a message for you. Listen to me, my friends—you will have a baby within a year!”
I have to trust God without insisting I understand him.
It was bizarre. Then again, maybe this wasn’t absurd after all. Jan and I looked at each other, then thanked her for her concern. Later, we said, “Well, who knows? Maybe this is why we were sent to Mayo Clinic!”
A couple of days later, we ran into the woman again in a Rochester shopping center. Her face resumed its glow. “Oh! It is you again, the couple that is going to have a baby. Now I know it for sure—it is a sign!”
Darkness in Mazatlan
Back home in Colorado, Jan did not get pregnant. She surrendered her place in the church choir and arranged for the women’s Bible study meeting in our home to find a different location. She hated giving up the leadership of a group she had started for elders’ wives, but there was no choice. Her migraines and depression kept rolling over her.
The church family continued to encourage her. Hundreds of cards arrived. One included Psalm 18:28—”You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.” Jan read it on a beautiful, sunny, Monday morning, and it lifted her spirits. She told me about the verse, and I said, “Okay, let me put you in the car, and let’s go for a little ride in the mountains.” That was her first time out in a long time.
One sympathetic doctor referred us to a support group for CFS victims and their families. It felt good to be in a room of people who understood. But Jan was too weak to continue to go to meetings, and the truth boiled down to this: cfs had no known cause, no known treatment, not even a reliable test to prove its existence. It was indeed “the invisible illness.”
Jan’s main achievement in life was to keep showing up for the Sunday morning services. That helped the congregation to see it still had a pastor’s wife, even if she couldn’t always return phone calls. It also misled a few in the congregation, who were known to comment, “Jan looks perfectly fine to me. I don’t see what the big deal is.” I occasionally teased her by saying, “Don’t look quite so ‘together,’ okay?” Once I threatened to take a video of “the real Jan” and show it to the church.
But I knew how frustrated she was. In the past, she thrived on pressure. Now life was all so different. It was frustrating for me as well. I wasn’t always kind and longsuffering. As the church grew and the pace of ministry accelerated, she seemed to get sick at precisely the wrong times. Just when I had five meetings scheduled back to back, I’d have to pull away and assist her instead.
One spring we flew down to Mazatlan in Mexico. The warm sunshine was great. I was starting to unwind from all the demands of the church. But by afternoon, Jan began to get sick. She said her head was pounding. I got her back to our room, pulled down all the shades, and she crawled into bed. She began to vomit; her face became puffy.
We vacationed in a black room for the next three days and nights. Jan kept nothing down; even a spoonful of water came back up. In time she became dehydrated. By Tuesday I was weary: Isn’t this great? I’m sitting in a world-class resort spending my vacation behind window shades. At night, I took a tiny light and sat in the bathtub, burying myself in a Ken Follett novel.
Wednesday morning I ventured out to find a travel agency and managed to buy two tickets for home, forfeiting the rest of our prepaid tour package. I was steamed. What insanity! I really needed this vacation.
I carried Jan down to the cab, and then again from the cab to the airplane. She leaned against me the whole flight home. Once we landed in Denver, I got her into the car, carried her into the house, put her in bed—and then went upstairs to my desk.
This is the end! I announced through clenched teeth. I’ve had it. My life stinks. Forget the church, forget God, forget everything.
Come Sunday, I had calmed down enough to face the pulpit again. But the anger was not far from the surface.
Mystery or management
When I was younger, I had formulas for spiritual success: If I did A and B, God was bound to respond with C and D. I’ve now lost the formulas. In the heat of my anger, I was forced to face a bitter truth: God was not committed to solving my problems. I had to learn how to find him in the midst of pain and in the midst of pastoring people who also wanted their problems solved.
To this day, we have received no dramatic resolution of our anguish—no baby left on the doorstep, no miracle healing of CFS. We serve a God who doesn’t always explain himself.
In the meantime, we cope with the day-to-day reality of CFS. We have learned over the years that it is often triggered by stress. Jan can feel it coming, to some degree. At the end of a Sunday, she’ll say to me, “I need to take it easier this coming week. I’ll be taking more afternoon naps.” Sometimes I can almost see a veil of darkness descend upon her. I walk into the house and look at her eyes; it’s like she descends into a pit of exhaustion, headaches, and mental confusion. Often she calls me “Dad” and her dad “Bill.”
Sometimes we go to the emergency room, but the shots often fail to stop the onslaught. It has become almost a spiritual duel. Jan takes it on—she reads Scripture and literally decides not to let the pain and nausea overtake her. She says she feels less victimized by it now than she used to.
While I try to be attentive and caring, some days I simply can’t pull it off. Sometimes the pastoral load, coupled with Jan’s illness, wears me thin. On difficult days, I’ve found myself driving my car too fast, pounding the wheel and screaming, God, why are you doing this to me? All I’m trying to do is serve you. You got me into this—and this is how you treat me? I finally realized that I’m not mad at anyone but God.
The person who helped me identify my anger at God was psychologist Larry Crabb, who attends our church. Listening to Larry speak helped me enormously; I became more honest with God. Larry also helped me crystallize what was happening to my faith by his question: Is God in the business of management or mystery? Perhaps that has been the most profound shift in my faith: I have to trust God without insisting I understand him.
I’d like to wrap up our story with a bow, but I can’t. I think of the famous quotation from A.W. Tozer: “God can never use a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.” The first time I heard that, I found it much too harsh. But now that I’m 47, his quote makes sense. God honors trust and brokenness.
I am enjoying God more these days than when I insisted that life be manageable. And when God does break through our clouds, and Jan finds a stretch of relief, there is more satisfaction, more spirit of adventure. God still mystifies me, but Jan and I are resting in his surpassing grace.
Bill and Jan Oudemolen. Bill is senior pastor of Foothills Bible Church, Littleton, Colorado.
Dean Merrill is vice president of International Bible Society in Colorado Springs.
1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
