Dr. Easley Interviews Sandra Glahn

#210 – February 20, 2009 Interview: Sandra Glahn [Glahn:] For the couple that‟s going through infertility, I would say it‟s often the very first thing a couple goes through in their young time together, the first major grief they experience together and they‟re floored to find out how differently they deal with it. And just to know that this doesn‟t mean you have a lousy marriage, it can actually mean you have a strong marriage, you just need to recognize we‟re not the same. [Lepine:] This is inContext with Michael Easley. And as is our custom on Friday, today‟s program features an interview. We‟re going to be talking with Sandra Glahn. Sandra is an adjunct professor of Christian Education and Pastoral Ministries at Dallas Theological Seminary. She has served there for more than a decade as a Women‟s Bible Study Teacher and also as a Ministry Director. She‟s also the editor of Dallas Seminary‟s award winning magazine, Kindred Spirit and has written a number of Bible studies for women called the Coffee Cup Bible Series based on the NET Bible. And she‟s also the author of a book with Dr. William Cutrer called When Empty Arms Become A Heavy Burden. It‟s on the subject of infertility, something that she and her husband have experienced in their own lives and in their marriage together. Michael. [Easley:] Sandra Glahn, thanks for joining us today on inContext. Great to have you here. [Glahn:] Thank you. I‟m happy to be here. [Easley:] Now, let‟s talk a little bit about how you got into writing. Many people don‟t know Sandra Glahn. You picked up a computer and a pen or something at one point and started writing? [Glahn:] I had a boss who believed I could write when I was working for a financial services corporation and he spent the company funds sort of helping me develop my talent. He believed that moral would be better if people did what they loved. [Easley:] Huh. [laughter] Yeah. [Glahn:] And he was right. So when that job ended I was freelancing as I was going through infertility treatment. I couldn‟t get a full time job that I had to go to every single day if I was going to be at the doctor all the time. [Easley:] Uh huh. [Glahn:] So that turned into a freelance career and I eventually decided I‟d really like to write for the Christian market, not the non-Christian market, which led me to Dallas Seminary‟s Media Arts program. [Easley:] I think the first time you and I met was through Bill Cutrer. Dr. Bill Cutrer helped Cindy and me at least attempt our first child as biological. Our next three are adopted, but that, I think was our first contact with Sandy Glahn. We also have a mutual friendship in Bob Glahn. [Glahn:] Oh! My brother-in-law.
[Easley:] Yeah. Yeah. Bob and I knew each other many years in the Northern Virginia area, so . . . Let‟s talk a little bit about your writing history. Obviously I want to get to your java series, your coffee series, but Sandy, let‟s go back to one of your early books: When Empty Arms Become a Heavy Burden. Obviously you struggled with infertility and that puts you into that field of writing. [Glahn:] Right. I‟m the fourth of five kids. It never occurred to me that we‟d have a fertility problem. I thought we‟d have an over-fertility problem if anything. [Easley:] Yeah. [Glahn:] But it led to a marital, spiritual, ethical, medical crisis for us in that I had a very narrow view of what Christian womanhood and wifehood looked like and so when that door did not open for me, I really did not have any other options for myself - [Easley:] Mm. [Glahn:] And I had to really go back and look at that and in the grace of God Bill Cutrer was our medical doctor. He had worked through many of the ethical issues. So when I was looking for a book that would help us, I didn‟t really find anything at that point on the market that walked through the issues. Either it said, “Yes, do In Vitro, go for it,” or “Don‟t even touch it.” [Easley:] Right. [Glahn:] But nothing really helped us think through the issues. So by the time we were done, we wanted to provide that guide for other couples who might be coming behind us and so the first book was teaming up with Bill Cutrer with his medical expertise. We like to say male-female, doctor-patient, sane-insane and, you know, it was debatable as to which one of us was sane. [laughter] [Easley:] Yeah. [laughter] [Glahn:] But anyway, that was the first book and it was an education I didn‟t want, but it certainly led to a ministry I never would have imagined. [Easley:] Infertility does become a spiritual issue. I remember when Cindy was going through it, you know, guys don‟t get it. The average husband is okay with a family or not a family and his fulfillment often comes elsewhere. I remember reading Genesis thirty, verse one. Rachel says to Jacob, “Give me children, else I die.” [Glahn:] Yeah. Yeah. [Easley:] And, you know, what is it about that? Why? [Glahn:] You know, I think, in our experience at least, the biggest loss for the wives is the actually inability to have a child. The biggest loss for the husband tends to be the loss of his happy wife. [Easley:] Yeah.
[Glahn:] And so, the disconnect there is while she‟s saying, “I have to do anything to have a child,” he‟s saying, “I‟ll do anything to get my happy wife back, even if it means sacrificing children.” She can easily hear that as, “See, I told you you weren‟t committed to this. I knew I was alone.” And two people trying to love each other completely missing each other, which, you know, kind of leads to needing to say, “I want you to love me the way I need to be loved.” [Easley:] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. [Glahn:] We don‟t intuit too well. Can‟t read minds. [Easley:] In the Christian community, not that we blame the Christian community for every one of our challenges, but they don‟t understand infertility. [Glahn:] Yeah. [Easley:] They don‟t understand, “Relax. If you‟d just quit trying.” All the, you know, we could share stories all afternoon about bad advice people give. But you‟ve got to navigate those waters. [Glahn:] I totally agree. I think that it comes in extremes. Either people saying, “When are you going to have a kid? Hurry up.” [Easley:] Yep. [Glahn:] “What‟s wrong with you? Are you too career oriented?” Or they‟re saying, “Don‟t you dare do high tech stuff. It‟s wrong. Why can‟t you be – are you stuck on genetics? Why can‟t you be satisfied with adopting?” And I think somewhere in between you have a need to look at the deep longing that comes from a desire of two people in love to create something beautiful together. [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] And it isn‟t at all being stuck on genetics, at least most of the couples I‟ve talked to. It‟s a matter of, “I will never look in the face of a child and see my husband‟s face and mine and I am in love with my husband and I would love to have that experience with him.” And that‟s not about taking a low view of life or cheapening genetics or anything like that. And when I look at Eve looking in the face of her child she‟s marveling saying, “I‟ve made an Adam with the help of the Lord.” [Easley:] Uh huh. [Glahn:] That is, I think, where the Christian community fails to see this is a deep loss,
we need to validate this pain rather than try to cheer it up. [Easley:] We‟re talking to Sandra Glahn today on inContext. Sandra, you have written a lot in the field of infertility, of sexual intimacy in marriage. This, obviously, related to the struggles with infertility. [Glahn:] It did relate to that in that I had to get a good theology for reproductive ethics, for marital intimacy, for contraception, for meds. All of those issues really come from an underlying theology of, “What is the purpose of intimacy?” And it is oneness. By teaming with Dr. Bill and looking at the medical issues and infertility, we were looking at the underlying theology. And once we finished writing the infertility book, which was sort of my heart, he said, “Now, the book that is on my heart is a piece that I can give to my patients because a theology of marriage before we dive into intimacy. Because so often intimacy books are just grounded on technique and the relationship has so much more to do with it than the technique.” And so he handed me stacks of three by five cards people had given him during the doctor sex talk everywhere he went. And said, “If you could try to organize these and put it in some sort of form that we could publish it, it would keep me from having to tell my patients, „Buy this book but don‟t read chapter four, buy this one but don‟t read seven.‟” [Easley:] Yeah. Yeah. Right. [Glahn:] And so he wanted it all in one place. [Easley:] Well, we‟ve recommended that book so many times to folks and just for our little part of kingdom, we want to tell you thank you for putting that into print. Sandra, you moved from non-fiction into fiction. Tell us about where you went from the sexual intimacy and infertility world. [Glahn:] Well, we were asked to contribute a chapter on genetic engineering and I think for that book we had two purchasers, one was his mother and one was my father and we realized there were just some topics that aren‟t going to lend themselves to a huge audience in nonfiction. And we saw stem cell research on the horizon and we were very concerned with what that would mean to the average – at that point fertility patients, we never dreamed it would be every day language. [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] But we wanted to warn, but we also figured if we wrote non-fiction nobody was going to buy it. So we pitched an idea to our publisher, “What if we take a fore into fiction to explore some of these complex issues that you can‟t handle in a sound bite.” And they were really at the point, the publishers, where they were ready to go into fiction and took a big risk with us. And in the goodness of God the week that first book, Lethal Harvest, released, it was announced the human genome had been mapped so there was a great deal of interest. [Easley:] Yeah. Yeah.
[Glahn:] So one was embryonic stem cell research and one was adult stem cell research in our storyline and then we tackled False Positive which was a sanctity of life piece that we thought would be a little too controversial to start out with but that, again, was really Bill‟s heart because he was dealing constantly as an OB-GYN with the abortion issue and seeing Christians, again, not always being as gracious and as merciful as they needed to be. [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] And seeing – well, you know, just wanting to write a piece that both non-Christians and Christians could read that would help them to understand the other side and communicate better. [Ealsey:] Right. [Glahn:] And at that point, after that was finished, we both had projects on our own that we really wanted to do. By this point I had graduated from seminary, which I never aspired to do. I kept thinking I‟ll be a mommy and, you know, pretty soon I was only a semester away from having a THM and thought, “Maybe I should finish this.” [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] And by that point, really had some women‟s Bible studies that I wanted to write because I was encountering a lot of smart women that didn‟t like Bible studies that were sort of fluffy and lacey. [Easley:] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. [Glahn:] They wanted to really dig into the meat of the Word but they also wanted them to include, maybe an art element. They wanted a spiral binding so they could do it on the treadmill. [Easley:] Right. [laughter] [Glahn:] In fact, somebody even suggested, “You should do one called Ripped With Ruth. [laughter] “No, I think we‟re going to stick with a coffee motif.” [Easley:] Yeah. And those titles include, let me start with the first one: Espresso With Esther. [Glahn:] Espresso With Esther, Mocha on the Mount, Java With the Judges and Solomon Latte which is Song of Solomon. [Easley:] Right. Talk about the response. What do you hear back from women doing your studies? [Glahn:] The response has been really gratifying and in some ways what I didn‟t expect. Because the books were smaller than most workbooks, I‟m hearing from women saying,
“I throw it in my diaper bag. I throw it in my purse and those times when I‟m stuck at the doctor‟s office or I‟m stuck in the car waiting for a repair, I can use those times to do my Bible study.” [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] And in a life that‟s crazy, it‟s really nice to have the whole Bible text included, you don‟t have to carry your Bible with you. [Easley:] Right. Right.
[Glahn:] I am all for people knowing their way around the Bible, but I also think if you‟re going to use those little segments of time, you‟re going to have to everything with you and not be able to carry your commentaries. So that‟s been really gratifying to see even surprises for me in how people have ended up using them. [Easley:] We‟re talking to Sandra Glahn. Sandra, you also have a website, “ASPIRE2” and if a listener goes there what will they find? [Glahn:] ASPIRE2 is the number two, not the preposition. Aspire2.com is designed for – there‟s a section for fertility patients, there‟s a section for people wanting to strengthen their marriages. There‟s also a segment for writers. I teach writing at Dallas Seminary in the Media Arts program and so there are a couple short videos there on writing for publication that are free. So just a variety of resources sort of coming out of the various ministries that both Dr. Bill and I have had. It‟s a shared website. [Easley:] A –S-P-I-R-E and then the number two.com. Adoption, sanctity of life, pregnancy loss, infertility, reproductive technologies and ethics. Sandra, you just released a new work: Informed Consent. What‟s this about? [Glahn:] That‟s my first solo novel and it‟s a medical suspense piece and I wrote it as part of my PhD work at a secular university. The first day of class my professor said to me, “I don‟t care if you give my gay, lesbian, hardcore porn, just don‟t give me anything Christian.” And once I sort of got over the shock I asked him, “Why would you say that?” And he said, “Because I‟ve never met a teachable Christian.” [Easley:] Huh. [Glahn:] So I determined to be his most teachable student that he‟d ever had. He didn‟t even know I‟d published and I wasn‟t going to tell him. I wanted him to look at me like he would look at any other student and really give me a rough critique and in the process, much to my surprise, he helped me communicate something that he said he would keep reading on faith issues, that was not an automatic turn off. And so, I really, I wanted to do that, just with those students that I was working with, as they were reading it. That was one of my goals in doing it but the other goal was I was very concerned with American Christian response to AIDS or lack thereof and, as
opposed to the African church which has done a fabulous job. We‟re doing better now, but at the time, this has been about three years ago since I started it, I was really concerned that we had a great lack of compassion. So I gave this horrifying disease to a Christ following character in the book so that the Christian who reads it will take another look at some of the presuppositions we‟ve made about this wasting disease. But is also includes a more subtle presentation of the Gospel. The Gospel is there, it‟s just not as overt as most pieces of Christian fiction have it precisely because of my classmates and my desire, first of all, to be teachable. [Easley:] Just out of curiosity, where are you on your PhD? [Glahn:] I‟ve finished my course work and now I get that fun part about orals and thesis. [Easley:] A little paper. Yeah. “A.B.D.” All But Dissertation. [Glahn:] Well, no the orals have me more scared than that. Probably because I‟m a writer. [Easley:] Really? Okay. All Right. Sandra, bioethics, infertility, a lot of these things are converging in new ways. Stem cell research, Christians for the most part are kind of, “Ahhh, it‟s a little bit heavy for me. I‟m not that interested.” Give us the simple version. What are we facing in these issues? [Glahn:] You know, that is actually an area where I‟m encouraged with some of the Christian response recently. It used to be when I would do a lecture on stem cell research I would say, “Are Christians for or against stem cell research?” And everybody would unanimously say, “We‟re against it.” [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] And now they‟ll say, “Which kind?” And I say, “Bravo!” Because that means we have really made progress in educating people. And the difference between embryonic, which destroys embryos in the process, and adult stem cell research, which doesn‟t, is really important. And so I do think that we‟ve gained some head way there and people really being more informed. But I think ultimately in the same way that we were dealing with sanctity of life with infertility because you‟re dealing with a human embryo and we are looking at these ethical issues, there‟s an underlying truth in Genesis, I think that informs the beginning of life, the end of life, pretty much all the ethical issues I interface with. And that is, I used to argue for the value of the embryo based on Psalm 139. [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] I would quote, “in the womb my mother weaved me” or “God weaved me in my mother‟s womb.” And then I ended up on the National Board for Consumer Groups and Fertility Patients and some of the people with me on that board were Orthodox Jews and they would say,
“You know what, we‟re reading the same Scripture. We believe it‟s the Word of God. We read those verses and we say, “Why can we not experiment in the Petri dish as long as we don‟t transfer it to the uterus? Because that‟s the mother‟s womb.” [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] So, I had to go back and look at, am I just using this as a proof text? Am I really arguing this in a way that is honoring to the text? I was sitting in a Hebrew class at the time as I was pondering this and we were reading Genesis, translating Genesis and we came to the part about where God gives humanity dominion. And He outlines the things over which humanity has dominion. You‟ve got the animal kingdom, the fish kingdom, the plant kingdom and creeping things. And I raised my hand and I said, “Am I to assume those creeping things are other humanity?” And the prof said, “No, that is usually the word that‟s used for four-legged beasts.” And it just hit me, I still remember where I was sitting, that I needed to argue this from the standpoint that other humanity, we can mess with other humanity when it comes to life and death, but it oversteps the limits of our dominion. [Easley:] Hmm. [Glahn:] We are not given dominion over other humanity. That‟s why a civic or a government group decides the death penalty or situations where life and death are involved. You don‟t do a one on one citizen. There‟s a different word for murder and kill because it‟s not up to me as a person to just decide life and death for someone. And I found that then when I walked into the embryo lab I could say it‟s one thing to work with embryos and try to help couples conceive if I‟m not destroying them. But if I‟m taking a low view and destroying human life in the process or freezing them and allowing them to go through and thaw has a fifty percent chance of killing it, then that is probably too risky and probably overstepping the limits of our dominion. Obviously there is some room for subjectivity there, but that I have found has been a much more affective way of looking at the issue. [Easley:] Well, and each couple who struggles with infertility in their life, they have to make a decision how far you‟re going to go. I remember Bill Cutrer taking out a piece of paper and writing down twelve steps to pregnancy and he said, “We can go as aggressively or as passively as you want through each one of these phases to try and help you conceive.” And then he threw up his hands, and he said, “In the end, we play with chemistry, God causes conception.” [Glahn:] Amen. Yeah. [Easley:] And you know from the average Christian we say, “Well, the moment of conception, is that really when life begins?” [Glahn:] That‟s an important question because most of the OB-GYN glossaries say conception is what we would call implantation.
[Easley:] Yeah. [Glahn:] So when we‟re saying life begins at conception, they‟re hearing, “Two weeks after fertilization.” And so then they‟re floored when we find out we‟re not using the same language to communicate the same thing. [Easley:] Mm hmm. [Glahn:] In fact, when I‟m interacting with researchers I never say life begins at conception or that I believe that. I say I believe life begins at fertilization so that there‟s no question about that two week window. [Easley:] Uh huh. [Glahn:] But that‟s again where some of the difficulty comes in because as Christians, when that terminology changed around the 1950s, I think we were right-spirited in that we didn‟t want to change our meaning with theirs. [Easley:] Yeah. [Glahn:] When they changed the meaning to, “conception means implantation,” we said, “No, no, no. That‟s not right.” But, you know, here we are forty years and more later, fifty years later and our meanings haven‟t changed with theirs so now we are no longer communicating at all. [Easley:] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember about 1975 or six I heard C. Everett Coupe before he was the Surgeon General and he was touring with Francis Schaeffer and they were talking about whatever happened to humanity and Coupe stood up and said, “Prior to,” and I don‟t remember the precise date, “every zoological, biological text said life began at conception.” And he said, “Those have shifted subtly but distinctly in a humanistic way to sort of lesson the impact of, „What is this? Is it matter? Is it life? Is it the beginning of life?‟” Yeah. We‟re talking to Sandra Glahn today on inContext. Sandra, when you look back on your work on infertility, what stands out as the one, two, three most important issues for believers to know? [Glahn:] I think for the person not going through infertility is the importance of weeping with those who weep, not trying to quote to people who weep or advise them unless they‟re ready or they ask you. I think we need to start there. For the couple that is going through infertility, I would say, number one, seek to really manage your treatment because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and it‟s your responsibility to be proactive. And learning about these issues, if you‟re going to enter into interacting with doctors about them and you call the shots. But as a married couple to understand that it‟s very, very normal and pretty typical for the wife to feel the loss of the child or the ability to have a child; where the husband is feeling the loss of his happy wife.
And to know, ”A,” that you‟re not alone, but “B”, not to expect your spouse to grieve the same way you do. It‟s often the very first thing a couple goes through in their young time together, the first major grief they experience together and they‟re floored to find out how differently they deal with it. And just to know, that this doesn‟t mean you have a lousy marriage, it can actually mean you have a strong marriage, you just need to recognize we‟re not the same. [Easley:] We‟re talking to Sandra Glahn today on inContext. Sandra, thanks so much for being with us. [Glahn:] It was my pleasure, thanks. [Lepine:] And let me encourage our listeners, Michael, if they‟ve missed any of our conversation today with Sandra Glahn, we do have a transcript of this material on our website, incontextradio.org. You can go back and read through the conversation, or if you‟d like to listen again to any part of the program you can do that online as well at incontextradio.org. In fact, we got an email from a listener recently who said, “I live in an area that does not carry Moody Radio, so every weekend I download the past week‟s programs of inContext, put them on my iPod and then I listen to them in the morning at 5:15 while I‟m on my exercise bike. It‟s a great way to combine exercise with Bible study and I appreciate Dr. Easley. Thank you guys and God bless.” And we appreciate your comments. We appreciate you writing to us. Our email address is incontext@moody.edu. Again, it‟s incontext@moody.edu. We‟d love to have you drop us a line and let us know how God is using the ministry of inContext in your life. Your notes are a great source of encouragement to us. And, again, stop by our website, which is incontextradio.org for more information about past programs. There are CD albums available. Other resources that we recommend can be found on our website: incontextradio.org. Now, on Monday we‟re going to begin a two week long study through the four chapters of the book of Jonah in the Old Testament. And I think most of us know the story of Jonah as the reluctant prophet who finds himself in the belly of the big fish. Maybe all you know about Jonah is what you saw in the Veggie Tale‟s movie. Well, on Monday Michael will begin taking us verse by verse through all four chapters in the book of Jonah and you‟ll find there‟s a lot more to this book than just a story of a big fish. Here‟s a preview of what we‟ll begin studying on Monday. [Easley:] I want you to notice this kind, sovereign Yahweh. Again, the fish says yes to God, everything we‟re going to see in the book says yes to God except the stubborn prophet. I wish chapter two verse nine and ten was the end of the book. I wish it would stop right there: I will sacrifice to You With the voice of thanksgiving That which I have vowed I will pay Salvation is from the LORD." Then the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.
“The end.” I‟d love it if it ended there. But it doesn‟t, does it? It gets worse. But it is a great, provocative reminder of the grace and patience of this kind Soveriegn. That he would invoke us and invoke the Jew of the context and use Jonah, this reluctant, stubborn, disobedient prophet to show the world He‟s a kind Sovereign. It‟s one thing to be sovereign, but it‟s a very different thing to be a kind sovereign. [Lepine:] And we‟ll begin our study of the book of Jonah on Monday. I hope you have a great weekend and can join us back then for inContext with Michael Easley.

The Basics of the Cycle

Women's cycles are devided into four phases: menses, the follicular phase (before ovulation), ovulation, and the luteal phase (after ovulation). Many women vary in how many days there are before ovulation, but almost every woman remains constant for the amount of days that are in her luteal phase, which means if you know that you have ovulated you can usually have a pretty good idea of when your next period should start even if the days in your cycle are different each cycle.

For me I really like this, because otherwise I would have no idea when my period was coming. Some people use NFP to calculate the days a woman is fertile, and then abstain from sex on those days. Others will combine NFP with barrier methods (condom, diaphragm etc.). This way a woman can still track some of her fertility signs (basal body temperature, cervical fluid etc., but not have to abstain from sex. It is also a good money saver, as couples don't have to invest as much money in buying condoms etc.

It can seem a little overwhelming at first, but once you get the general gist it is not that hard at all. Here is a general overview of how it works for me:

Well, really the thing I mainly do is just take my temperature in the morning with a basal body thermometer right after I wake up. After you have ovulated, your body temperature rises until your next cycle or stays high if you are pregnant. After my temperature rises, I wait three days to be sure and then don't use any type of contraceptive after that.

I use http://www.fertilityfriend.com/ to input the data. Technically that web site is designed to help people who are trying to get pregnant (NFP works well for people who are experiencing problems with getting pregnant). However, that doesn't mean that I can't use its charting tools to help me keep better track of my data. It also offers a helpful and free online class you can take too. They e-mail you one lesson a day for 20 days.

The beginnings

I got to thinking about NFP, and realized that it was almost absurd that I don't have a blog yet about women's fertility cycles, NFP, contraceptives, or sexuality. For awhile I have been wanting to create resources for all of those topics. You know, articles or helpful guides for these topics. I am not an expert by any means, but I have done a lot of research and it is an issue I am very passionate about. I have also thought about teaching some mini-classes on it, but I don't think I am ready for that yet. One day I hope to though, so hopefully this blog will give me incentive to start accumulating my resources.