Rejoicing Barren

The following is a guest post from Emily, one of my readers, and I pray it touches your heart like it has mine.

When I first began to suspect that we might not be able to conceive, I was heartbroken. As each month passed with no success, I struggled daily to trust God with our situation. I knew in my head that the Lord’s plans are always best, but I didn’t know how to accept the fact that my biggest dream might never come true. Every day, I begged the Lord to allow me to get pregnant, and every month I hoped that this would be the month. And every month when I found out that I wasn’t pregnant – again – I was absolutely devastated.

I watched as so many of my friends started their families. I hurt as people callously asked why I wasn’t pregnant yet, and I worried that others might assume that I was too selfish or preoccupied with other things to care about having children. I couldn’t talk about it without crying, so I didn’t even tell my family about our struggles for almost a year. When I finally did tell them, they were sweet and supportive. They told me that they were sure that I would get pregnant in God’s time. So I kept waiting. And I kept expecting that this month it would finally happen. But it never did. And I kept praying that God would change my heart in some way, to help me somehow be okay with it all. But I still cried, and hurt, and waited only for my circumstances to change.

After a year and a half of trying, our suspicions were confirmed by a doctor. Aside from drastic medical procedures, or a miracle, we will not be able to have biological children. I thought it couldn’t get any harder, but it did. For about 3 months after that, I waited, and hurt, and struggled on a deeper level than before. And finally, God changed everything for me – not by finally allowing me to get pregnant, but my changing my thinking. It started on Sunday morning while I was sitting in the service, thinking about how I might be pregnant this time, and worrying that I might find out – again – that I wasn’t. My pastor was preaching about contentment. And I was harboring a nasty little attitude – thinking “That doesn’t apply to me because of my circumstances. How could God expect me to be happy and content while he withholds from me the one thing that I want? How am I supposed to just overlook that?” Then my pastor asked us to turn to Galatians, and I happened to look across the page and read the following:

“Rejoice, O childless woman,
you who have never given birth!
Break into a joyful shout,
you who have never been in labor!”

Wow. What could I say to that? Somehow God did still expect me not only to be content, but also to rejoice! And it wasn’t optional. It was a command. And not just a command in this passage, but all throughout the Bible. God repeatedly commands his people to rejoice: Phil 4:4-8, Ps 97, and Joel 2:21 (just to name a few). So I came away wondering how I could daily obey the command to rejoice. And then that afternoon I found out again that I wasn’t pregnant. And so all the pain and frustration and questioning came back. That night as I lay sobbing in bed beside my husband, he sweetly and sternly told me just what I needed to hear – and the Lord used my husband’s words right then to break through the pain and lies in my head, and to show me the truth and give me the freedom to rejoice. He told me that he believed the reason that I was struggling so much is that, while I was saying that I wanted God’s will and that God’s will is best, I was secretly refusing to believe that not getting pregnant could possibly be God’s best for me, and make me the happiest. I persisted in assuming that someday God, because he is good, would have to give me a child, instead of trusting Him with the decision about what was the best thing for me. My husband challenged me to stop expecting to get pregnant: to just give it up. To start planning my life around what it would seem (from our current, human perspective) is God’s plan for us: no pregnancy. No biological children. What then? Something better! Maybe adoption. Maybe a lifetime of ministry to and enjoyment of the family and friends that God has already blessed me with. Maybe something else that I’ve never even imagined. It’s God’s decision, not mine. And could I really decide better than the infinitely wise, loving, and powerful God? Of course not! So that settles it. I will leave the future in God’s hands, and embrace my present role – barren, and rejoicing.

We are currently pursuing natural methods to increase fertility. We are also planning on beginning the adoption process soon. Because of God’s grace at work in me, I am joyfully embracing God’s plan for my life as he unfolds it day by day.

I don’t know if God will give us children, biological or adoptive. He hasn’t promised me that. But look at what he has promised me: a perfect plan for my life. I have a relationship with the Creator and Redeemer of the universe. I have his grace, love, joy, peace, and comfort every day. I can be confident of God’s perfect plan and provision. I have a place of service to him that he created me for, and an eternal home in heaven. And look at what he’s already given me: a loving and godly husband, a place in my church family, parents and siblings that love and support me, a warm home, good food, a couple of fabulous cats, and the joys of working and playing and seeing beauty and hearing truth every day. These outweigh the other things by far. When I compare a childhood dream, false expectation, or a lie, to all of God’s real promises – His truth – I see that perhaps being barren and rejoicing is not really a paradox after all. It’s God’s perfect plan for me.

Thank you Emily for sharing what God placed in your heart.

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Guest Post: Sterilizing Life

Posted by donielle on March 18, 2010 · 24 Comments 

The following is a guest post from Kathleen, who blogs and philosophizes about marriage at Project M: Musings on Love, Marriage, and the Madness that Ensues.

I started thinking about sterility when, after ten months of trying, I still wasn’t pregnant.

I’m not just talking about human or sexual sterility here, but all kinds – sterilized foods, sterilized environments. I’m talking about all the various ways that we humans experience or try to stamp out or smother life.

See, I had been on the Pill for the last four years of my life to induce artificial fertility while I finished up school. I had never, during that time, given more than a moment’s thought to sterility or to what I was really doing. I was taking a Pill to suppress life. And I was OK with that.

I had wanted control over my reproductive system. I wanted to avoid the mess of unintended life. That’s what every woman wants who takes the Pill, right? I also wanted to be free to avoid thinking about reproduction. They told me I just had to take a little pill every day and unexpected life was out of the question. I didn’t have to think about it. I thought it was perfect.

After changing my mind and deciding that I did want to participate in life-creation, I found out quickly that my body was not primed for that. I had spent too much time trying to suppress life, and now my body was confused. I found out that it was going to take longer than I had anticipated for my body to change its mind after those four years of deliberate infertility. In fact, my body might never produce life. I don’t know yet.

Like many women in my situation, I began to look into ways of achieving fertility.

The first think I learned about was fertility awareness, or natural family planning, which can help you either avoid and achieve pregnancy. Fertility awareness involves getting to know your cycles. You have to get to know your cervical fluids and your basal body temperature and keep track of it all on paper. You have to pay close attention to your reproductive system. You have to develop a mindset that is completely contrary to the contraceptive way of thinking.

Fertility awareness is messy. Some might say it’s icky. It takes attentiveness and a high esteem for bodily fluids and other yucky things we don’t like to think about. And that’s why most women don’t want to use fertility awareness as a method of birth control: you have to embrace the natural, messy rhythms of life. And we don’t like messiness. We prefer to produce life in a sanitary, sterilized environment, where we can control everything with pills and capsules and antiseptics.

Then I started learning about nutrition from Naturally Knocked Up. I learned all about what I need to promote fertility: things like good bacteria, fermented foods and raw foods. In short, I learned about foods that still had life in them. I learned that in North America we’re over-sterilizing our food, to the point where there’s little nutritional value left.

I learned about eating other icky things, like organs and fat and skin, about sprouting and cultivating and fermenting. I learned about boiling my own bone broth and eating raw egg yolks and all kinds of things that we are told are gross. I learned that real nutrition takes work. It takes attentiveness and a high esteem for the kinds of food we’re taught to turn up our noses at.

And then it started to dawn on me. We’re a culture that is afraid of life and its consequent messiness. We’re scared of yucky things. As a society, we have learned to kill everything we can’t control.

We Westerners learned that some bacteria in food are bad, and so we set out to kill them all. We learned that fertility is hard to control, so we developed ways to stop it entirely. Then we developed ways to bring it back again artificially.

We decided that we wanted to be able to create life in a sterile environment. We thought that it was the safest way to do it. But in the process, we have eliminated all the things that are necessary to life: messy bodily fluids, living foods, nutrients and good bacteria.

I am started to come to the awareness that life breeds life. We can’t surround ourselves with death and expect to bring forth life. We can’t conceive new life in an environment where we’ve killed everything that scares us.

I am trying to embrace this truth. I am trying to embrace life, even the forms that scare me. Maybe in this way my body will be coaxed to participate in creating life. Until then, I want to learn all that I can.

Thanks Kathleen!

I have a lot of new and exciting things coming up here this fall, so make sure you add my blog's RSS Feed to your reader or you can sign up for free updates by Email. I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter! **

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I may forget, but luckily He never does

Posted by donielle on July 20, 2009 · 11 Comments 

Lately I’ve been scattered.

Unorganized.

Running in circles.

I’d been cleaning, but my house was never clean. I’d been gardening, but it was always full of weeds. I had no time to workout, no time to blog, no time for myself. And my unrest had also transferred to my young son who started acting out and really pushing boundaries.

You see, I had forgotten how much better my life runs when I don’t run it!

Luckily, the Lord never forgets. And throughout these last few weeks he has brought me some great blog posts, newsletters, and conversations with friends to help me realize that the reason I was feeling such unrest was only because I wasn’t relying on him. I had been trying to run my life.

So last week, I took the week off to spend time with him and reorganize and schedule my life. I woke up at 5am each morning and read my devotions while nursing the baby and spent time in prayer after I put her back down. I forgot about my to do list and opted instead to start my own “Home Keeping” book to better schedule my days. I also spent more time loving my family and trying to forget about what the next day/week/month would bring. We played with friends and leisurely picked cherries. I even *gasp* let our nutrition slide a bit and picked up a few convenience items.

And you know what? I feel better. My head is clearer, and I think my home is functioning better than it has since last summer before I got pregnant. What a great relief it has been for me to have Him take such a heavy load off my shoulders!

It also got me thinking just a little bit, because I always felt this same type of unrest while dealing with infertility and the fact that I wasn’t yet pregnant when I wanted to be. And I didn’t just want to be pregnant then, I had scheduled it into my life. I had written it in on the calendar. Figured out how long I needed to work before I could quit my full time job.

If you don’t believe me, I can show you my date book!

My only goal was to have a baby. I ate for my fertility, I exercised for my fertility, I was intimate with my husband only for my fertility, I prayed only for increased fertility. What happened was I would lose myself. I seemed to lose where I was in life, with everything crumbling at once and I just couldn’t pick up the pieces. And each time the Lord would gently call me back. (Actually, I think one time he had to holler at me. But he’s God, he can do that right?) And once I had given him control again, he’d carefully place in my hands the pieces of my life that I had dropped and broken. Then everything would fit together again. Of course it didn’t mean that I would get pregnant right away, and it didn’t mean that I never cried about it, it just meant that my feelings of unrest went away as he gave me a clear head and a clear heart.

So do you have feelings of unrest about your fertility, your marriage, your job, or even your home? I highly recommend taking time away from everything (even if it’s just a few minutes in the mornings) and spending some time in God’s word letting Him help you figure out what’s really important in life.

Because He has the pieces you’ve dropped.

I have a lot of new and exciting things coming up here this fall, so make sure you add my blog's RSS Feed to your reader or you can sign up for free updates by Email. I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter! **

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