by Katie Schuermann
The thing is, I deserve to be barren.
The list of my sins is life-long and Ten Commandments-deep.
I have made a god of my own wishes and desires so many times in my home life and in my career as an author and musician that I can no longer recall them all.
I continually neglect to call upon the name of the Lord on behalf of others, and I often daydream during the prayers in church.
I have skipped Sunday morning worship in my anger, and I often stare at my closed Bible on the dining room table, picking up my fork and eating breakfast instead of sanctifying the morning with reading the Word of God.
I have gone against my parents’ wise counsel on more than one occasion, despising their authority and imagining myself wiser than them, even going so far as to tell them so.
I have hated so many people. So, so many people. I have even hit people in my anger. All of my excuses be damned.
I have worn dresses too short and gowns too low. In my twenties, I even played the unchaste role of Maggie in a St. Louis production of Lend Me a Tenor, a choice I regret to this very moment.
I once stole a broken stopwatch from a cousin.
I lied to my math teacher about the (in)completion of an assignment.
I frequently look on Zillow for properties bigger and better than my own, and I walk by properties in my community, imagining myself living in their homes in their place.
I see other peoples’ adopted children, and I would rather they be mine.
In other words, I’ve broken all of God’s Commandments, from the First to the Tenth, there and back again, many times over. I am disgusting. I am dust, the kind that dirties everything and chokes people.
So, I’ll say it again: I am barren, and I deserve it. But that is not why I am barren.
I am barren, because God displays His own works, not mine, in my suffering (John 9:1-3).
I am barren, because the death in my womb reminds you and me to repent of our sins (Luke 13:1-5).
I am barren, because God disciplines His children like the good Father that He is (Heb. 12:5-11). But discipline is not punishment.
For God does not punish His baptized children for their sins. He won’t, because He already punished Jesus in our place. He poured out His wrath fully upon His Son on the cross, and Jesus Himself said before He gave up His Spirit, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
And so, to say that barrenness is punishment for my sin is to confess falsely that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was not enough, that the blood of the Lamb of God did not fully atone for all of my wrongs.
To get right to the point: to confess that barrenness is punishment for my sin is to mischaracterize God’s nature, not mine. Because God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 145:8). He saves His people and blesses His heritage (Psalm 28:9), and He does so by punishing Jesus in our place.
I may deserve to be barren, but I am not barren because I deserve it.
I am barren, because God deems it wise for me to be so.
