by Katie Schuermann
I’ve never liked the word barren.
To be known as the barren woman is terrible, because it is true. I am barren, because I am “fruitless, lacking, producing no offspring,” as the dictionary bluntly and boorishly declares to everyone in the room.
I call myself barren, because I am.
I also call myself barren, because God has made me so.
It is that last sentence that really preaches to me. Allow me to explain.
While the word barren chafes my pride, I see it in the Bible and remember that being a barren woman is not unprecedented in the story of God’s salvation of mankind. Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, Anna … so many of my mothers in the faith also were barren, and it comforts me not to be so special.
Also, when I see the word barren in the Bible, I remember that it is God Himself who makes people barren. He is the Creator, and He sees fit both to give and to withhold the gift of children in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and even today. He is the Author of life, and He works the horrible plot-point of barrenness for good for His People. Surely He will work my own little barren story for good, as well.
This is why I am bold to continue speaking and writing a word that has gone out of fashion in the infertility industry. When I admit to being barren, I am confessing both to myself and to you the truth about my womb as well as my Lord’s will. I am daily exercising my faith under its banner, being humbled under the will of God, trusting that the Creator’s merciful blessings extend even to whose whom He disciplines, all the while prayerfully waiting and watching to see if the Man who raised Lazarus from the dead might also raise my barrenness to new life.
By the way, when I call myself barren, I am not confessing to you my eternal state of being. I am confessing to you merely the reality of my today. Today, my womb is closed. Today, God in His wisdom continues to withhold the gift of children from me and my husband.
But calling myself barren today communicates absolutely nothing to you about my tomorrow. God has my tomorrow in His hands, and I fall asleep each sunset trusting that He will give me what is best with the next sunrise.
In the meantime, I wait and I hope and I pray and I look for the good works God has prepared for me to do as a barren woman right now.
This is how I can smile for pictures taken with other peoples’ children. This is how I can write books for other peoples’ grandchildren to read. This is how I can laugh during podcast interviews about being childless. This is how I can sing for joy about my loss and your gain. I am a barren woman, yes, but I am a woman made barren by God. And since the Creator deems it best for me to be barren today, then I am not ashamed in being so.
Though I still dislike the word.
