Church

Getting Outside of Ourselves

We all know the danger of dwelling on our own suffering. All any of us needs to do is take a short jaunt down “Me Lane” to find ourselves right in the middle of dreaded Despairville.

What if we avoided “Me Lane” altogether? What if, instead, we made a hard right turn onto “Neighbor Avenue” and took a trip to Mercyburg to visit our sisters in Christ? Think of what we would find there.

No doubt, we would run into other barren women in need of a comforting shoulder, but I think we would also discover women who suffer in the vocation of motherhood; women who pine for the independence and quietude of our own childless lives; women who suffer physical pain from birthing and caring for their precious gifts; women who fear the very gifting from God which we so desperately crave.

What if we set aside our own suffering for today and spent some time listening to those mothers, shouldering their grief and pain, praying for their strength, and tending to their physical needs? I think we would find great joy in the act of caring for our neighbor. Maybe we would even gain some insight into God’s wisdom of giving and withholding certain gifts from our own lives. At the very least, I think we would find comfort in knowing that we do not suffer alone in the body of Christ.

So, will you take a walk down “Neighbor Avenue” with me and meet my friend Rebekah? She wrote a book on the struggles of breastfeeding, and I cannot recommend it enough. I have never given birth to a child, never breastfed a baby, yet I resonated with the language of suffering in this real-life saga. I think you will, too.

And, c’mon. Just look at that title. You know there will be laughs on this trip.

Barrenness through Mom’s Eyes

My mom Laurie Schepmann is a caring soul, and it is my fervent prayer that my life might emulate her grace and love.  She has never wavered in her love for me as I have journeyed from a little girl into a grown woman and am now dealing with the cross of barrenness.  Below is a letter that Mom wrote.  I share it with you as a reminder that you are loved as a daughter, whether or not you are a parent.

Dear Kristi,

I do want to say once again that your value or worth or whatever you want to call it has never diminished in our eyes because of your barrenness.  The same goes for our love for you.  Such a thing would never enter our minds.  You are our daughter, and nothing can change our love for you or the bonds that tie us to each other.

I do appreciate how difficult a thing it must be to share something like barrenness when one views it as a humiliation or degradation of oneself.  I, however, have never felt that it lessened a person, or more specifically YOU…but, then again, I have not “walked in your shoes.”  I understand that there are people who can make you feel that way, though, and the only thing I know is to forgive them for their lack of understanding, pray for them, and move on.

Those who are barren are not lessened in my mind one iota.  It is just another one of those things over which one has no control.  As always, we support each other whenever we can and whenever we finally REALIZE that there is a need.  So often, we are not there for others because we have no idea what goes on in their hearts and minds.  Thanks be to God that there is forgiveness for us and that He promises to be with us and help us in all of our needs, though!

It has always been my belief that you handled it very well.  Little did I know, though, of the turmoil and pain you endured in private.  Because of our desire not to snoop, but rather to wait for you to share any news, if and when you chose to, we said very little.  If you interpreted that as not caring, I apologize and feel sorry about it.

We are looking forward to the time when you can bring your adopted child home!  Whoever he, or she, may be, we know this child will find welcoming hearts and laps and hugs in our family.  My prayers for that child, as you know, have continued from the first time you told us that you were applying for a child!  (In anticipation of his/her joining us soon, we’ve already bought him/her a Christmas stocking.)  May our loving Heavenly Father, Who knows all of our needs, bring that child to us soon and in accord with His divine wisdom and will; for, He surely knows and loves us more than anyone else.  We know that special love through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ!

Thank you for opening up and sharing with us and with others, who are traveling that same, painful road.  May God bless you for your courage and help many others through you.  God works all things for good to those who love Him.

Love,
Mom


Ursula’s Curse

I am having trouble singing in church.

It happens sometimes. I take a deep breath, and my expanding diaphragm rubs up against the forgotten ball of grief buried deep inside my gut. My coward of a diaphragm recoils from the touch, shuddering all music-making air out of my lungs.

I open my mouth to sing anyway – I will not give up this hymn so easily! – but my traitorous throat holds my larynx in a vice grip.

Even my eyes betray me. I can no longer see the words on the page for the two waterfalls spilling onto my cheeks.

But, no matter. I may be mute and blind in my grief, but I am not forsaken in the pew. The Word still prevails through the mouths of my song-preaching neighbors. Freida and Margaret sit behind me, Teresa sits before, and Blake and Jenny sit at my side. Their voices sing loud and clear for my benefit:

A Mighty fortress is our God,
A trusty shield and weapon;
He helps us free from every need
That hath us now o’ertaken.
The old evil foe
Now means deadly woe;
Deep guile and great might
Are his dread arms in fight;
On earth is not his equal.

With might of ours can naught be done,
Soon were our loss effected;
But for us fights the valiant One,
Whom God Himself elected.
Ask ye, Who is this?
Jesus Christ it is,
Of Sabaoth Lord,
And there’s none other God;
He holds the field forever. 

Though devils all the world should fill,
All eager to devour us,
We tremble not, we fear no ill;
They shall not overpower us.
This world’s prince may still
Scowl fierce as he will,
He can harm us none.
He’s judged; the deed is done;
One little word can fell him. 

The Word they still shall let remain
nor any thanks have for it;
He’s by our side upon the plain
With His good gifts and Spirit.
And take they our life,
Goods, fame, child, and wife,
Though these all be gone,
Our victory has been won;
The Kingdom ours remaineth. *

Thank you, Church, for faithfully singing the Word to me when I am struck silent by my grief. “The Word they still shall let remain,” indeed, “the Kingdom ours remaineth.” Even my double-crossing flesh cannot hold back a hearty, “Amen!”

* “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” by Martin Luther (Lutheran Service Book 656)

A Dad’s Love for His Little Girl

Pastor Roger Schepmann is my dad, and he has graciously given me permission to share his thoughts surrounding my barrenness.  Dad has always been a stronghold for our family and has always loved me unconditionally.  I am blessed to be “Daddy’s little girl.”

As a father, I like to have everything go smoothly for my children.  When they were little, I’d tell them to bring whatever it was that needed fixing, so I could fix it, and they would be happy.  Example:  the child has fallen and his/her knee hurts.  Well, I’d kiss it to make it better.  Or, if some toy needed some minor repair, they could bring it to me, and I’d do my best to fix it.  Now, I’m not a “Mr. Fix-It,” but I’d do my best.

When it comes to barrenness, as a father, I still think it is something I should fix.  I want to fix it somehow so my daughter can have all the children she has ever wanted.  But it is something I cannot fix.  I’d like to fix it, but I can’t.  That’s why I simply put the entire matter into the hand of God.  He knows what to do or not to do.  He has it all figured out already.  And I have to realize that He can do the impossible.  That doesn’t mean He must, but He has the capacity to do what might be deemed as “impossible.”  So, I commend my daughter and her husband into the hand of God for I know God will work good through this very difficult matter.

Do I think less of my daughter for being barren?  Not at all.  She is who she is:  a child of God, made God’s own in Baptism, kept God’s own through the Spirit’s working in Word and Sacrament.  She is not any less a child of God because she is unable to conceive a child.  She is still “Daddy’s little girl” and will remain such.  I have always been very proud of her.  That has not changed.  Barrenness does not define who she is.  It is a cross she bears, but not one she bears alone.  As a father, I am here to listen, to pray, and to give her the support she needs.  I don’t always do a good job of all of that, but with God’s help, I will do better in the weeks and months ahead of us.

“God is our Refuge and Strength, an ever-present Help in trouble.” Ps. 46:1


Christian Man-to-Man Advice about Dealing with Barrenness

Thank you, Rev. Dr. Benjamin T. G. Mayes (husband of Rebecca), for generously responding to the following question recently submitted.

Question Submitted: Any ideas for barren husbands? This may be harder on me than on my wife. We’re a happy family of 2, but I have rough days missing children we won’t have.

Brother, here are some random thoughts to give an answer to your question. My sense is that men have totally different feelings about barrenness and lack of children. Most men are probably able to compartmentalize the disappointment that they feel when they realize that their family might not include any little ones. We probably are not all the same. As for me, there were times when I did not feel the desire for children. Of course, that’s when I thought it would be easy to have them! We always seem to want what we don’t have, isn’t that true?

I have one son, who is definitely not a baby any more. He has been a major blessing to me and Rebecca, so I’m afraid I’m not in your exact situation. But now, I, too, wish to have another child of my own, and who knows if and when that will happen?

I don’t think anything can take the place of having your own child, just like nothing can take the place of having your own wife. God gives different gifts to different people, but those gifts are unique and not interchangeable. The woman with five kids might be tempted to see those kids as a burden. For us, we feel the lack of children as a burden. We feel that we lack little ones on which to shower our love. I don’t think anything can take the place of those kids. So that is the one major caveat I have to give here. The following tips may not fill the hole in your life and family that you are feeling. But they might help, and they will certainly be good reminders of the truths you probably already know.

1. Katie and her team here have amassed a treasure trove of Gospel comfort for barren families, including you.

2. As I’m sure you know, our primary identity and joy (we must remind ourselves!) should come from belonging to God’s family, having God as our true Father, the church as our true mother (cf. Matt. 12:50; Gal. 4:26), and other Christians as our brothers and sisters. If you are a pastor, you also have children in the faith through your preaching, teaching, and baptizing (1 Cor. 4:15).

3. On a practical level, obviously pursue adoption if you’re able.

4. Since you don’t have kids, you may as well save up some money and splurge on doing some special things with your wife, like traveling or investing in some of the hobbies you both enjoy. I would personally suggest checking out beautiful art and architecture in Germany and Italy! Then, of course, you might also be able to afford being generous to others.

5. I’d recommend becoming a mentor for boys or young men in your area. Many boys have no father figures and really need one. I’ve had the opportunity to become involved in the life of a young man, my godson, who was baptized at our church when he was 8 (now he’s a teenager). He was adopted by his great-grandmother and had no father figure to look up to. So he comes to our house every Saturday night, and we have what you might call a family night, so that he can see how a man should treat his wife, so that we can play games together, and also have time to talk about questions that he wouldn’t feel comfortable asking grandma. It’s been a great experience for me, and for him, too. Maybe for you, spending time with the church’s youth group would allow you to show the love of Christ to young people. It doesn’t take the place of having your own son, but it is a way that someone in your position can truly help a young man and show him the love of Christ. And truly, if the Lord has not blessed you with physical children, showing the love of Christ is more important than having a child of your own.

In summary, I think men probably approach the issue of barrenness with more detachment than our sisters in Christ, but what does detachment really mean? It means that we can compartmentalize our sorrow and put it in a box so that it doesn’t bother us all the time. But it is still there. We pray to God for solace, and He gives solace when and where it pleases Him, not when and where it pleases us. In the meantime, He has given you the best solace in His Son and Holy Spirit (the Comforter!), and at the same time, I think He gives you other blessings and avenues of service that might just be unique to people in your situation.

—Rev. Dr. Benjamin T. G. Mayes

Collect: February 20, 2012

It is our privilege to pray with and for you.  If you would like to submit a personal petition to be included in our prayers, please send your request via the “Submit a Question” page on this site. 

Collect of the Week:

Let us pray…

Good and Gracious Shepherd,

While on this earth You taught Your disciples for many years, instructing them and demonstrating for them how to care for Your sheep. As You fed the crowds of hungry people and washed the feet of these men You gave all future shepherds of Your flock a picture of humility and compassion, which they are to likewise model. We give You thanks for providing us in this present time with the blessing of good and faithful pastors who have washed us in our baptisms, being Your instrument to make us children of the Heavenly Father, and who have fed us Your Body and Blood, which fills our souls when in our emptiness we hunger for You. We pray that You would nurture and mold these men to become Your voice to people who are hurting all around them. Give them strength to shoulder the burdens we lay upon them and wisdom to know which of Your Words will be that healing balm that we desperately need; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Caring for the Barren Woman – Take Three!

Rebecca Mayes and I are planning to hit the road in April in hopes of meeting YOU. We will be presenting on the topic “Caring for the Barren Woman” at Concordia University Chicago, Concordia Theological Seminary, and various churches in Michigan and Indiana. Won’t you please come out and see us? Location and presentation details can be found here.

If you would like any of the HeRemembersTheBarren.com hosts to present “Caring for the Barren Woman” at a church near you, please let us know via the “Submit a Question” page on this website.

We can’t wait to meet you!

IVF: A Time to Mourn

Each January we are reminded of the millions of lives that have been lost through abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973. Our churches have been sent materials to help us recognize and discuss the importance of life during this time of year when we remember the monumental court ruling that removed the right to life from the most helpless of our society. I was encouraged this past November to see that the state of Mississippi was allowing its people to vote on whether they believed that life began at conception. There seemed to be so much support for the amendment and pro-lifers were optimistic about the outcome. But it failed. It’s not surprising that Planned Parenthood was working overtime in an attempt to “educate” the public and I’m sure had much influence with some of the voters. But what really got me was that the other group leading the fight against the measure were what some might consider “my own people.” Infertile couples and fertility clinics were frightened by the possibility that, as a result of this measure passing, IVF might also become illegal in their state.

The attitude that helped prevent this amendment from passing came across loudly and clearly in the blogosphere during the time prior to the vote. While most of the barren bloggers that I came across who were against the amendment demonstrated a common obsession with self-interest regardless of what the truth might be, at least they appeared to understand the significance of the statement that life begins at conception. For some reason they fully understood what takes place during an IVF procedure. Many well-meaning Christians do not.

Or maybe they do after all. A CNN article that came out in early November focused on one Christian family who seemed to know exactly what they were doing with IVF, and the possibility of having personhood assigned to embryos didn’t give them reason to pause and reflect about what they had already participated in. Rather, it prompted them to move up the date of their next procedure.

I wish I could have a conversation with this family. I’m curious about how they would justify what they were about to do. Would they point to some Scripture passages that guided them to this decision? Would they say that their pastor counseled them to go ahead with this plan? Or did they simply feel that this was the right thing to do? How do their consciences handle the risk they were taking, when statistically 65% or more of their fertilized embryos will die?

If life begins at conception, and if all life is valuable, why don’t we as a Church likewise mourn for those tiny lives who have been conceived through IVF and either discarded to die, frozen to death, or who simply “didn’t take,” meaning they lost their lives in the struggle for the survival of the fittest? Abortion sacrifices the life of an innocent child for the perceived rights of the mother to control her own body. IVF sacrifices the lives of many children for the hope of one healthy, viable child for a desperate couple. Is one situation any less tragic than the other?

Sisters, please help me with this issue. If you take offense somehow or feel that I don’t have all the facts, please contact me (Rebecca) through the “Submit a Question” section. I want to dialogue about this. I want to know more than I do. Do you have a pastor who supported your own decision to do IVF? If so, I would love to talk to him. I want to find out if I’m missing something. But if I’m not–if I’m right on the money here–then we all need to be engaging our churches more in this topic and helping to educate both pastors and lay people about the significance of our actions when we seek to step in as the creator of earthly life and eternal souls. We need to love and cherish those children in our churches who were conceived through IVF while helping their parents and other couples look for alternative ways to fill the voids in their hearts. We need to repent, confess, forgive, and participate in a unified life together in our congregations, where we all have a common understanding of and appreciation for the sanctity of all human life.

We mourn for the deaths in abortions. We mourn for the deaths in miscarriages and stillbirths. Let us also mourn for the deaths that occur in IVF–deaths that are completely preventable.

The Enlightenment

In Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism he reminds the Christian that one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to “enlighten me with His gifts,” and this enlightenment so often occurs when we are hearing the Spirit-filled words of Holy Scripture. Have you ever had that experience? Perhaps you’ve read the passage a hundred times before but suddenly you get it.  It happened to me in church this week. The words hit my ears and penetrated my soul. The sanctuary filled with a bright light while angels sang and harps strummed to a great crescendo. Well, ok, maybe that part was just going on in my head. But the “aha!” moment was so profound that I almost felt like interrupting the service just to ask everyone if they had truly grasped the magnitude of the holy words we had just sung.

“For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” Psalm 84:11

For a few seconds I wrestled with the “from those who walk uprightly” part. Does this passage really apply to me? I know how deep sin dwells within me. I cannot stand uprightly before God and face Him like I am. But wait–because I have put on Christ in my baptism, doesn’t our Heavenly Father see Christ when He looks at me? Do not the words of absolution I just received remind me that I am forgiven and righteous before God? And do not the righteous walk “uprightly”? YES! This is meant for me!

And then the key words of the passage were finally able to seep into the still empty crevices of my heart, like a soothing ointment that provides instant relief from pain. No good thing does He withhold. It finally occurred to me: God’s not holding out on me.

I hear the cry of a newborn infant in a store and I think, “Oh, what a blessed sound! How good it would be to hear that sound in my own home.” But it wouldn’t be good. Not now. Because if it would be truly good for me then I would already have it.

I hear of young single women who have just discovered that they are pregnant and I think, “Wouldn’t our family be best for this child? Doesn’t the girl realize how much better of a life this baby would have with two parents instead of one?” But over and over God has clearly indicated that it would not be good for those children to be ours. And God wants the highest good for us and for these children.

No good thing does He withhold. This means that right now, in this time and this place, I have all good things from my Lord and Savior. Whatever I feel that I lack is, according to Him, not a good thing for me. He is withholding only those things that are harmful to my body or my soul . He is, as the Psalm also says, my sun, lighting my path to my heavenly home through the promises of His Holy Word so that I do not stumble along the way. He is my shield, protecting me from all things which might lead me to trust in something other than His grace and mercy alone. He is also protecting me from myself and the ramifications of my sinful and selfish desires by covering me with His blood.

He’s not holding out on me. This realization is so freeing, so comforting. Even though we know better we can sometimes still be caught pondering whether our past sins have caused our current heartache. We feel like we’re being punished in some way, like a child whose parent has put his favorite toy up on the shelf because he did not pick up his room when told to do so. But God is not holding out on us. The baby we so desire is not waiting out there somewhere until we can get our acts together, figure out what sin we haven’t confessed, or guess at what God wants us to do next. He is giving all good things to us now–this moment, this day, this week. Alleluia! Let those angels keep on singing! I wish you could hear them, too.

New in Christ

A new year.  A new beginning.  A fresh start.  All sorts of thoughts, dreams, and adventures await.  Is this the year we get pregnant?  Is this the year we adopt?  All sorts of things lie ahead for each one of us.  Would we want to know what we each day holds?  Would we rather be surprised?

One thing that should not surprise the believer in Christ is the fact that she is the Lord’s child.  In Holy Baptism, she has been given a fresh start to each and every day.  Water was poured over her in baptism, and all her sins of thought, word, and deed were drowned.  She is given a clean slate.  She is forgiven of all sins.

I take great comfort in knowing that I am forgiven.  You see, I already have lots of hopes and desires for the year.  I know what should happen.  I’ve got it all mapped out.  I have plans to grow my family through adoption.  I know that my dear friend would love to get pregnant and have a baby.  I think I have all the answers.  My thoughts are sinful because I’ve dictated to the Lord what He should do.  I’m wrapped up in myself.  For those thoughts, I confess my sins and ask for forgiveness.  Then I pray that my life would always reflect the life of a baptized Christian.  Will my thoughts edify the body of Christ?  Will my words benefit my neighbor?  Will my actions demonstrate my love for self or others?

Each day is a gift from the Lord.  When I am given the gift of a new day, I pray that it might be a blessing to my husband, my daughter, and my neighbor.

This is a new year.  Dear sister, begin each day in the name of the Triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  You, who are baptized into Christ, are given a new beginning.  Let us rejoice in the gift of new life in Christ.