How is it possible that Harriet Beecher Stowe never met Katie Schuermann? Perhaps Harriet was given the gift of prophesy…
“There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.”
-From Uncle Tom’s Cabin, pg.99
Question Submitted: I have been with my husband for 10 years now. To be honest we never used any type of sexual protection. I’ve been pregnant one time, very shortly, maybe for two weeks, and then I had a miscarriage. In 2009, and every year after, I have received prophetic words all from individuals who do not know that I was diagnosed with endometriosis, ovarian cysts, and an anteverted uterus. By faith I believe and speak that I am blessed through Christ Jesus. Therefore, I say I no longer have those diagnoses. Now, all have said the same thing, “The Lord is going to bless you and your husband with a child.” I believe it, have fasted and prayed and sought on the Lord concerning this. And, to God be the glory, He has given us revelation on the details of His will. He revealed that we are having a little girl and has even gave us a name. I have even seen what she will look like. Therefore, what is the issue?
What do you do when you get discouraged?
Growing up I didn’t desire to be a wife or mother, and then suddenly in 2008 the desire came along with all of the negative doctor reports. I know the desire to be a wife and mother is pleasing to my Lord and is from God, because, like never before, I have this wonderful & overwhelming desire to be a mother and to raise our children in holiness. Yet, discouragement creeps in, and this past week it came on hard. Insert a scene in which my husband is standing with a look of sheer helplessness as I stood in front of him crying, heaving, snot-nosed, shaking, emotional, with incomprehensible words spilling from my mouth. The only audible thing he heard was, “No one knows that even while I am up there leading praise and worship, I just want to cry, fall to my knees and cry, yet I don’t because I know my position requires me to minister to another at that moment…but it…(crying)…hurts…(crying)…sooo…oooh..oh.ooh(crying) bad…”
It was (to say the least) a moment that I know many who are waiting on the Lord to bless them have experienced from time to time. Yet sadly, I felt bad and called myself pathetic for not having faith and for allowing emotions to get the best of me. God had given me my visions of His will, therefore I should not be discouraged, right?
“oh thou of little faith..”
I said all this to ask: What do you do when you have done all that you know to do and are at a point where you feel so helpless that you are in a state of despair and close to giving up on the hope of having a child? I know that God is able and will bless, but how do you overcome the moments of impatience?
My dear sister in Christ, you are not of little faith. You are simply tired and worn out from bearing the weight of your cross of barrenness. It is exhausting to want something you haven’t been given, and it is even more taxing to put your trust in prophecies that have not yet come true. You are weary, my sister, not faithless.
Perhaps, some of your weariness comes from the task of discerning whether or not those prophecies and visions came from man or from God or from both? Perhaps your doubt is not in God but in whether or not the promise of motherhood is really from Him? I am not in a position to confirm whether or not those prophecies and visions concerning your own family life came from God, but I can tell you with assurance that God is not the only one who makes such prophecies and gives such visions. The devil, false prophets, and our sinful flesh are also eager to chime in with their own voices when it comes to the things we hear with our ears, see with our eyes, and feel in our hearts.
So, in what can we put our trust? We can put our trust and faith in the Word of God in Holy Scripture. That is the one, safe place where we can be certain that it is God’s voice we are hearing, not the devil’s. It is in His Word that God has most definitely revealed His will to you and your husband regarding what He has planned for your life, and you can put your faith in that even unto eternal life.
Here is the hard truth that comes from God’s Word: Outside of giving you the Child Jesus to save you from your sin, God has never promised in His Word to give you a child of your own.
Yet, God promises you so much more in His Word, and – Joy of all joys! – He keeps His promises. God promises to love you (John 3:16, Romans 5:8); God promises to save you from your sin (Matthew 1:20-21, Mark 16:16, Romans 6); God promises in baptism to adopt you into His family and make you an heir of heaven (Galatians 3:26-4:7); God promises to never leave you but to faithfully come to you in church through the reading of His Word and in the Holy Supper (Hebrews 13:5, Matthew 18:20, Exodus 20:24b, John 1:1, Matthew 26:26-29); God promises to provide all that you need to support this body and life (Matthew 6:30-32 and 10: 29-31, Colossians 1:17); and God promises to work all things, even your barrenness, for your eternal good (Romans 8:28).
You have asked me the question, what do I do when I have done all that I know to do and am at a point where I feel so helpless that I am in a state of despair and close to giving up on the hope of a child? I CRY, all snot-nosed and heaving like you described above, trusting in God’s promise to wipe away every tear on the last day; I CEASE putting my hope in things which God has not promised to me in His Word; I CLING in faith to the promises God has given me in His Word, namely, His promises to love me, save me, and never leave nor forsake me; I WAIT on Him in prayer, trusting that whatever He brings my way is for my eternal good; I SEEK first His kingdom and His righteousness, believing that God’s grace is sufficient for even childless, barren, little me; and, I REST in the knowledge that God loves me and cares for me in Jesus, even when I fail to do the things I just listed.
You are loved by God in Jesus, dear sister, just as you are, with or without a child. We don’t always get the things we want in this life, but we do get the things we need. God promises that for us in His Word, and you can trust that promise to come true.
There’s a psalm for that. Yes, you can complain to God about your situation. This world is full of injustices, and barrenness is one of them. God is fully aware of our childless home; He knows the desires of our hearts. Thus, He invites us to bring our sorrows and hurts to Him. When we complain to God, we give evidence to our faith, that we know God is gracious and merciful to hear us and has the power to help us.
Even more, God tells us HOW to complain. There are psalms of lament in the book of Psalms. These psalms show us that it is good and right to complain to our heavenly Father. The very words to use in our complaints are given to us by God Himself.
So what’s in a psalm of lament? 1) a complaint to God about what has gone wrong and God’s failure to help 2) a plea to God for help 3) a confession of faith in God’s goodness 4) a promise of praise for God’s help
Psalm 13 demonstrates all four of these components.
1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
4 lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
A psalm of lament gives voice to our sorrows and shows us how to complain. When our lives don’t go as planned, we hurt. It seems as if God has abandoned us, and that makes us angry. This is where Satan enters. He seeks to skew our vision and desires to turn us away from God. Instead, we run with those hurts and angers to Jesus. We unload it on Him, for He alone can take our anger and heal our hurts. Thus, God uses our anger to teach us to rely on Him for all of our needs, both of body and soul.
Share your feelings of sorrow, hurt, and anger with your pastor. Go to him; he is God’s man for you in your time of need. Your pastor will help you complain to God (He can give you a whole list of lament psalms) and will also comfort you with words of God’s grace and mercy.
So go ahead and complain. God wants to hear from you. In fact, He has given you the best words to use – His own.
God Himself causes our suffering. He is not the cause of sin, mind you, but He is the cause of our suffering. [p.32] Those are the words of Dr. Gregory Schulz in his book The Problem of Suffering: A Father’s Hope.
As I read Dr. Schulz’s book, I began to think he had a window to my heart. As he shared the struggles of pain and suffering surrounding the death of two of his children, he asked why these things could happen. I asked that same question surrounding my barrenness. He wrote based on his experiences as a father and a husband. He asked why suffering happens. He questioned suffering in the world. I asked those very same things. Dr. Schulz pointed me to Jesus, the only relief from suffering.
We experience death, pain, sorrow, and grief. How can suffering come from God? Suffering is real. Suffering hurts. Suffering drives us to our knees. Suffering demonstrates to us that we are mortal. We cannot cure every disease. We cannot prevent death. We cannot administer the drug that takes away aches and pains.
No, our only relief lies in Jesus Christ. He took all of our sin sicknesses and sufferings and ingested them into Himself on the cross – for us. We are made holy in our baptisms. Once baptized, though, we are signed up for a lifetime of suffering.
There is great temptation to say that our suffering will come to a fairy-tale ending in this world. On the contrary, in this world we will have pain and sorrow. It would be foolish to insist that our suffering is going to have a glorious finish. This is a sinful world, and while we dwell in it, we will not be safe from sin. When the body and soul of the believer in Christ are united with Jesus, THEN all suffering will end. This is why we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “But deliver us from evil.” True relief is peace in Christ.
In this world, we will experience disappointment, heartache, death, miscarriage, and so much more. Take heart, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, you are not alone. Dr. Schulz writes: “…even the Gospel doesn’t give us absolute rest as long as we are away from home in this vale of tears. It can and does bring us the Good News of Jesus, the rest for our souls, but we still experience anger and anxiety.” [p.124] He continues: “My joy is not complete. It cannot be, until God grants us all a blessed reunion in heaven.” [p.125] God does not abandon you. He loves you, and He understands your suffering.
I commend this book to you. Grieve with Dr. Schulz. Live under the cross of Jesus until He takes you to Himself, where all suffering ends.
On May 23 I sat in a rocking chair at a friend’s house and held a precious little girl in my arms and sang to her of Jesus’ love, Jesus’ lambs, the Lamb’s High Feast, and Simeon’s song, which boldly asks the Lord for a peaceful departure from this life. The very next day, on her first birthday, she died. It wasn’t a surprise–everyone knew that this was the likely outcome of her disease–yet it was tragic nonetheless. What once was here is no longer and there is heartache.
On May 28 I sat in a rocking chair in my own house and held a precious little boy in my arms and sang to him as well. In great irony and yet in God’s perfect timing, He chose to send our family new life in the midst of mourning another’s death. Although the wait seemed so long, when we received the phone call two weeks ago that there was finally a baby for us, we were in shock. What once was just a prayer had become a reality and is finally here and there is much joy.
You can imagine the rejoicing, no doubt. I won’t deny that we’ve had our blissful days. Yet behind it all is the knowledge, the grave reality, that it is not complete. I don’t mean that our family isn’t complete. Only God knows when that will be. I mean the joy is incomplete. Why? Doesn’t a baby make everything perfect? Isn’t it everything that I’ve always wanted? No, it isn’t.
I say it isn’t because I live in the Body of Christ, and when one suffers, all suffer. My friend just buried her daughter. I mourn with her and cry for her, even as I shed tears that come from watching my new son sleep. My arms, now sore from the new weight I’ve been carrying around, also ache for my family members and friends who continue to wait to hold their own gifts. As I pray prayers of thanksgiving for the blessed baptismal day that brought my son into God’s family, I simultaneously cry out for God’s mercy and intervention to stir the hearts of those I love who have rejected their own baptisms. Life and death, both physical and spiritual, continue to surround us all and permeate our daily experiences and relationships. The sun frequently peaks out from behind the clouds to give us a glimpe of the Light that will one day completely surround us, but the clouds never entirely float away.
Therefore, members of the Body of Christ do not move in and out of categories such as “the suffering,” “the blessed,” “the content,” “the afflicted.” We are one, and if we truly love one another we remain together, bearing one another’s burdens, joys, gifts and tragedies. The completeness comes at the end of the struggles, at the resurrection, and only then. This side of heaven there are times when we feel that our cup runneth over and there are times when our parched lips taste no relief. But the living waters flow freely between those mansions the Lord prepares for us, and I continue to long for the healing it will bring to the Body.
“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11
I’ve been thinking of the hymn that starts, “Jesus has come and brings pleasure eternal, Alpha, Omega, Beginning and End,” (LSB 533). The wait for this family to be reunited with their child is just beginning. The wait for my family to be united with a second child has come to an end. I pray that the Alpha and Omega, our Lord Jesus, would grant our two families and all the Body of Christ the opportunity to walk this path of life together, focusing on His eternal pleasures, the full and complete joy that will most certainly be ours one day when the clouds all fade away and the Son shines in all His brilliance.
Question Submitted: I realize we have all been given different gifts, but the gift of children (or not) is such a sensitive issue. I am blessed to have mine. How much of my joy in my children am I able to share with my barren friends without hurting them? I don’t feel I should necessarily hide my joy in my own children…but there is perhaps a line somewhere to consider.
The line is in God’s commandment to serve our neighbor. Here’s what it looks like:
I have a friend whose mother died of cancer several years ago. I know that every time I speak of my mother, go out in public with my mother, write something about my mother, or even post a status on Facebook about my mother, I am treading on sensitive ground. With my words and actions, I am calling to mind that which she has lost and possibly causing her to suffer. Because of this, I try to speak, write, and act in such a way that has her best in mind.
This does not mean I cease celebrating the gift of my mother. It just means that I know my mother is a precious gift I neither merit nor deserve, so I try not to boast of her in front of my neighbor. Instead, I thank God for my mother, try to honor her, and strive to live out my vocation as daughter in service to her.
Children are another gift from God, and they should be received with all thankfulness, joy, and celebration. Yet, God’s commandment still holds true: everything we say and do should be in service to our neighbor. So, my best advice would be to thank God for your children, delight in their accomplishments, and celebrate their milestones as they come and go, but do so in public with your neighbor’s best in mind.
(A quick note for my barren sisters: Children truly are a gift given from God, even when they are not given to us. It is a good thing when another baby is born into this world. I know it is hard not to covet the children of your neighbors, but I think you will find it easier to join in on the celebration of your neighbors’ children when you take an active role in their lives. Suddenly, their celebrations are your celebrations, their joys your joys. It can be hard to celebrate when you are always on the sidelines. Vocation makes all the difference. Just some food for thought…)
Another honest, empathic moment from our dear Joanna…
Question Submitted: My friend and her husband were pregnant with their first child this year, but she miscarried. I would like to know how to approach Mother’s Day for her. I want to acknowledge the child that God created in her, but I also want to offer her sympathy in her loss. What words of encouragement would you suggest?
First, thank you for loving your friend enough to recognize that this may be a difficult day for her and for wanting to be there for her. She will treasure your thoughtfulness no matter what you say. I’m not terribly verbose myself, so I prefer the straightforward approach. What you wrote in your question was very sincere and completely appropriate. What if you said something like, “I know today may be tough for you. I’ve been thinking of you and how, even though it was for such a short time, God chose to make you a mother this past year. I’m sorry it was so brief. I just wanted you to know how much I care about you and pray for you, especially today. Can I (take you out for some dessert, come over for some tea, fill in the blank) to commemorate today?”
Maybe you were looking for something more encouraging or Scriptural, I don’t know. But speaking from personal experience, when people have come up to me to express sympathy and they give me a speech telling me things I already know, sharing with me some intellectual or spiritual knowledge, I don’t necessarily feel encouraged. I have the head knowledge, it’s just my heart that’s aching. When someone acknowledges the pain I’m in and tries to put themselves in my shoes in order to best reach out to me, followed by a kind action (or at least an offer) I see a sincere concern and I am comforted. I don’t feel alone then. This is, of course, assuming that your friend is regularly hearing God’s promises to her each week in church. If not, then it is absolutely appropriate to include these in your talk with her.
I’m sure that whatever you say she will be grateful.
I recently sat with my mother at a kitchen table on vacation, weeping in my grief at having no children. “I may never be a mother,” I confessed.
All my mother said was, “I know.” And I was comforted.
I was comforted, because my mother did not try to change me or my situation; she did not try to minimize my suffering by labeling it or explaining it away; she did not offer empty suggestions for how to fix my barrenness; she made no false promises that God would someday give me a child, for, outside of giving me the Child Jesus to save me from my Sin, God has made no such promise to me in His Word. My mother simply acknowledged my burden and then sat with me to share the weight of it.
This is when a barren woman will be comforted: in the safety of someone’s watch who believes and confesses that we are okay in Jesus, even when we suffer. A barren woman finds comfort in being reminded that there is no need to fix that which Christ has already made whole. I feel most loved when my friends and family let me be barren and remind me that the death in my womb cannot snuff out the true Life given to me at the font.
I had let my guard down too soon. I cried. I grieved for that which was not given to me.
Thanks be to God for you, my dear sisters, who kept watch with me. You listened and didn’t try to offer a rosy outcome. You hugged me and cried with me. You gave me space to let it all out. You reminded me that I am God’s child, and you prayed for me. You sent me a baby elephant. Thank you.
