Thank you, Rev. Todd Wilken and Issues, Etc., for talking with us on the radio about Mother’s Day and all that comes with it.
You can listen to the program online here.
Grief
Shepherds Who Point Us to the Lamb
There is no better time to talk about suffering than Good Friday, and our church body is blessed to have so many learned, compassionate, and insightful shepherds who know that the life of the Christian is one of taking up our crosses and following Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Take some time this weekend to watch, listen, and read the following as we focus on the suffering and death of our Lord:
Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller’s comments on Issues, Etc. about Sanctification and Suffering
Synodical President Rev. Dr. Matthew Harrison’s video, “Suffering is Purposeful through Repentance”
and Rev. Dr. Gifford Grobien’s comments specifically to you, the barren:
When couples experience barrenness, with Job we should want to worship God and to say, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). But in the midst of the devil’s temptations such faithful action and confession seem out of reach. We are distraught. There really isn’t any reason we can hear that will ease the questioning and the sadness. Once again, suffering has overshadowed the way things ought to be. Suffering overtakes even the faithful person. The cross looms and gives no reason.
Instead, the cross calls the church faithfully to follow. Faithfully. That is, even without seeing. Even without perceiving or understanding. The cross beckons us to see suffering and to see deliverance through suffering. It does not explain suffering; but it promises deliverance from suffering. More than this, the cross of Jesus Christ promises deliverance through suffering to fellowship with the one who suffered ultimately. The church is a fellowship of suffering; a fellowship with the passionate One; a fellowship with God of the universe who nevertheless stooped to suffer not just with you, but for you.
Suffering, by its very nature, takes time. We, on the one hand, desire immediate results. We have our food through the drive-through, our information at the touch of a screen, our friends at the click of a mouse. Even our sins are forgiven in a moment, at the Word of absolution. That much is true. Yet suffering connotes experience. It implies time. Deliverance comes after a time of suffering, and this time is not in vain. During this time we are sanctified. We grow in the love of God through the Spirit of God. We are sustained by this same Spirit through God’s indomitable gifts, so that no temptation overtakes us that is beyond our ability. God is faithful, and with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape.
Escape. Deliverance. God provides the way of deliverance from suffering. He conforms us to the cross so that we would die and live in Christ. God delivers from infertility. It takes time. It may take a lifetime. But there is deliverance in the cross.
One of the ways to endure suffering as we await deliverance is to hear God’s Word and to pray. When we pray the Psalms we do both. God knows what it is to suffer, for He gives us psalms to pray even in suffering–psalms of lament. Thus we pray the psalms of lament. Psalm 13: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” Psalm 59: “For the cursing and lies that [my enemies] utter, consume them in wrath; consume them till they are no more, that they may know that God rules.”
Pray these psalms, knowing that the enemy spoken of is the devil, the tempter overcome by suffering. He is overcome by Christ’s suffering, indeed, but it is true that Satan is overcome in his work in our lives when we persevere through suffering. When we are afflicted, the root temptation is to curse God and turn away in unbelief. God is all powerful, so our affliction must be his fault! That is the temptation of Satan. That is the theology of glory. So, when we persevere in faith, in spite of affliction, the work of the devil in our particular circumstances is also overcome through the power of the Spirit in the Word.
Mama Bear
I know you’re afraid. I am, too.
We’re going against natural instinct, you and me. We know we’re not supposed to step in between a mama bear and her cub, but that’s exactly what we’re doing when we speak out against infertility medicine which breaks commandments of the LORD. We are stepping in between a mother and the children to which she feels entitled.
And a mama bear’s roar is terrifying.
Yet, we step in, nonetheless, because all children are loved and wanted by God, not just by mama bears. Every child’s value is best seen and understood at the foot of the cross on which Christ’s bloody sacrifice was laid out for them. We love these children, because God loves them; and we don’t want any of them to be valued solely for what they provide for the mama bear or the research technician or any other self-serving individual. We want to protect these precious children from being recklessly created outside of the one-flesh union where they can be graded, tested, abandoned, and destroyed.
Things could be different. We could be proactive in applying theology to infertility medicine rather than reactive. We could intentionally teach and counsel couples to live life under the cross of barrenness rather than encourage them to try every possible means to overcome it. We could speak the truth in love that children are not a commodity to which we are entitled in this life but a gift which God in His wisdom gives and doesn’t give. We could be honest in the Church and admit that God has not promised in His Word to give the gift of children to everyone.
Maybe, just maybe, this kind of honesty spoken in love would help the barren mama bears cope a little better. I know it helps me.
Unanswered Prayer
Have you yet to receive a “yes” to your prayer for a child? Does it feel like God leaves your prayer unanswered?
Our Sunday school class has been studying prayer. This past Sunday, Pastor Schuermann drew our attention to this quote from Dr. Martin Luther on the problem of unanswered prayer:
It is not a bad sign, but a very good one, if things seem to turn out contrary to our requests. Just as it is not a good sign if everything turns out favorably for our requests.
The reason is that the excellence of God’s counsel and will are far above our counsel and will, as Isaiah 55:8-9 says:”For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” And Psalm 94:11: “The Lord knows the thoughts of men, that they are vain.” And Psalm 33:10: “The Lord brings the counsels of the nations to nought; He frustrates the plans of the peoples and casts away the counsels of princes.” Hence it results that when we pray to God for something, whatever these things may be, and He hears our prayers and begins to give us what we wish, He gives in such a way that He contravenes all of our conceptions, that is, our ideas, so that He may seem to us to be more offended after our prayers and to do less after we have asked than He did before. And He does all this because it is the nature of God first to destroy and tear down whatever is in us before He gives us His good things, as the Scripture says: “The Lord makes poor and makes rich, He brings down to hell and raises up” (1 Samuel 2:7).
By this His most blessed counsel He renders us capable of receiving His gifts and His works. And we are capable of receiving His works and His counsels only when our own counsels have ceased and our works have stopped and we are made purely passive before God, both with regard to our inner as well as our outward activities. This is what He means when He says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). Therefore, when everything is hopeless for us and all things begin to go against our prayers and desires, then those unutterable groans begin. And then “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). For unless the Spirit were helping, it would be impossible for us to bear this action of God by which He hears us and accomplishes what we pray for. Then the soul is told: “Be strong, wait for the Lord, and let your heart take courage and bear up under God” (Psalm 27:14). And again: “Be subject to the Lord and pray to Him” “and He will act” (Psalm 37:7, 5). (Luther on Romans 8:26, AE 25:364-5)
Effects of Sin
Sin – all Sin, Adam and Eve’s, yours and mine – leaves our world broken, laboring in pain for the resurrection when all things will be made new. Sin leaves even our children broken, and so we miscarry.
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.
Hear from a grieving mother, your sister in Christ:
Have you ever tried to catch a snowflake, anxious to see its intricacies, only to find that it has melted before your eyes even had a chance to focus? Have you ever seen a flash in the sky and turned around just as the last sparkles of a shooting star vanish, only to realize you missed the show? But then there are other times when you’re walking out of a store, late in the evening, tired from the days events, when suddenly the whole sky lights up right in front of you, right over your head, and the shooting star seems so close you could reach up and touch it…and no one else even gets to see it. It’s like it was only for you, and you didn’t even ask for it.
When I think of the baby that just died in my belly before I was even big enough to change into maternity clothes, I don’t think of the melting snowflake…I think of the shooting star that lit up the sky right in front of my face. I did not deserve Anastasia. My sin and status as a fallen creature is so interwoven into my being that its claws reach not only into my own life…but into the flesh of my children. It is evident in Anastasia’s death. It was not just my sin, but our sin. We all share in the sin that leaves us broken, weeping, alone, sick, and sometimes…in despair. We all share in death because we all share in sin, in our sin.
But there’s something else we all share in…our Savior. Anastasia was bathed in the blood of Christ. Her little ears were covered in God’s Word. And her home, for twelve weeks, was the body of one Baptized into Christ and made a temple of the Holy Spirit by God’s gift of Holy Baptism.
The doctors offered to let me have a D&C the day we found out Anastasia had died. But I couldn’t go. I was so overcome with my sin, with it’s effects, that I needed to grieve and confess. I have never wept so hard or long. Then I called a dear sister in Christ and, when she answered, I burst into tears telling her I didn’t even know why I was calling. We wept together.
And in Anastasia’s death, in my sin, I felt dead with her. But Jesus, He was dead too. Not half dead, not a little bit dead, He was dead. He was dead in our trespasses and sins. Have you ever thought about and wondered what those three days must have been like for His followers? God was dead. They were alone. And to add salt to the wound, they had to carry on in the work and physical labor of burial while grieving. And yet they were still alive. God’s power was enough to sustain His creation even when He was dead.
I carried Anastasia for twelve weeks. And then I carried her, dead, for ten days. One of those days was Ash Wednesday. I will never forget carrying her to the front of the church to receive ashes on my forehead. Presenting my other children for ashes felt like I was handing them over to death as well. Knowing that I infected them with the same sin that poured out death on my sixth child was unbearable. We were all being marked with death…but, it was death in the shape of life, even while I carried death inside of me.
And then I went into labor. I labored for five hours at home. I’ve given birth four times at home to our living children and the pain was no less in duration or strength to birth one so small. When she came I scooped her up and I held my snowflake. Twelve weeks with ten fingers and ten toes, two tiny ears and her mouth open just far enough that I could see her tongue and gums. She is God’s tiny miracle, put right into my hands for me to behold. She might be gone now, as quickly as a shooting star, but she was there, she was mine, and I am overcome with God’s mercy, goodness, and love for us sinners before we yet knew Him. The Lord is merciful. He forgives all. And because we are adopted by His grace, we and our children are adopted into LIFE. Death is not the end of Anastasia’s story, or of my or your stories. Easter is coming. Come soon, Lord Jesus.
Melanie Sorenson
All Depends on Our Possessing
When with sorrow I am stricken,
Hope anew my heart will quicken;
All my longing shall be stilled.
To His lovingkindness tender
Soul and body I surrender,
For on God alone I build.
Well He knows what best to grant me;
All the longing hopes that haunt me,
Joy and sorrow, have their day.
I shall doubt His wisdom never;
As God wills, so be it ever;
I commit to Him my way.
If my days on earth He lengthen,
God my weary soul will strengthen;
All my trust in Him I place.
Earthly wealth is not abiding,
Like a stream away is gliding;
Safe I anchor in His grace.
“All Depends on Our Possessing,” Lutheran Service Book, 732 s.4-6
First Officer
Question Submitted: I’ve noticed that several of your hosts have adopted children this year. Does it hurt that you are the only HRTB host not to have been given the gift of a child?
Don’t gasp, readers. This is not an audacious question. It is an honest one, and, frankly, I get asked it quite often. So, here is my honest answer:
First, from this website’s conception, my goal was never to have only childless hosts. In fact, if you have ever referred to the host page of this site, you already know that Rebecca, Kristi, Melissa, and Sandra have been mothers for years, whether through the gift of conception or adoption. I invited these sage women to cohost this site with me, because I am terribly aware of my own shortcomings. I am not an authority on every topic we cover on this site, and I rely heavily on their experience, wisdom, prudence, and compassion in responding to such issues as miscarriage, secondary infertility, adoption, and other concerns that touch upon the subject of barrenness.
Now, in response to the hurting portion of your question:
It does not hurt that I am the only HRTB host not to have children; it hurts that I don’t have children, period.
Yet.
It is remarkably easy to rejoice with my fellow hosts in the gifts they have been given this year, because I, too, have been given special gifts from God. I have been given the gift of knowledge from God’s Word that children are His gift to give and that He is wise in His giving; I have been given the gift of faith which trusts in the goodness of God’s giving and His not giving; I have been given the gift of fellowship in the Body of Christ, and I get to participate in the joy of my mother-sisters; I have been given the gift of assurance that my own prayers and sorrows are made known to my Father in heaven, because I have a Mediator who always intercedes on my behalf at God’s right hand; I have been given the gift of a Comforter who, through Word and Sacrament, grants me peace that surpasses all understanding; and, last but not least, I have been given a special vocation in the lives of my fellow HRTB hosts: First Officer of the Starship Motherhood.
What, exactly, does the First Officer do?
The First Officer receives stunned, amazed, blessed, joyous, play-by-play texts when Baby Mayes arrives.
The First Officer gets to share meals with Baby DeGroot and Big Boy Ostapowich.
The First Officer gets the privilege of being one of the first people to receive updates and pictures of Baby Leckband in China so that she can post said updates and pictures to Mama Leckband’s website for her while international internet access is limited.
Most importantly, the First Officer receives tender empathy at all times, even from across an ocean in the middle of a sleepless night just after Baby Leckband has been put into the arms of her family for the first time:
“I know there is joy and pain for you personally on this day. Know this, dear sister, you are loved for who you are TODAY. Your worth is found in the shadow of the One who has borne all of our suffering. His gifts are yours each and every day, despite your earthly pains and sorrows. You. Are. Loved!”
Does it hurt? Not as much as it could, thanks to the compassionate generosity of my fellow hosts who never leave me out but put me right in the middle of the celebration.
I am one blessed, barren woman.
Salute,
First Officer Schuermann
Wrestling With God, Against God
I remember hearing a sermon preached years ago that made such an impression on me that I have thought of it many times over the years and wished that I still had a copy of it. I believe it was called, “Wrestling With God, Against God,” with the corresponding lesson being Genesis 32 when Jacob wrestled with God incarnate. The message stayed with me because it was something I had never heard vocalized before, though I had felt it: sometimes in life we find ourselves in situations where God seems to be against us. No matter what we do we just can’t get a break. It’s as if we, like Jacob, were battling with a force who we thought wanted the best for us, but who won’t let us by to get to the destination that we seek. We are angry that we can’t proceed, we’re exhausted by the fight, and we are confused about who this contender really is: our friend or our foe?
My friend Sara, who lost her one-year-old daughter last May, has seemed a pillar of strength through these many years of dealing with serious health issues for two of her children. She has written beautiful posts that encourage and uplift her readers, even through her tragedies. She knows what Scripture has to say about God’s love and compassion. She can repeat it well to her readers. But in her recent post she confesses:
Round moons, and all the tulips in Holland couldn’t change the fact that this life of pain and sorrow was threatening to swallow me. From where I sat, in the throes of depression, the truths I’d believed, rehearsed, written and proclaimed couldn’t gain traction.
Sara is wrestling with God, against God. Even she, who was and is a model to so many who are experiencing their own trials, has arrived at that point.
Jesus’ own cousin, the one of whom He said, “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist,” (Matt. 11:1), sent word through his disciples from his prison cell to find out from Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matt. 11:3). Some commentaries say that John did this only to prove a point to his disciples; he never doubted Jesus’ mission. After all, he’d been at Jesus’ Baptism when the heavens had opened and the Father Himself had spoken. But some pastors I’ve talked to don’t buy this. John was in prison, suffering, and Jesus, his own relative who had proved to have power from on high, was apparently doing nothing. Is it possible that John, great as he was, reached a point where he, too, was wrestling with God, against God?
You can get to that point and still be a Christian. You can shake your fists and yell and feel forsaken and beaten down and still be “with God.” Because He isn’t going anywhere. In our frustration we can beg God to let us by and yet simultaneously we beg Him not to leave us. When your heart doesn’t feel the joy that was meant to accompany all of God’s promises to you in His Word, He doesn’t turn His back on you. When you demand answers for why this is happening to you, He may not give them to you, but He won’t plug His ears either. Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller made an excellent point in his Issues, Etc. radio interview following the shootings in Aurora, CO (paraphrasing): “Jesus doesn’t always give us the answers—but He always gives us Himself.” He gives us Himself sacramentally, when He is literally poured out for us into the chalice from which we drink. He gives us Himself through the absolution spoken by our pastors, “I forgive you all yours sins…” He gives us Himself through our fellow Christians, who reach out to us in love and concern.
Sometimes you just reach the bottom. All your efforts to feel better have failed. The hope is gone. And yet the Hope is not gone. Jesus is at the bottom, too. How you feel about His promises or the plans He may have for your life do not in any way change the validity of those promises, the efficacy of His Words, or His real and ever-present love for you. It’s easy to tell you to take comfort, to have faith, to “hold on.” It’s easy to tell you what to do or what to feel. But when you’re at the bottom, sometimes you can’t do or feel anything. And it’s OK to be honest with God about this.
Lord, I can’t wrestle anymore. I have nothing left. Dear Jesus, please carry me. Please give me the gifts You promise, even if I can’t receive them joyfully yet. Even if I don’t feel comforted. Keep giving me Yourself so that I may not drown in my sorrows in the bottom of this pit, but float to the top on all that You have poured out for me. Stay with me, even when I despair. Amen.
Compelling Distress
“But where there is to be a true prayer, there must be seriousness. People must feel their distress, and such distress presses them and compels them to call and cry out. Then prayer will be made willingly, as it ought to be. People will need no teaching about how to prepare for it and to reach the proper devotion. But the distress that ought to concern most (both for ourselves and everyone), you will find abundantly set forth in the Lord’s Prayer. Therefore, this prayer also serves as a reminder, so that we meditate on it and lay it to heart and do not fail to pray. For we all have enough things that we lack. The great problem is that we do not feel or recognize this. Therefore, God also requires that you weep and ask for such needs and wants, not because He does not know about them [Matthew 6:8], but so that you may kindle your heart to stronger and greater desires and make wide and open your cloak to receive much [Psalm 10:17].” Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, III: 26-27.*
* Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (ed. Paul Timothy McCain; St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 411.
The Great Getaway – IT’S A GO!
It’s official. The Great Getaway has been slotted for the last weekend in July.
(contented sigh)
Who: Any woman who suffers from barrenness, secondary infertility, or is grieving a recent miscarriage *
What: The Great Getaway retreat agenda
When: Friday, July 26th through Sunday, July 28th
Where: St. Louis, MO
Why: To getaway for a bit and relax in the company of your sisters in Christ
Interested in attending? Register online today and hightail it to St. Louis by 6:00 p.m. on Friday, July 26th. We’ll take care of the rest.
If you would like to attend the retreat but have trouble meeting the financial requirements, we HRTB hosts have penned a letter that can be sent to your family and/or friends asking for their sponsorship of your retreat attendance. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any help.
* Space is limited for this retreat. Women who have already contacted us expressing an interest in “The Great Getaway” get first dibs. After that, it is first come, first serve.
He Remembers the Barren 