How to Care for the Barren

White Knights

knightThere are some men, particularly protective brothers in Christ, who look at me with understanding in their eyes but say nothing. They simply act.

They put their baby in my arms before I can say no.

They walk into the kitchen at their child’s birthday party to silently check on me.

They hug me hard after church on Christmas Eve before I drive home to my own, childless house.

They hand me a gift bag of homemade candy on Mother’s Day.

They drive me to far-away presentations.

They stand at my side and put a comforting hand on my shoulder when IVF death statistics are read aloud at conferences.

They travel across state borders to attend a roundtable discussion on IVF and embryo adoption.

They buy a copy of He Remembers the Barren and read it.

They pray for me.

Truth be told, these men are princely, white knights to this barren damsel in distress, and I am so grateful. Thank you, silent men, for everything you do.

When God Hides Himself from Us

Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior. Isaiah 45:15

“We’re called to leave the hidden things hidden. We should not try to figure them out. There might not be a satisfying answer in God’s Word to every question that is raised by hardship and cross-bearing. Jesus directs us to turn our eyes away from what we cannot fathom to the blessings that are ours by faith in the Gospel, even in the midst of tantalizing why-questions. Our many unanswered questions concerning God in this world might go unanswered–but God in Jesus Christ is there in the Gospel.” (Holger Sonntag, “Our Cross with God” [CPH], 38)

MP900262788

Navel-Gazing

Grief is different than self-pity, I think, though the line between them can get a bit hazy.

Grief happens, while self-pity is manifested.

Grief comes to a person, while self-pity comes from a person.

Grief is born out of suffering, while self-pity is born of our own sin.

Grief is endured, while self-pity is relished.

Grief moves us to call upon the LORD, while self-pity looks to our own navel for comfort.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2), dear sisters, not our navels.

button_Jalb

How and When to Give

Question Submitted: I can’t praise your book highly enough, but I’m not always sure about how/when to give it to people. Sometimes, people are not in a place where they’re ready to talk about barrenness, or they may feel that others giving them resources is intrusive. It’s such a sensitive topic. Do you have any suggestions for how/when to give a copy of He Remembers the Barren to others?

I know what you mean. He Remembers the Barren is not exactly the kind of gift you want to wrap up and put under the tree for your loved one. Who wants to open a package and find this inside instead of something from Bed, Bath, and Beyond? Or who wants to pull a book with this cover out of a stocking in front of family and friends? Let’s all say it together: awkward.

HRTB.Proof 1

Yet, I still think He Remembers the Barren is a good gift worthy of giving, because it reminds all of us that God’s love and favor is not dependent on our becoming mothers but, instead, on Jesus becoming our sin on the cross so that He might give us His blessed righteousness. In Christ, we are freed from the burden of sin and the curse of death that comes with our wretched barrenness; in Christ, we are made worthy of God’s love and favor; in Christ, we have true hope whether we are mothers or not.

So, please consider giving your loved one a copy of He Remembers the Barren, but use some of your James Bond-esque stealth in the giving. Here are some suggested tactics (Q and M approved, of course):

  • Read the book yourself, so that you know what your loved one is going through and can better love her through her grief and suffering.
  • Give the book to your loved one’s parents, siblings, pastor, etc. for the same reasons.
  • Make sure your church library has a copy of the book on hand as well as your local public library.
  • Write a note to go with the book (i.e. “This book is not a label or a judgment. It is a great big hug from me to you. I read it, and it helped me know that God remembers me even when I suffer. I thought it might help you, too. I love you.”)
  • Give her the book in private and at a time when she does not need to be around people for awhile. You can mail it to her home, or you can hand it to her wrapped and tell her to wait until she is alone to open it.
  • If you two already have a history of openly discussing her barrenness, then give it to her in person when it is just the two of you. And tell her what she means to you.
  • Give her the book without any expectations on your own part, and saturate the giving in prayer.
  • Once you give it to her, don’t bring it up. Wait for her to talk about it or not talk about it.
  • Don’t be offended if she doesn’t read it for awhile. Depending on what phase of the grief cycle she is currently experiencing, she may want nothing to do with it at first. She might even be embarrassed or offended. Still, won’t it be nice that the book will be there for her when she is ready for it?

I have had people turn shades of green at the mere mention of my book. The thought of reading something about the very thing they loathe makes them sick to their stomachs, because their present grief is too poignant. Such is the way of suffering, so I don’t force the book on them. Still, I try to give it to them, because I think the book really does offer comfort and empathy and relief amidst the pain of suffering.

Thank you for caring enough for your loved one to do what is hard. She is blessed to have you in her life.

The Great Temptation

The great temptation of barrenness is to believe that God’s blessed favor will only come to you in the form of a child of your own.

Well, it doesn’t, though it does come in the form of a child – the child Jesus, born to die for your sins.

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!” (Isaiah 54:1 and Galatians 4:27 [ESV])

God’s blessed favor is for you.

MC900436345

“To the barren ladies I know and the ones I don’t”

bleeding-heart-flower copySomeone loves you and prays for you and bears with you, dear sisters. Read this and rest today while a sister in Christ shoulders your cross.

I’m the one with more children than you have fingers on your right hand. I feel ostentatious and gaudy around you. I feel like having my babies with me is in poor taste, like I am flaunting my riches. I cringe to imagine that you might feel the same way, you who have suffered so much in your own mind and who are now subjected in real time, in public, to stare in the face the dream that hasn’t come true for you. I am so sorry it hasn’t. I am so sorry to think that I might be causing you more pain. I ache for the love you show my silly little people. I don’t know if I could.

I sin your sins. When I see all the world’s human trash with its ill-bred and empirically worthless children, I seethe to think of the pearls cast before them while your clean neck and open ears and graceful wrists and industrious fingers are bare. When another moron teenager turns up pregnant, I want to rage at God for what I can only see as unimaginable injustice and just plain poor planning. I want to make it right. I want to distribute the world’s children sensibly by my own self-righteous fiat. I want YOU, you wonderful, smart, talented, responsible, faithful Christian person, to be a mother of nations. NOT THEM.

I see it. I didn’t want to, but I loved you so much I finally looked and really saw it, or saw it as well as one such as myself is able to. It was the worst thing I have ever seen. It looks like utter desolation, like horror. I can’t look long. I can’t believe it’s the view out your window every hour of every day. Oh, you. You have lost what you never had.

But I know also that we are nearsighted. I am so nearsighted outside of this metaphor that, without my glasses, I can look into a dark bedroom where I know there is a digital clock and still see no light whatsoever. This is how we see into eternity also. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. So I know that, despite its appearance to myopics like us, the desolation is not utter. I know you know too, and we walk by faith together because our sight is untrustworthy.

I cannot tell you how much I respect and admire you for not trying to take by force what God has not given. You are like the man on a lifeboat, crazy with thirst, who still knows better than to drink seawater even though his companions fall to the temptation. It must be so hard to watch them–to watch them sicken, to watch them die, to watch them live. You are the one who clings to a true hope and has the best chance of healthy survival. You trust the Lord, though he slay you.

I thank you for the witness that you are to the sacred blessing of marriage no matter what the quantifiable yield of that marriage. I thank you for the witness you are to the inherent value of femininity no matter what the quantifiable yield of that femininity.

I don’t say these things to you because I feel I don’t know you well enough, or I don’t know how you are doing with all this right now, or I know you feel as sick of this being the relentless topic of your life as I am of the relentless topics of my life. But I want you to know that I am always thinking all these things even as you are, and I pray for you always. I’m sorry if my not saying something makes it seem like I don’t care or I don’t really get it. I know I don’t really get it, but I try to, and I care so much.

I know you feel empty, but you bear the heaviest burden, and bearing is never without gain. God bless you, strong one.

Glory vs. Cross

That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened [Rom 1:20]. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened. (Martin Luther in his Heidelberg Disputation, points 19-22)

For example:

A theologian of glory calls barrenness a trial to be overcome, a burden which can be revoked by some great act of faith on our part, a curse that can be lifted by true love’s kiss. (Works Cited: My Own Wishes and Desires: A Treatise, The Complete Works of Joel Osteen, and The Wisdom of the Disney Princesses)

A theologian of the cross calls barrenness a terrible brokenness of the flesh which results from Sin in the world, a cross to be endured joyfully in light of Christ’s promise to make all things new on The Last Day, a suffering given to us by God who loves us and molds us and disciplines us and shapes us and points us straight to Christ’s own suffering on the cross for our own salvation and comfort. (Works Cited: God’s Word as revealed in The Book of Romans)

MC900441763

Hopeless?

Stressed BusinesswomanQuestion Submitted: I’ve been married for nearly 15 years. I have no biological children and desire so much to be pregnant and to have children.  I am resistant to just giving up but also feel like a fool for hoping otherwise. My friends don’t understand, they just keep hoping for me. Am I just supposed to be barren? I am sadly and regretfully uncontent at this point. We are pursuing foster care and open to adoption but I want more. I want to hold that precious life to my breast after carrying it in my womb! I just ache and am hopeless!

He knows exactly what you’re going through. The Creator of the universe, the Triune God, knows and He hears your cries. He shows you this in His Holy Word, through the story of His servant, Job, who lived thousands of years before you. “Where then is my hope?!” Job called out, and God heard his hopelessness (Job 17:14). God sees your friends and the lack of support they seem to be giving you, just as He saw Job’s friends and heard his plea to them: “Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!” (Job 19:21).

“Though He slay me…” Job started to tell his friends, admitting again that God is in control of his life (Job 13:15), “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” Job knows he has no choice. It is God alone who can rescue him from his hopelessness. And what is it that Job realizes he should be hoping for? Does he hope for healing from his physical suffering? A restoration of his wealth? More children to comfort the loss of his family members? Yes, I’m sure he does, but these hopes are not what are revealed to us. The words we do have from him are universal. They apply to not just Job, but to you as well. And to me. This is one of God’s great gifts to us, these words that were written so very long ago, with us in mind:

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27).

The breasts that long to nurse, the womb that longs to carry–these are part of the “skin” that will eventually be “destroyed”. These maternal experiences, precious though I’m sure they are, pass away quickly. It is so easy to dream them into more than they are, to put our hope in being able to make them our own instead of hoping in the One who has made us His own, and “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). Yes, Christ did more, and still does more, than we could ever ask for, when He suffered and rose on our behalf to save our souls from being destroyed as well. And our bodies, thanks to this great Atonement, will be recreated and no longer broken as they are now.

King David was yet another biblical figure who wrote about hope. He knew what it was like to lose a child and, like you probably have done, asked the question, “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?” (Ps. 39:7). But by the power of the Holy Spirit he was able to immediately answer his own question: “My hope is in You.” He, too, worshiped the same Redeemer as Job and looked not so much to earthly deliverance from tragedy, but to his Savior for all eternity. His book of Psalms records the many things in which he placed his hope: God’s Word (Ps. 119:74), the Lord’s salvation (Ps. 119.166), the Lord’s steadfast love (Ps. 147:11). These do not pass away. Menopause or hysterectomies don’t remove them. They remain forever, for you.

And if you feel that it is time to let go of the hope of pregnancy, fear not. There are many hopes left to be had.
“No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

Bowling

MP900405096I am reading your blog. (Yes, I mean you.)

And I understand the temptation to rant. People really do say awful things to you. They publicly drill you for details about your sex life (which is no one else’s business but your husband’s), suggest home remedies for amping up fertility (which you tried five years ago when the ideas first came out in Redbook), and generally pry and poke and dig at you because you dared cry at sewing circle when Mrs. Jones announced her daughter’s pregnancy.

I understand. It stinks to be on the receiving end of such tactless attentions, but there is something else that needs understanding in these situations.

There will always be bowling balls in your life.

There will always be people who take aim at your barrenness and flatten your feelings like a bunch of pins down a waxy lane. These people spare no verbal expense but always go for the strike, recklessly voicing their expectations for your womb, opining on projected reasons for your childlessness, and offering up armchair diagnoses of your health for the benefit of, well, I guess, themselves. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you think, say, or do. These hooks, crankers, and tweeners are going to seek you out and hit you full-on like a 16-pounder.

But, for the most part, everyone else in this world takes their conversation cues from you. They won’t talk about your barrenness unless you bring it up; they won’t make suggestions about your diet unless you openly discuss your metabolic problems; they won’t offer up ideas for how to get pregnant unless you share with them your desire for a child and subsequent frustration in your childlessness; they won’t try to help you feel better unless you look miserable; in other words, they won’t dwell on that which you don’t dwell.

So, let’s give the world a break and take some responsibility for the conversations we keep. Let’s not blog-blame others for finishing the conversations we start ourselves and, instead, kindly explain to our friends and acquaintances face-to-face what we need most from them.

And as for the bowling balls who barrel towards us unprompted, well, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5 ESV).

That’s good news, I think.

Lord Jesus Christ, in Your deep compassion You rescue us from whatever may hurt us. Teach us to love You above all things and to love our neighbors as ourselves; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. (Collect for July, 14, 2013, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost)