Infertility

A Blessed Exchange

By Melissa DeGroot

Adam and I are hosting our second exchange student this year, something we decided to do partly at Knox’s request after our first experience hosting five years ago.

Whenever the subject comes up, people sometimes say, “Oh gosh, that’s such a big job. That’s a big responsibility.”

And yes. It is.

But so are a lot of things that involve caring for other human beings.

I’ve been thinking lately about why we said yes in the first place. There wasn’t one main reason. Instead, I think several little things came together that made opening our home to another teenager an open and willing endeavor, knowing full well the ups and downs that can come along the way.

For one thing, it was familiar to me. My family hosted an exchange student when I was in high school, and I grew up in a larger family. There were already plenty of people, personalities, schedules, needs, noise, and activity in our house.

So perhaps there’s still a little bit of that mentality in me:

What’s one more?

There’s also something wonderful about welcoming someone from another country into your home. We may not be able to travel across the world and immerse ourselves in another culture, but suddenly another culture can walk right through our front door.

You learn about someone else’s food, language, family, customs, assumptions, humor, and way of seeing the world. And they learn about yours. It’s a remarkably immersive experience without ever leaving home.

But there was another reason that mattered deeply to us.

Knox is an only child.

Hosting an exchange student gives him, at least temporarily, the experience of having another teenager in the house. Someone his age is suddenly sitting at the dinner table, riding in the car, sharing the bathroom, navigating family schedules, joking around, getting annoyed, helping out, and generally participating in all the ordinary chaos of family life.

In a small way, he gets to experience something resembling a sibling relationship. And, of course, that means it isn’t always sunshine and roses.

There are communication bumps. There are cultural differences. There are parenting moments and misunderstandings. There are house rules and expectations that have to be explained. Sometimes a lot. Adding another person to a family changes the dynamics of the family.

The initial hospitality morphs over the weeks and months into real life, working to understand and care for each other through our worldviews. And perhaps that’s one of the things I appreciate most about the experience.

As Christians, Adam and I are also very aware that when we invite someone into our home while raising our own son in the faith, we are inviting them into our actual life and not some polished version of it.

We aren’t hosting an exchange student in order to convert them. There are appropriate rules and boundaries surrounding these programs, and we respect those. But we have also been intentional and honest about who we are as a family in the application and interview process–while the students also share in their applications how open they are to participate in a host family’s religious practices.

Our Christian faith isn’t something we can simply remove from our household for a year. Church, prayer, conversations about faith, and life together as Christians are part of the rhythm of our home.

Both of our exchange students have happily attended church with us, and when questions or conversations about faith naturally arise, we talk about them.

What an interesting privilege that has been.

By God’s grace, another young person from another part of the world gets a little glimpse of the faith and hope we cling to every day.

But it gets real, y’all.

Christian hospitality doesn’t always look like sitting around the dinner table having profound conversations about Jesus.

Sometimes it sounds like:

“Whose turn is it to empty the dishwasher?”

“Where are you going?”

“What time will you be home?”

“Did you do your homework?”

In other words, it looks a whole lot like family.

And maybe that is precisely the point.

God so often does His greatest work through these ordinary vocations-the mundane, repetitive acts of feeding people, driving them to practice and appointments, washing dishes, setting boundaries, forgiving misunderstandings (especially my own!), sharing meals, going to church, laughing together, and learning how to live with people who aren’t exactly like us–biological or otherwise!

Hospitality isn’t merely entertaining someone in your home.

It is making room.

Room at the table. Room in the schedule. Room in the refrigerator. Room in the car. Room in your patience. And sometimes, by God’s grace, room in your heart for someone you might never otherwise have known.

Yes, hosting an exchange student is a big responsibility.

But so is loving any new neighbor.

It teaches us to love someone new as Christ has loved us.

And after doing this twice now, I think we’re discovering that making room for one more is a gift each time.

So far, it has been a great experience, since other doors like foster care and adoption have closed to us. That’s a post for another time.

In the meantime, this teenage addition to our family has been a blessed exchange.

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #5

by Katie Schuermann

When I imagined the joy of announcing to my parents that they had become grandparents, I could not also imagine joy in explaining to them that their grandbabies were being kept in a clinic until further notice.

The very thought of such an exchange checked my ambition, for it drove home the point to me that children belong with their parents. To try explaining anything otherwise highlighted the absurdity of IVF.

Put another way, parents cannot parent children stored in a clinic, and grandparents cannot help raise grandchildren they never see nor touch. No-one in the family can live out their God-given vocations in IVF, for creating children apart from their parents stunts and disorders basic human vocations.

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.

The Hysterectomy

by Rebecca Mayes

There is a strange phenomena in Western medicine that if an organ is diseased you should just cut it out. This seems to be our best method of “healing” after thousands of years of practicing medicine. Much of our society is walking around without gall bladders, a kidney, a scrotum, part of their intestines, breasts, and, of course, a uterus.

It was recommended early on in my reproductive health struggles that I have a hysterectomy. This was the best promise for relief, they said. But I refused.

So why keep it around? Why not get rid of it? This organ was supposed to be healthy for me, and getting rid of it could put me at risk for cardiovascular issues, a decrease in bone density, or a messed-up metabolism. But most importantly, if it actually performed the way it was supposed to (and there was always the chance it could) then I would have a child, and that would be worth every minute of pain and discomfort and unpredictability. If I let them cut out this organ, I knew they’d be removing hope along with it. To let go of one meant letting go of the other.

So I kept it, despite the fact that it could not contain or control its own endometrial lining, but allowed parts of it to go astray inside my abdominal cavity, creating webs of tissue that would sear with pain when hormone levels changed.

I kept it, even though its partners-in-crime, the ovaries, would regularly spawn cysts that sometimes grew until they burst, causing me to go into shock and rendering me lifeless on the floor (once in the bathroom at work, where the EMS kindly extracted me).

I kept it, regardless of how disappointed my OB/GYN always looked when I handed in my fertility tracker, which was supposed to have green, yellow, and red baby stickers lined up and color-coded, in an obvious pattern. Mine looked more like a traffic light gone haywire.

I kept it, though its unpredictability and lack of punctuality pushed me to the brink of insanity by producing monthly (I use this term loosely) signs and symptoms that gave hope of a pregnancy and then dashed them to pieces, over and over and over again.

I kept it, and simultaneously detested it, when it neglected to nurture my one biological child and instead allowed him?/her? to die.

I kept it, though the amount of blood it was producing in my 40’s was enough to make me anemic.

Until one day, I finally told this uterus of mine (figuratively) and my OB/GYN (literally), “Cut it out.”

This was not, of course, without first praying about the decision and talking to my husband. I felt like a hypocrite, having denounced so many times over the years the over-prescribing of hysterectomies to women who were done having children. It’s true that this was (still is?) a flaw in our medical system, and few physicians or patients recognized the important role this reproductive organ serves beyond reproducing. But my doctor, a Christian man whose joy in life was to help couples bring children into the world and and also lead healthy, pain-free lives, could truly do nothing more for me. It was time to let go.

Seven years later, I can tell you that this surgery completely changed my life. My wise doctor left the healthiest ovary to help me gently transition through menopause, so there was no sudden hormonal shift. My physical pain was completely gone. The optimistic voice in my head that chanted “but what if??” incessantly each month had ceased to haunt me. I was no longer afraid of sudden, conspicuous leaks in public places, or of having a cyst episode while away from home. I could finally have an entire month where I was fully present with, and taking care of, my precious family. My heart had always loved my family, but my body had prevented me from taking care of them consistently. Now this cross had been lifted, and I “rejoiced with great joy.” I still do.

My story is not your story. My decision is not recommended to all who share my medical issues. Sometimes surgery does not provide the full relief a woman is looking for. I knew that going into it, which is one reason I was hesitant to do it earlier. There are no guarantees. The idea of intentionally removing all hope of conceiving probably sounds insane to those of you still without any children, but I was not in that position. I was at a place where I was ready to let the surgeon take both the hope and the pain together.

After our first adoption, someone gifted us with a beautifully framed poem, which read as follows:

“Not flesh of my flesh,
nor bone of my bone
but very remarkably,
all my own.
And never forget,
for a single minute,
that you weren’t born
under my heart,
but in it.”

I read the poem to my oldest son when he was around 5 years old. He looked up at me, bewildered and confused, and said, “That’s a big heart.” Maybe it was time to remove my uterus so I could have more room for the heart.

The Sisterhood of Suffering

by Kristi Leckband

The apostle Paul writes these words in 1 Corinthians 12:26 — “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.”

There is so much suffering in this world. We, the members of the body of Christ have suffered much. We have not suffered all, for Christ took that upon Himself for us. We should have suffered death, eternal death. God, in His mercy, sacrificed His own beloved Son, so that we might not suffer eternal death. God is gracious!

And now, dear friends, we can help carry the burden of suffering with our sisters in the faith. It’s sad to hear that a friend’s pregnancy has failed. Your sister in Christ tries to be strong, but it hurts so much. The birth mother chose to care for her child rather than place the little one in your dear friend’s arms. Your friend’s arms are heavy with sorrow but empty of children. Your friend’s children despise her as a parent. She questions where she went wrong.

What, as the Body of Christ, can we do? What can happen within the sisterhood of suffering? I have some ideas.

The sisterhood of suffering is one where you can…

  • NOT offer her false promises.
  • NOT tell her to simply “get over it.”
  • NOT dismiss her pain.
  • NOT ignore her tears.
  • NOT judge her sorrow.
  • NOT look the other way.
  • NOT leave her to drown in her despair.

The sisterhood of suffering is one where you can…

  • spend time with her.
  • hug her.
  • sit quietly beside her.
  • cry with her.
  • acknowledge her pain.
  • speak truthfully to her.
  • pray for her.
  • share God’s Word with her.

We are called to care for one another, and I’ve listed only a handful of ways we can do this. When one sister suffers, many suffer. We can only help bear the burden when we KNOW one another. Thus, we spend time together. We ask questions. We listen to one another. By the grace of God, He will help us share the suffering of a hurting sister. Can we take the hurt away? No, but perhaps we can be the hand of God to hug her. Perhaps we can be the voice who reminds her that God loves her and does not forsake her. Perhaps we can hand that pens a note of encouragement to her.

St. Paul exhorts us with these words from Romans 12:15 — “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.”

Dear sisters, let us love one another in the sisterhood of suffering.

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #4

by Katie Schuermann

I could not fathom asking my children to spend their earliest days away from the warmth and safety of my womb’s embrace.

To be created in a petri dish means living in an environment that cannot sustain life. If I used IVF to create my children, then their first home would be in that unsustainable, dangerous environment. They would be far away from me, and I would be unable to protect, defend, or nurture them at their weakest and most vulnerable state. I would be unable to mother them.

It would be a hired clinician, not me, overseeing my children’s initial cell-division. This means that my children’s earliest caretaker in life would be a stranger tasked with grading them by sight alone for their viability, determining which of them should be transferred to my womb and allowed an attempt at implantation, and, if any remained behind in the petri dish, which of them should be frozen and stored at the clinic in liquid nitrogen.

Subjecting my children to such indignities and clinical abuses seemed the very opposite of parental love to me.

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.

My Only Son with Type 1

By Melissa DeGroot

June 9, 2023, is a date seared into my soul.

My one and only son, Knox, had lost fifteen pounds in a span of two weeks. He was frail. He was going to the bathroom constantly. Then, he started telling me his eyesight was blurry and that he thought he needed new glasses—even though we had just been to the optometrist a few months earlier. He was sleepy and sluggish. His eyes looked glossy.

Something was clearly wrong. But I had no idea what.

Was he anemic? Was he going through a growth spurt? Was there some vitamin deficiency? Like any concerned mother with access to Google, I was running through every possibility I could think of.

Finally, and thanks be to God, my husband and I had enough sense to take him to urgent care.

The doctor took one look at the situation and immediately sent us to the emergency room. Then, he was taken by ambulance to the Pediatric ICU.

Knox was in full-blown diabetic ketoacidosis.

He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

The New Normal

I knew almost nothing about Type 1 diabetes. I had heard of it, of course, but I didn’t understand what it actually meant to live with it. No one in my immediate family had it. There was one relative on Adam’s side of the family who had it (and died from its complications more than 40 years ago), but Type 1 had never been something on our radar.

Suddenly, it was something we would think about every. single. day.

To say the diagnosis was traumatic is an understatement.

Knox spent a week in the hospital. I slept and held vigil on the little uncomfortable couch beside his bed while he was poked and prodded, hooked up to IVs, subjected to constant glucose checks, and given insulin as the doctors worked to stabilize his body.

And then we were sent home to begin what everyone calls a “new normal.”

Except it wasn’t.

Those of you who live with Type 1—or have a child who does—know the deal. From the moment of diagnosis, everything changes.

Food changes.

Sleep changes.

Sports. School. Travel changes.

Even the simple act of sending your child to bed changes.

For months, Adam and I woke up at 3:00am to check Knox’s blood sugar. Even now, more than three years later, a glucose monitor alarm in the middle of the night can still send one of us scrambling out of bed. A dangerous low isn’t something you can just ignore.

Current technology has given people with Type 1 diabetes exceptional tools to manage the disease and live incredibly full lives. I am profoundly grateful for them.

But the disease is still there.

And for a mother, that reality has been difficult to accept.

Unexpected Grief

After Knox’s diagnosis, all three of us grieved.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Eventually, some measure of acceptance.

Watching my son go through those emotions, too, broke my heart. I couldn’t take the injections for him. I couldn’t make his pancreas begin producing insulin again. I couldn’t guarantee that he would never experience a dangerous low.

I couldn’t fix it.

That helplessness nudged another wound I had carried for years.

Knox is my one and only child—not because we planned it that way. I spent years carrying the sadness and inadequacy that can accompany secondary infertility.

My body didn’t give me another child. And now I couldn’t fix the body of the only child I had.

We parents spend so much time trying to protect our children that we can almost convince ourselves that it is actually within our absolute power to do so. Then something happens that reminds us how little control we really have.

I could count carbohydrates, calculate insulin, advocate at school, educate coaches, pack emergency supplies, stay awake at night, pray, worry, research, prepare and watch.

But I could not heal my son.

Why Him?

Knox and I have talked about this. Why did God allow this? Why Type 1? Why him?

I don’t know.

And while it hits my pride at times, I have become more comfortable saying those three words.

I don’t know.

I don’t want to give my son some tidy, rose-colored answer God hasn’t given us. I don’t want to tell him that God gave him diabetes because He knew Knox was strong enough to handle it.

Because there have been days when Knox wasn’t strong enough. Neither was I.

And perhaps that is precisely where the faith we confess becomes all the more comforting.

God never promised we would be strong enough for everything that happens to us.

He has promised us Christ, who is the strongest.

In this fallen creation, bodies fail. Pancreases stop working. Women experience infertility. Children get sick. Parents discover there are things they simply cannot fix.

The one true faith doesn’t say that suffering itself is good.

Death is still an enemy. Disease is still part of a creation groaning under the consequences of sin.

And though suffering carries meaning of epic, spiritual proportions, it does not get the final word.

Jesus, who took it on the cross, died, and rose for us, does.

Not Mine to Save

This is the lesson I keep learning as a mother.

Knox was never ultimately mine to save.

God revealed that truth to me when I was young, even if I wasn’t fully prepared to accept it in every stage or context of my life.

On January 15, 2011, when Knox was just days old, God gave me something to cling to that would become infinitely more precious twelve years later.

Knox was baptized.

Water and God’s Word were poured over my tiny son, and the Lord placed His name upon him: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Long before I knew the words continuous glucose monitor, insulin-to-carb ratio, ketones, or diabetic ketoacidosis, God knew Knox.

Before I ever heard an alarm warning me that my son’s blood sugar was falling, God had already made a promise to him.

Before I discovered how helpless I was to keep my child safe, Christ had already done what I could never do.

He had died for him.

He had risen for him.

And in Baptism, He had claimed him.

My job was never to be Knox’s savior.

He already has One.

Now

Today, Knox manages much of his Type 1 himself. His teachers understand. His coaches understand. His teammates know. Whether he’s sitting in class or playing hockey, there are people around him who know what is happening and how to help.

God has provided people. He has provided medicine and technology.

He has provided other parents of children with Type 1 who understand the strange world we entered that June day.

And He has slowly given our family something resembling normalcy again.

Not the old normal. A different one.

I still wish I could take Type 1 diabetes away. I still wish I could have given him brothers and sisters.

But God is teaching me that motherhood was never about my ability to control the outcome. It was always about stewardship.

This child was entrusted to Adam and me for a time. We love him, feed him, teach him, protect him, advocate for him, laugh with him, worry about him, watch him play hockey, wake up when the glucose monitor screams, and do every ordinary thing parents do.

But ultimately, we entrust him to the One who loves him more than we ever could.

June 9, 2023, taught me how little control I have over my son’s life.

January 15, 2011, reminds me who does.

My one and only son belongs to Christ.

And when I cannot fix what is broken, when I cannot control what happens next, and when I cannot protect him from every suffering this fallen world may bring, our Lord returns me to that promise.

Knox is baptized.

Christ has claimed him.

I often parody-sing Stevie Wonder’s line, “Signed, Sealed, Delivered… He’s YOURS!” as a humorous, yet true reminder.

And that is a comfort no diagnosis can take away.

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #3

by Katie Schuermann

For IVF to work, my husband would need to collect his own sperm and hand it over to a stranger for handling.

The primary means of collecting sperm in IVF is for a man to masturbate1 in a clinic while looking at images of women other than his wife. There are other options for collecting a man’s sperm (surgical removal, Onan’s method, etc.), but none of these options are good for my husband, nor are they beneficial to our marriage.

I just asked my husband if he has any regrets about never masturbating all of those years ago, though we still have no children today. He says no.

1 “The usual way to collect sperm is to masturbate into a cup.” WebMD.com

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.

Tough Love

by Rebecca Mayes

No adopting mother who brings her child home for the very first time would ever in her wildest imagination consider that she might someday ask this same child to leave.

But I did.

And now this child has had two mothers send him away. What must that feel like?

Have you ever seen one of those horror movies where a family realizes they are being targeted by some kind of evil, whether it be aliens, birds, zombies, or whatever, and they do everything they can to secure their home so the evil cannot penetrate? They keep remembering forgotten entrances, like the chimney or the old coal chute, and they keep boarding up every crevice they can find. The mother hovers in the corner with her child, arms clasped tightly, holding fast so no matter what, nothing will take this child from her.

That was me.

I saw, even early on, that this boy was an easy target for the devil and the world and that his own defenses were weak. Knowing this, his father and I planned out every protection and deterrent we could think of. For years I huddled in that metaphorical corner, murmuring assurances to him and to myself, all the while feeling like the evil was getting closer, regardless of all our efforts. I kept repeating the Lord’s promise that “they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28).

But the real horror was not in seeing the invader’s hands reaching out to him. The real horror was in seeing him turn from me – from the Lord’s hand – and reaching out for them.

And so I let go. I let go because if I had kept holding on, the demons would have stayed and threatened us all. Their presence had already taken a toll on our family, and there was just no other way.

Our eviction notice came as no surprise to this adult-child, for he knew our values and our rules, and by his behavior he had chosen to relinquish the privilege of room and board. He was anxious to leave, to be free of our confining rules and evident disappointment. And so on his 19th birthday, after finding another place to stay, he got his wish. He was gone.

I had heard the phrase “tough love” over the years and thought I understood what it meant. I didn’t. My body and soul had been in perpetual motion, providing and protecting, these 19 years. Choosing to stop that momentum was like trying to stop a train.

“For this child I prayed…” said Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:27. I thought this meant that she prayed for his conception and birth. She got was she requested. Mission accomplished.

But no. She then handed her son over to Samuel in the temple. I handed my son over to the world.

For this child I prayed….and prayed…and prayed...and prayed…

This momentum does not stop.

As with Hannah, the Lord answered my prayer, and I had one job to do: “Train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6). But I felt like I had failed. Eventually I realized I could control this child, his choices, his faith, his life, his future no more than I could control my fertility. My job is to remain faithful to the Lord and serve Him in all my daily vocations (albeit imperfectly), and this faithfulness often requires making tough choices – like letting go of the very child you had prayed for for so long.

It felt like I was handing him over to the world to be devoured and spit out, but I was really handing him back to the Lord, for only He can control the future. He redeemed this child by His own blood, brought this child to us, washed him in baptismal waters, surrounded him with a loving family, gave him the opportunity for a Christian education, and continues to move countless friends and family to join us in praying for his return to the faith.

Our heavenly Father has not given up. I have witnessed His pursuit of this child in the years since he left. The boy’s life did not fall apart. He found friends, he found work, he is growing and maturing. Our relationship with him has been strengthened. He sometimes even finds his way to worship. There is hope.

Even though I have seen the Lord’s patience and mercy, again and again, for my child throughout his life, he does not yet see it himself. He seems to be still grasping in some kind of darkness. But just as the Lord can open wombs, He can also open the eyes of the blind.

She Has Her Hands Full

by Katie Schuermann

In twenty-four years of marriage, I have never been pregnant. In that same amount of time, my husband and I have received at least a dozen private adoption queries from five different states, and not a single one has worked out in such a way as to make us parents. And in spite of our multiple foster parent training sessions completed through the states of Texas and Illinois, no child ever has been placed in our home by the government.

Which means, in twenty-four years of marriage, no one has ever said of me, “She has her hands full.”

But do you know what people can say of me? that is, if they are looking closely?

“She has her stairwell and kitchen full.”

For in a plot twist no one saw coming, God called my husband seven years ago to serve as pastor of University Lutheran Church in Champaign, Illinois. “UniLu,” as everyone in the community fondly calls the congregation, is a campus ministry located just one block off the main quad of the University of Illinois, and it exists primarily to serve undergraduate and graduate students attending the University of Illinois.

This means that Michael and I are finally, joyfully foster parents, though not through state certification like we originally thought. Instead, the church equips us to take into our little family of two around sixty children every year, all of them grown-up and sojourning away from home. We get to shelter them, feed them, teach them, sing with them, play with them, love them, and try to assist their parents in raising them in the faith, all the while knowing that these foster children will not be staying with us, that in the end, it is good — best, even — when they return to the families from which they came.

One of these precious foster children said to me the other day, “I could never do what you do.”

She was referring to the fact that every year our family changes. Every semester, we welcome new students into the church and launch graduating students into the world.

As I reflected further upon her comment, I realized something remarkable about our little story of barrenness.

Michael and I are able to endure this kind of transient family life. In fact, we expect it. We thrive in it.

The primary reason for our endurance, I believe, is because God equips us to serve where He sends us and whom He sends us. He prepares specific good works for us to do, and He completes these specific good works in us. It’s that simple.

But something a little less simple and a little less obvious …

When I view our present vocation through the lens of our barren years, I see plainly that God has been training Michael and me for this kind of transient family life our entire marriage. Never have we ever been able to keep the children who come into our home. Always, we must return those we cradle to another’s arms. Every single child we meet and love and welcome into our hearts belongs to some other family. Every single child who loves us calls other people “Dad” and “Mom” and some other house “home.”

What I am trying to confess is that our barren marriage has served as the perfect training ground for being foster parents at UniLu. Welcoming student after student and then blessing each on his way is simply a continuation of the kind of love and care we have always known and shown to other people’s children in our barrenness.

To think that this strange vocation might have been God’s intention all along — “It is high; I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139)!

And here is what really blows my mind.

In making us foster parents to so many college-aged children, God is filling not only our hands but also our hearts and our prayers and our hours and our table and our stairwell and our kitchen.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine such a big, beautiful family, one so plainly created by a God.

All I know to do in response to God’s gift of family life is to thank Him for His abundant mercy and sing a psalm: “Blessed is the man and woman who fill their quiver with college students!”

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #2

by Katie Schuermann

Though it was confusing — even embarrassing — in our marriage to be one flesh year after year but never pregnant, we understood that it went against God’s will to separate what He joined together (Matthew 19:6) in our one-flesh union.

For to force humans into existence outside of God’s procreative design of coitus would require harvesting and handing over our gametes (sperm and eggs) to a clinician who would then mix them in a petri dish in a cold room away from us. This separates what God has joined together in our marriage bed, and that goes against our religion.

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.