Infertility

Embryonic Adoption

Question Submitted: What do you think of embryonic adoption?

Rebecca and I have spent hours on the phone, on the road, and over our dinner plates talking about this, and here is what we think:

Before we engage in a conversation about embryonic adoption in the Church, we first need to come to an agreement in the Church that embryos should cease being produced and frozen through the procedure of IVF.

In an effort to get that conversation on IVF rolling, we are engaging various LCMS pastors across the Midwest in a series of roundtable discussions on the topic. We’ll check in with you later about embryonic adoption once we’ve listened to what our pastors have to say.

In the meantime, let’s continue to pray for our littlest neighbors frozen in time. Lord, have mercy.

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All Depends on Our Possessing

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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

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.

Let Us Care for You!

A Middle Eastern woman with her daughter-in-lawI know one of the reasons you won’t confide in people about your barrenness. There are those who insist on fixing you. You know, the people who slip you a piece of paper with the name of a health book they think will cure your barrenness, or the people who tell you to relax or – my personal favorite – start the adoption process in order to get pregnant.

But not everyone wants to fix you. Some people just want to care for you. Leah Houghton, a mother and part-time social worker, is one of those people, and she has something she wants to say to you:

The journey to parenthood has certainly been very trying for my family. Just of few of these trials include a partial-miscarriage of my first pregnancy where I miscarried one of the twins with which I was pregnant. During a standard sonogram, our second child was diagnosed with a cleft lip and palate. We were told by doctors that he would be blind, deaf, and mentally delayed. We were also told he would have heart and lung problems and would be “grossly disfigured.” We would have to wait until his delivery to discover that none of these things were true about our son. Yet, we still faced (and are still facing) numerous surgeries, doctor’s visits, clinic appointments, speech therapy evaluations, etc.   

Just a little over a year after our son’s diagnosis, we experienced the miscarriage of our third pregnancy. I have also experienced moderate postpartum depression after the birth of my second child. Then, after I stopped nursing my daughter, I began experiencing severe anxiety and panic attacks (related to hormonal changes) that nearly incapacitated me for months. However, throughout all of these trials, the Lord has provided our daily bread and given us such grace and comfort. All these gifts truly surpass our understanding.

Sisters, I know from the outside that the woman who has a handful of young and energetic children may seem like the last person on earth to be able to provide you with any comfort when you are struggling with barrenness, and it is true that I cannot imagine the grief that an empty womb and an empty home must be. Yet, I encourage you to please tell your sisters in Christ your struggles. Let us care for you. Let us be a quiet ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, and a comforting hand to hold. No, I don’t know what it is like to walk by empty nurseries that have been prayed over night after night with hopes that God would choose to fill that nursery in some way. No, I don’t know what it is like to have empty arms that so long to hold a child near. But, I do know what it is like to carry a child when you don’t know if you will ever get to bring that child home from the hospital; I know what it is like to grieve the loss of a child that you will never see on this earth; and I also know the strength and peace that can come from waiting on the Lord. And, sisters, I want to encourage you and carry that burden with you in prayer and love.

Please let us care for you!  Let us pray with and for each other and bear with one another in love!

Leah Houghton

Family Ties

Can you see the similarities? Those tell-tale,

family resemblances between an aunt and her niece?

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No? Look harder.

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Ah, yes.

They have the same smile;

the same eagerness to hug;

the same love of books and trees and the outdoors;

the same ability to turn Barbies into heroines;

the same preference for berries over candy;

the same irritation with Veronica Salt and Edmund Pevensie;

the same tendency to be a little too honest and blunt;

the same adoration of a certain Uncle Michael;

the same Baptismal markings of redemption on their foreheads and on their hearts;

and the same confession on their lips of Christ crucified for sinners.

They may have been born on different continents, but have no doubt. They are family, and their ties run deeper than flesh and blood.

Have you and your husband considered adoption?

I Just Can’t

LSome of you look at me like a deer in the headlights. You see the book I have in my extended hand. You see my intent to give it to you, and you flee.

“No,” you shake your head. Some of you even wave your hands. “No, I just can’t. I can’t read that.”

I am not into waterboarding, so I quickly slip the tool of torture back into my bag. Out of sight. “It’s okay. You don’t have to read it.”

This is usually when you start to cry. “I-I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s good. It’s just that…that…”

I know. I really do. You don’t want the word barren anywhere near you. You don’t want to read about someone else’s pain, because your own is already too much to bear. Your disappointment and fear and anger have all but extinguished the little flicker of child-fire inside of you, and you think this book is a swift wind that will snuff it out. You don’t want to be content in your childlessness. You want a child, and you will have one or go down fighting.

Most of us go down fighting, and that, dear sister, is why I wrote the book; not because I want your child-fire to die, but because I want you to be encouraged by the truth:

You are special, beloved by God, your Father. He has not forgotten you, nor has He forgotten that you want a child. Yet, children are not a prize for you to earn, a commodity for you to demand, nor an idol for you to worship. They are a gift which the Heavenly Father only has the privilege to bestow and to withhold. If God makes you a mother, then you can receive His good gift of a child with all joy and confidence in His love for you. If God does not make you a mother, then you can still know with all joy and confidence that God loves you completely in His perfect gift of the Child Jesus whose sacrifice on the cross atoned for your Sin and reconciled you to your Heavenly Father. You are God’s own child, purchased and won by the blood of Jesus, and God promises in His Word that He will work all things – even your barrenness – for your eternal good.

It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to be okay. It’s even okay – Dare I write it? – to be content today without a child. His grace is sufficient for you. It really is.

Now, would you please go read the book? There are so many other comforting things I want to tell you.

The Downton Abbey Dilemma

Downton AbbeyI’m a Downton Abbey addict. I don’t really watch prime time television at all, you see, except that someone turned me onto this PBS Masterpiece series from Great Britain a few years ago and I just love, love, love it. But there wasn’t really ever a good reason to blog about this passion on a site about barrenness–until now.

This past week’s episode included a scene where Lady Mary is discussing how to change the home’s old nursery into a sitting room for herself and her new husband Matthew. Matthew, who heard that Lady Mary had been to see the doctor recently, gently touches his wife’s arm and, with a twinkle in his eye, wants to know when they should possibly be thinking about using the nursery as a nursery (as if she had some kind of control over this in 1920). Lady Mary nervously shrugs off his comment and casually replies, “Oh, there will be time enough for that later.” In true Downton Abbey form, this brief exchange foreshadows a new storyline that will inevitably take more shape in upcoming episodes. The audience is left to ponder these two questions: 1) Is Lady Mary embarrassed that she is not yet pregnant after being married for several months now? or 2) Is Lady Mary not particularly interested in having children and knows that this attitude will not sit well with her husband?

The dilemma that I face is that I may never know the answers. This is a difficult pill for an addict to swallow.

Why can’t I just tune in next week and the week after to find out? No, my TV is not broken, nor do I have any social responsibilities scheduled for Sunday nights. It’s because the producers of the show have decided to reintroduce the fact that one of the servants is gay, and his sexuality (which was implied but rather brushed over at the beginning of the series) is now going to be featured as a storyline. In watching some interviews with the cast on YouTube I discovered a little more about what’s to come, seeing as how there is a new and rather attractive footman who’s joined the show who has caught the eye of more than just the housemaids. There won’t just be talk anymore about homosexuality. There will be scenes. Downton Abbey is about to join the rest of prime time’s sleazy line-up.

The thing that gets me is that one of the main reasons I adored the show was because it takes place during an era where honor, integrity, and morality were thought of highly. Of course it wouldn’t be modern television if some of the characters didn’t fall from grace, but these indiscretions were not shown, and there was regret and embarrassment after the fact. There was confession and forgiveness demonstrated within the family. I found that refreshing. So refreshing, in fact, that the disgust over the upcoming storyline is not enough to make me truly want to wash my hands of the whole program. I keep pondering the other storylines and it kills me when I think about not being able to follow them. This is what addiction means.

I’m finding that these kinds of dilemmas are becoming more common for the modern Christian, and because there is so much good wrapped up with a little bit of filth, we often feel it’s ridiculous to make such a fuss. Take for instance a mother of an only son who loves him so dearly and wants so desperately to keep peace within her family that she bites her tongue when he announces that he is living with his girlfriend. It’s not what she would have wanted and she knows it’s not right, but he’s such a good son and a responsible young man, etc. They’ll probably get married anyway.  Or what about the father whose daughter has suffered for so long with barrenness that he sees no point in asking too many questions when she announces that she is pregnant following an IVF procedure. He wouldn’t have recommended this procedure, but she hadn’t asked for his advice and the procedure is over so why bring it up? Afterall, a child is on the way!

Living the Christian life is hard. Having an active conscience is stressful. It makes you unpopular and you often feel like you’re missing out on the fun. Don’t think I haven’t tried to find ways around this problem. It’s very possible that Downton Abbey may not focus on the gay servant next week. I don’t know when this is going to happen. I might be able to get a few more episodes in. I could find a friend whose conscience is not so burdened and ask for the summaries after each episode to make sure I know what’s going on. Or I could find the summaries online somewhere, I’m sure.

Such are the musings of an addict.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions (addictions??) of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 1 Peter 1:14-19 ESV

Wow. I’ve been “ransomed from the futile ways” of my forefathers “with the precious blood of Christ.” This is vivid imagery. And speaking of imagery, I know that, just as I ponder all the possible outcomes of the innocent storylines of Downton, if I keep watching this show I will be thinking about all the storylines, and those scenes that are inevitably coming will be imprinted on my mind. Do I want to be thinking about these things?

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Philippians 4:8 ESV

If I find out that the offending storyline ends at some point soon, I may make my way back to the Abbey. I know there is a season 4 coming up. Perhaps there’s still hope. In the meantime, I’ll have more time to read on Sunday evenings I guess. Oh, but how I will miss them all!

An Everlasting Name

A pastor friend drew my attention to the following excerpt from January 4th’s Old Testament reading (Isaiah 56:1-8) from The Brotherhood Prayer Book‘s daily lectionary, which includes this part:

3. Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say,
The LORD will surely separate me from his people;
and let not the eunuch say,
Behold, I am a dry tree.
4. For thus says the LORD:
To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
5. I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.

 

Comforting, don’t you think?