Marriage

The Older Mom

By Kristi Leckband

That’s me, the older mom. Our first child was born when I was 30 years old. Yes, 30. By the time we adopted our little girl, I was 40 years old. Yes, 40. Two months later child #3, a newborn, was adopted into our family. I was thrilled to be adding to my family. We had waited a really long time for our daughter to have siblings. And they both came to us, two months apart.

But there are times when it is no cakewalk. I had loads of energy when our firstborn came along. I was in good shape. I could run beside her as she learned to ride a bike. I could keep up with her and her teammates as my husband and I coached their softball teams. I could ski with the high school youth and walk up the long hill after sledding.

When the next two joined our family, I was ten years older. I was also ten years wiser as a parent. I knew what to expect from little children and how to nurture them. I had more patience and could bend a bit more when learning took a while. The physical challenges weren’t so noticeable yet. I could keep up with the “littles” as they toddled around the house and played in the swimming pool. I could get to the softball in the outfield while they ran the bases. Our family also had the added benefit of a sister who was ten years older. She had loads of energy to spend on her siblings, and the laughter in our house proved it.

The physical challenges of being an older parent are coming to light. I’m in my 50’s now, and there are still two teenagers at home. We hike through the woods, but they are content to go off on their own for that. Sleeping on a camp pad is just not fun for my body anymore. I don’t ride all of the water rides because my body can’t handle the motion. I have become more of the cheerleader for my teenagers. I suppose it has helped them become more independent, but I know that I’m not as active with them as I was for our firstborn. Our family worked together to plant 50 tomato plants in the spring. That night, I needed a heating pad to provide relief from the ache of bending over while planting the little seedlings. I can’t even imagine how Sarah of the Bible felt when she birthed Isaac at 90 years of age. Isaac would have been a teenager when she was in her 100’s. How did she do it??

My vanity has taken a hit as an older mom. I don’t have the hour-glass figure that youth provided. When my firstborn wed, the gray hairs were visible. If the Lord should grant spouses to my next two children, gray will be the featured color enveloping my head.

Being the older mom, I have the benefit of being a better listener for my teenagers. I can listen to them lay out their case for something, and I can do so without wanting to interject my opinion immediately (although I still want to do that). I have more patience to let the conversation flow and guide my teens to good resolutions for problems.

As an older mom, I find myself engaged in many conversations with the moms of my children’s friends. I have the added bonus of already sending one off to college and into married life while those moms are just starting to contemplate post-high school life for their children. By the grace of God, I am able to provide some helpful advice and be a sounding board for their thoughts.

It makes me feel pretty good to be running a 100-yard race with the teenagers and other 30-40 year old moms at a track and field event. I don’t win, but I can still compete. I’m so thankful that my body allows me to do that. I can play pickleball much easier than I can play tennis. (Thank goodness for a smaller court.) I’ll still climb on the rocks in the river, but I won’t venture quite so far as the rest of the young moms. God has taught me to recognize my limits in this area.

Do I regret that I’m an older mom? That probably is not the question to ask. Is it okay to be an older mom? Absolutely yes. While the human body is more capable of handling the physical challenges of parenting when in her 20’s, it does not mean that being an active mom in her 50’s and beyond isn’t going to be possible. I know that my teens will be in college when my husband and I near retirement age. That doesn’t bother us. We are blessed with good health and plan to be active participants in our children’s lives, and even our grandchildren’s lives.

I wish our children could have come into our lives sooner. I listened to the cultural pressure to “enjoy marriage without children” for a few years before starting a family. That advice to wait, dear sister, is hogwash. Enjoy the children as soon as you can. Those girls and boys are gifts from God. We should gladly receive them.

Each day, God gives me the privilege of spending time with my children. No matter my age, I have the blessing of being a mom. (And even being a grandma.)

That will never get old.

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.

A Bit of Hosting

by Kristi Leckband

For years, I prayed that my table would seat a gaggle of children. However, the Lord did not fill my table with children. Rather, He taught me that my table can seat people of all ages, and they do not have to be born of my womb.

Upon our move into this house, we have hosted many people in our home. Some come for a meal. Some stay for several days. One even stayed for a couple of months.

And we LOVE it. We share holiday meals with college students and friends who are not able to see family. We host evening gatherings for friends. While we did some hosting in our first home in Nebraska (many nights of cards), we do even more of it here. Part of that is the result of more space in our house. Part of it is because our children are old enough to handle a break from the home routine. Part of it is they can handle a later bedtime. Our dining table does not seat just five of us anymore. We have the privilege of welcoming others to a meal around our table, and it is delightful.

When you open your home to others, you invite them to share community with you. It tells your guests that you want to know more about them. It shows them that you care.

Hosting doesn’t have to be a big, fancy meal. It can be something as simple as dessert one evening. Perhaps you have young children at home. You can be the one to arrange a playdate for others; that’s hosting. Maybe your home seems too small to have a lot of people in it. Invite a small group or just one or two others. Hosting doesn’t mean you have to put on a big party. If your friend asks what she can bring, let her. Keep it small and simple. Ask her to bring some crackers or some fruit or some wine. Invite a friend over to play a game. Share a cup of tea.

The purpose of hospitality is to spend time together. True friends are not coming to inspect the cleanliness of your home. (Please make sure your bathroom is clean, though.) They are coming to be with you. The Lord desires us to be in fellowship with one another. He invites us to befriend our neighbors. We value people, and we want to support them in good and bad times. We can do this better when we actually KNOW them. When you share your table with others, you share yourself. That, in turn, invites others to share of themselves with you.

I taught my children that family doesn’t just have to be your blood relation. They learned that through adoption. I also wanted them to see that the people with whom we share time can become our family. This includes the older woman who treats my children as her grandchildren. This includes the unmarried college man who desires a spouse. This includes the young couple who await children of their own. This includes the high school students who need to see a stable family in action. All are important, and all need our love.

When we’re hosting people, my children get excited. They want to help get ready for our friends. In younger years, they would make name cards for everyone. Now they help set the table. They help prepare the meal. They pour drinks. They clear the table. They sit and listen to adult conversation. They laugh, and they ponder. It’s the blessing of community.

Our Lord creates the perfect community in the Lord’s Supper. He is the ultimate Host. He spreads a table before us and gives us to eat and drink of His very own Body and Blood. His is the perfect meal, and we are His guests.

It is now our privilege to extend that kindness to others. Perhaps you’ve wanted to host people in your home but just aren’t sure what to do. Know that you can do it. Maybe you start by meeting somebody at a coffee shop. Go for a walk with someone. Get together for appetizers one evening. Hosting doesn’t have to be a big production. Find what you can manage and start there. It’s really about treating others with loving care.

I’d love to host you in my home sometime.

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.

Our Blended Family

by Kristi Leckband

Our family of two grew to three with the birth of Joanna. She is our only biological child. God added two more children to our family through His gift of adoption. Maria came to us at 18 months old, and Josiah came to us as a newborn two quick months later. It’s not traditional, but it’s not a rarity either.

When we started the adoption process, we told Joanna what we were doing. At the time, she was four years old, so we really didn’t say too much to her. The plan was that she would stay with grandparents while Jerome and I flew to bring Maria home. God had other plans. Joanna was almost ten years old when Maria joined our family. Joanna flew to China with us and was an eyewitness to God’s miracle of adoption. When Josiah joined us from the hospital two months later, Joanna was one of the first to hold him. She had a front row seat to all that was happening. At her age, she could truly comprehend what God was doing in our family.

Jerome and I have always talked openly about adoption. We talked about children as gifts for that is what they are. When Maria and Josiah were quite young, we made a picture book for each of them about their birth, their baptism, their adoption, and family. They looked at the pictures and heard their stories read to them repeatedly. We gave them the language to use when talking about these things. My children saw adoption as a wonderful thing. I know this to be a fact because I can still clearly recall this story…

I was driving Maria and Josiah to the library. They were seated in the second row, chatting about life as four and five year olds do. All of a sudden, one of them said, “Mom, we feel sorry for Joanna.” Surprised, I asked, “Why is that?” A sweet little voice replied, “Because she’s not adopted.” Oh, my heart. They saw adoption as a blessing!

Even today, Maria and Josiah can have fun with adoption. Recently, some of our scholars tested their blood types. It caused a bit of excitement in school. Siblings were tested so as to determine their parents’ blood type. Maria and Josiah laughed to think that their blood types would have nothing to do with big sister Joanna or their parents. They could smile and laugh, confident that they were loved for who they were, not for how they joined our family.

Jerome and I could not have prayed for a better understanding for those two. Adoption is not something to be hidden away in our family. We are adopted into God’s family. He makes us His own and gives to us all good things. We are now blessed to share those good things with others. Our three children are recipients of God’s good gifts. Jerome and I are the vessels through which those blessings flow.

Yes, there is a significant age gap between Joanna and the “littles.” She was an only child for a long time. She did have friends closer to her age, and we made sure she had time with those people. Life changed when she gained a sister and a brother in a short span of time. She relished her role as big sister and took such good care of them. I could see her learning to be a mother at that young age. Joanna, still to this day, is a wonderful big sister. While she lives hours away, she still connects with them and inquires about them. She invites them to be part of her life.

Maria and Josiah have their own trials to bear. Their life history has some gaps, and we’ll never be able to fill in all of them. It makes me sad that they won’t have a complete picture. However, it doesn’t lessen the blessings that they are to our family. I do think it is helpful they have each other to share that burden. It may seem “normal” to them that there are gaps because they both have those holes in their lives. They are best friends, and I thank God for that.

Whether your family grows biologically or through adoption or not at all, you are still blessed. God has given you life. He encourages you to live in His grace. He gives you life and salvation. He gives you His Holy Word and Sacraments, that you might be forgiven of all your sins and be refreshed in His promises of love to you. In the Church, we are one huge, blended family. We love one another and rejoice in being adopted in the family of God.

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 – #1

by Katie Schuermann

Though having no children felt like we were already dying, my husband and I could think of no situation in which it was ethically acceptable for us to try to make children in a petri dish and risk their lives simply to fulfill our own wishes and desires.

Put another way, it would be wrong to ask our children to suffer in our place.

We know from the Bible that it is the strong who are called to protect and defend the weak (Micah 6:8, Psalm 82:3, Isaiah 1:17, Philippians 2:4, Zechariah 7:10, Proverbs 31:8-9). It is parents who are tasked with providing for their children, not vice versa, and the inherent disordering of human vocations in IVF alarmed us.

Therefore, we understood that it would be wrong to force the creation of our children in an environment that would put them at such a high risk of dying, simply to make us feel better.

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.

Fearfully and Wonderfully…Hormonal

By Melissa DeGroot

When I turned 41, my body entered the Twilight Zone.

Up until then, things had been clicking along pretty well. I was eating low-carb, going to the gym, feeling pretty good, and generally thought I had figured out what worked.

And then, seemingly overnight, my body said . . .Nope.

My thyroid tanked. My metabolism, pshh, what metabolism? seemed to pack its bags and leave. Things that had worked for years suddenly stopped. I gained 50 pounds despite continuing to exercise and trying to adjust my diet. I felt anxious, depressed, angry. . . and let’s not even get into libido. As far as east is from the west did I even want to think about that. I remember feeling so disconnected from my body, yet thinking, What in the world is happening to me?

Welcome to perimenopause.

Thankfully, I eventually found a doctor who helped me sort through some of what was going on. With medical care, supplements, hormone replacement therapy, and a few other things, I slowly began feeling more like myself again. The weight eventually came off—slowly, but surely—and over the last few years, I’ve managed to maintain some semblance of normalcy.

And I use the word normalcy loosely.

Because, apparently, perimenopause also means if you “do the supplemental things,” you may discover hair growing in places where hair has absolutely no business growing. Sorry. Just the truth! Then PMS sometimes decides to become PMDD—and other months, nothing at all. Thankfully, I haven’t struggled with hot flashes yet. Sleep, however, occasionally goes off the rails, though certain supplements have helped tremendously with that.

And by the way, if you are low in testosterone and do take a supplemental version of it, both you and your husband will thank you. Wink. You’re welcome.

Story time: One of the more surprising episodes happened last year shortly after I began a new vocation as a deaconess. I was settling into this new job and a completely new season of life post-homeschooling when suddenly my period was two weeks late.

I thought:

Oh. My. Gosh.

What if I’m pregnant?

After years of secondary infertility, there I was in my mid-forties, beginning a new chapter of life and wondering whether God had decided to throw the ultimate plot twist into the story.

Breaking news: I was not pregnant.

Just perimenopausal.

And honestly, that story pretty well sums up this season of life. It is a wild ride of hormonal shifts, strange symptoms, unpredictable cycles, and occasionally wondering, What in the new, fresh H-E-Double hockey sticks is going to happen next?

Thankfully, my husband has been wonderfully supportive and loving through all of it. (Again. Thank you, testosterone.) We understand a little better now what may be happening when I suddenly don’t quite feel like myself.

Sometimes.

Because beneath all the unpredictabilities that is this body of mine, something much deeper is happening.

My body is moving toward menopause. And menopause means that the possibility of conceiving another child will finally and permanently be off the table.

For a woman who has lived through secondary infertility, that realization could have been devastating at another point in my life.

But strangely, now, I think I’m okay.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to let go.

Not because the longing and hurt didn’t matter, but because life has continued unfolding around it. God continued providing. He gave me people to love, work to do, neighbors to serve, a husband and son to cherish, and fulfillment in vocations I never could have imagined. And healthcare to help me feel a little bit better!

There has been purpose, meaning, and even flourishing in places I wasn’t looking. Thanks be to God.

But perimenopause is another reminder that my body is changing. I’m getting older.

That can stir up other fears and questions. What will aging look like? What will happen to my health? What will life look like twenty or thirty years from now? Who will be there? What losses will come?

Some of those questions require practical and faithful wisdom since, ultimately, planning and healthcare can’t answer the deepest problem.

Our bodies are headed toward dying.

Perhaps dramatic for a blog post that began with chin hairs. But there it is.

Our bodies bear the effects of a fallen world.

And yet these bodies are also fearfully and wonderfully made. So much so, they are redeemed.

Christ did not come merely to rescue some spiritual part of us from our troublesome meat suits. He took on a body Himself. He suffered in that body. He died in that body. And He rose bodily from the grave.

Which means my hope isn’t that I can keep this body looking 35 forever.

Thank God, since that ship’s sailed.

My hope is the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

So for now, I can laugh (if my estrogen or testosterone haven’t dipped) at some of the unpredictabilities of perimenopause. I can seek good medical care. I can exercise, eat reasonably well, take the things that help me sleep, and occasionally pluck the mysterious hairs that seem determined to spring forth.

But I can also receive this strange season for what it is: another reminder that I am a creature whose life and body belong to God.

Fearfully and wonderfully made.

Currently somewhat hormonal.

And waiting, with all creation, for the day when Christ returns, raises, and restores our bodies.

Family Growth

by Kristi Leckband

The Lord has given me blessing upon blessing. He placed me into a loving family at my birth, and my parents made sure I knew Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I taught in Lutheran schools for several years and married Jerome, who eventually became a pastor.

After four years of marriage, we were blessed with the birth of Joanna. Her arrival brought joy upon joy into our home. While this blog was active, we endured suffering while wanting to grow our family. No children came. Then, in 2013, after seven long years of waiting, Maria joined our family via international adoption. Two brief months after that, Josiah joined us as a newborn via domestic adoption. Oh, the blessings of the Lord!

Fast forward to 2026. Our family picture looks a bit different. Jerome and I have celebrated 28 years of wedded life in Christ, and we are both past the age of 50. Joanna graduated from college, married a Lutheran man, and is now mother to a five-month-old baptized child of God. She and her family live ten hours away from us. Maria and Josiah have both grown into teenagers and will live at home with us for a few more years. We now reside in Arkansas, where Jerome serves as associate pastor and headmaster of our classical Lutheran school. Upon our arrival, we enrolled our children in that school. Gone are the days of homeschooling. I now spend my days preparing music for our church and school. I am blessed to have many interactions with the people in these places on a daily basis.

Our family has seen its share of changes. One of our children developed an autoimmune disease. That was pretty rough. We sent our oldest off to college, nearly twelve hours away. That was a quiet ride home. After twenty-three years in one place, we packed up our belongings and moved south. A lot of memories came with us. We stopped homeschooling so that our children could be part of a classical Lutheran school. That was another huge adjustment for all of us. Throughout all of those changes, though, the Lord has continued to bless our family. He has taken care of each one of us and still continues to do so today. I look forward to sharing the goodness of the Lord with you this month.