Suffering

The Truth about Anna

anna-the-prophet

My friend Stephanie said something to me last summer that struck me:

“Anna was married and never had children, and she had a happy life.”

It almost made me laugh when Stephanie said it, my delight was so immediate. To think that I had been writing about barrenness all of these years and never once considered the prophetess Anna!

Luke doesn’t specifically tell us in his Gospel whether or not Anna was barren, but he does tell us that her husband died after seven, short years of marriage and that Anna lived as a widow for the next eighty-four. Luke also never mentions any children born to take care of Anna in her old age but that she “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day” (Luke 2:37). It is easy to assume she was never given the gift of children.

But do you know what Anna was given? She was given the opportunity to pray and wait on the LORD for the redemption of Jerusalem, and – Wonder of wonders! – she got to behold that very redemption in the flesh. She got to see Jesus!

Isn’t that beautiful?

You, my dear barren sisters, have been given the opportunity to fast and pray night and day, and – Wonder of wonders! – you get to see Jesus in the temple, too.

Excuse Me

It’s gross.

It might even be a bit inappropriate.

But I’m still going to say it.

Weeping and gnashing your teeth and throwing your hands in the air and asking unanswerable questions is a bit like belching. It releases some of the pressure that has built up in the digestion of grief.

So, on behalf of all the barren women grieving around you, I would like to say, “Excuse me.”

Pastor Talk

IMG_1889 copy Speaking of The Great Getaway last summer, we were also blessed to have a pastor talk with us about what God’s Word has to say about suffering. I found these particular truths to be helpful:

On losing our children…

“This is the problem God had. His children were lost, and He gave His Son to get them back. He gets us.”

On why we suffer…

“We suffer and have crosses so that God’s work can be made manifest.”

“This is the nature of the Christian life: that out of death comes life.”

Newsletters

I received a Christmas picture-card from a Great Getaway friend with the following inscription:

“These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

God gives us just what we need at exactly the time we need it. Life is full of ups and downs and we thank you for being in our lives. Wishing you and your family a blessed and happy new year.

Isn’t that lovely? No bragging, no complaining, no commiserating. Just the blessed, simple, gracious truth.

Thank you, Jill. I need to take Christmas newsletter-writing lessons from you.

false gods

My husband said this to me the other day:

We have to deal with our false gods. That’s what God does with us. He makes us confront our false gods and see how they actually fail us.

In my barrenness, God makes me confront my false god of control, for, up to this moment, there is not a single thing I have been able to do to control my barrenness and give myself the gift of a child through conception or adoption.

Nor have you been able to do it.

Hear that? That’s the sound of my big-bellied, false god falling off my mantle and shattering onto the floor.

And for that, I thank God for my barrenness.

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Shadowlands

I love the movie Shadowlands (1993), especially the line author C.S. Lewis says in response to his clergy-friend-named-Harry’s canned explanation of the unexpected good news of Lewis’s wife’s cancer being in remission.

Harry: I know how hard you’ve been praying. Now, God is answering your prayers.

Lewis: That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself; I pray because I’m helpless; I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.

Touché, Mr. Lewis.

“WWJD: What Would Joseph Do?” Contest Winner

Merry Christmas, Gentiles!

On this blessed day of Epiphany, we are delighted to present to you the winner of our Third Annual Writing Contest. This year, we asked you to reflect on the topic, “WWJD: What Would Joseph Do?” and, as always, it was a privilege to be on the receiving end of your contemplations. Thank you to everyone who participated!

We’d like to share our four favorite posts with you this week, starting today with a post written by our contest winner, Megan Davis. Congratulations, Megan, on winning a free copy of He Remembers the Barren, and thank you for allowing us to share with our readers what we think is one of the most brilliant metaphors we’ve read in a long time.

Grateful,

Your HRTB Hosts

“What Would Joseph Do?”

Joseph would be a righteous and just man with a long and noble linage in the LCMS. He would eventually be convinced by his pastor to pack up his family and head to the seminary. He would study hard and prove to be a man of wisdom, conviction and great love. He would eagerly head to his vicarage assignment.

It would be nothing like he imagined. The first service and his installation would be beautiful, but then there would be a voters meeting. The head elder would get in a fist fight with the usher over the color of the new carpet. The organist would whisper to him that the pastor was a drunkard. His children would be called hooligans and his wife’s hem line criticized. In the coarse of two hours he would hear every commandment shattered. He would come home that first Sunday and drop his head into his hands and weep over the sinfulness of the church. She was like his bride to be and she acted like this. Despite his deep love for her, all he would see inside her was the fruit of evil. He would resolve to finish out his duties as vicar then quietly leave the seminary and take his family home. He could not marry a whore like this.

But as he went through his year, God would soften his heart. Through the readings and the liturgy Joseph would be reminded that, despite her sinfulness, God was living inside His Church. Through prayer Joseph would be granted eyes that could see the innocence of Christ overshadowing her sinful nature. And much to Joseph’s surprise, God would reveal Himself living in her midst and bearing fruit through her.

So when the time came he would go back to the seminary with a glowing review from his supervisor. He would finish his classes and receive a Call from God to care for and love His Church. At the ordination, Joseph and His Church would be joined not unlike in marriage. The first year would be as awkward as a long journey on the back of a donkey nine months pregnant. The fruits of the Spirit would be born at the most inopportune times, in the most uncomfortable places and witnessed by the least likely of people. Nothing would ever go the way he would plan. From his little pulpit in an out-of-the-way church, he would have to guide his bride through a foreign, pagan world. Together they would long for the peace of the promised land. And when he would wonder what he was doing, and if he could continue, he would get to hold the very body of Christ in his hands.

Megan Davis

Advent Admonition

My barren sisters:

Tonight is the night you watch other people’s children participate in Christmas pageants. It’s time for you to build relationships with those children. You said “amen” at their baptisms, so they are yours to support and guard and protect in the Faith. Start talking to them. Teach their Sunday school class. Lead them in music. Have them over to your house for dinner. Show them videos of your pet bunny. Go to their ballgames and concerts. Share whatever specific gifts you have been given, for, in sharing yourself with them, you will begin to love them and they most likely will begin to love you. That’s how you can get through tonight’s Christmas pageant. Love the children that are there even as your heart pines for the ones that aren’t.

Tonight is the night you sing of another woman’s pregnancy and another woman’s infant. Sing out loud and strong with confidence, for these songs are your own. The Child born of Mary is your child, the very One for whom you yearn. You may never have been pregnant – or the children of your pregnancies may be no more in your womb and no more in your arms – but Jesus is born for you. He is your Child, come to save you from your sin that you and your children might live forever in Him. His is the birth by which you will be “saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15).

Tonight is the night you go home to a childless house, and here, my sisters – in the silent, holy night – is your cross. Here is where the birth of Jesus matters most, in the horrible war against principalities and powers. Here is where you weep and gnash your teeth for the death that curses this blasted world. Here is where you repent and turn to Him who died for sinners.

So, cry out to the Child Jesus who died but lives again and remember in faith: in Him, you will live again, too.

17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:
18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death (Revelation 1).

Christmas is merry in Jesus.

Love,

Katie

PCOS P.S.

Gina is someone I look up to in so many ways, not only because she is an extraordinary woman who bakes decadent, gluten-free desserts, but because she doesn’t hide from the crosses God has given her – and she encourages me to do the same:

PCOS is so hard to live with and deal with, not only because of the infertility but because all of it is the pits. At this point in my life, I can look back and see that my PCOS was/is a cross to bear that at times I threw on the ground and despised, but, as with all crosses, it continues to be bearable only through Christ and the love of Christian friends, my spouse, and family. From this perspective, I can tell you that I am in part shaped by the suffering of PCOS and, as with all suffering, God can use it for the good of both the sufferer and those around her; but I can only see that now that I am 47 and reconciled to my barrenness, and I still only glimpse this here and there.

A friend of mine and I were talking about the wounds and scars of life and we finally decided that we can’t hide them and we can’t repair them. We can only let them leak God’s mercy to others, that same mercy He showed us.

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)