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Chocolate? Check.
Salty snacks? Check.
Gluten-free desserts? Check.
An assortment of teas and coffee? Check.
Comfy sofas and lovely gardens? Check.
Now, all we need are attendees.
Ladies, please mark your calendars for August 22nd – 24th, because The Great Getaway 2014 in St. Louis has been scheduled.
Registration details are coming soon.
My young pen pal recently became a big sister through adoption last year – twice!
Here’s how she described her new life as a big sister in her most recent letter to me:
We are super busy. Sometimes I lock myself in my bedroom, lie on my bed, and try to imagine life BEFORE munchkins 2 and 3. It is IMPOSSIBLE. I can’t even think of our living room 2 years ago. 🙂 Right now, Little Brother is hanging onto my chair watching Little Sister ride her tricycle around the kitchen/dining room while holding her baby doll. She stops every time she goes by Little Brother to smile at him.
Isn’t that delightful?
Have you and your husband considered adoption?
Physician’s Assistant:Â Now, why won’t you consider IVF?
Me:Â My husband and I have some ethical concerns about the procedure. Our consciences are burdened by the meager 29.4% success rate of implantation–
Physician’s Assistant: Oh, that’s not right. That’s too low, I think.
Me: No, that’s right. I just looked it up last week. The success rate can be higher or lower depending on the age and health of the mother, but – let’s be honest – I’m going on thirty-six. That rate is just about as optimistic as the scientists advise me to be.
Physician’s Assistant: True, you are of advanced maternal age.
Me: Well, creating babies and then attempting to implant them into my advanced maternal womb with a whopping 70.6% chance of dying doesn’t seem loving to the babies, does it?
(That question went unanswered.)
Whenever I walk into my kitchen, I am reminded of something extraordinary:
Though God in His wisdom has not blessed me with the gift of children of my own, there are children out there who love me and need my love in return.
I am reminded of this fact every time I reach for the refrigerator door, for there, pieced together like a quilt of tender affection, hang colorful pictures, drawings, letters, cards, handprints, and crayon art created by beloved nieces, nephews, godchildren, tiny friends, and church family who remember me in my barrenness.
Refrigerator love is a powerful forcefield which holds back the suffocating silence in a childless home.
So, if your children have a special auntie or uncle who struggles daily against the empty loneliness of barrenness, consider mailing some refrigerator love their way.
(And the kind of refrigerator love that goes behind the door – especially if it is of the chocolate variety – is also known to be effective.)
I must share a unique blessing I have.
I didn’t always have it. Years ago, I had to sit on the table in my OB/GYN’s office, tucking and re-tucking the thin sheets around myself while waiting for the doctor to arrive and avoiding the ads for contraceptives that plastered the walls.
I have a new doctor now. This doctor celebrates life, teaches his numerous children about the Creator of life, and has personally prayed for me in my suffering. And instead of drug marketing posters, this doctor displays in his office crucifixes, Scripture verses, and wall art like this:
Thank you, Amy, whoever you are. And thank you, Dr. G. You both provide so much encouragement to every woman who sees you.
“Where is the baby in your tummy?” asked the precocious, three-year-old boy.
“I don’t have one.”
“Why?” The boy stared incredulously at my belly, then turned to toss a questioning look at his own mother’s expanded, blessed abdomen. Something wasn’t measuring up. Literally.
“God has not blessed me with the gift of a child.”
“Oh.” The boy considered this bit of news for a moment. Then, having reached a satisfactory conclusion, he nodded his head. “Well, when He does, you will feed it with your bumps.”
Calling all LCMS pastors, seminarians, commissioned ministers, deaconesses, and parish nurses!
We certainly live in a “brave new world,” especially when it comes to infertility medicine.
In vitro fertilization, embryo adoption and assisted reproductive technologies…What is the Church to do? How can the Church steer congregations through the ethically murky waters of infertility medicine? What comfort can we as the Church offer to those who suffer from infertility and miscarriages?
LCMS Life Ministry and the Concordia Seminary Life Team are helping start the conversation by sponsoring an Infertility Ethics Symposium for pastors, seminarians, commissioned ministers, deaconesses, and parish nurses on Saturday, November 8, at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Won’t you please join us?
Admittance is free.
Contact LCMS Life Ministry at 314-996-1711 or tracy.quaethem@lcms.org for more info as it becomes available.
Symposium Schedule:
8:30 a.m. – Opening Worship – Rev. William Weedon (Homily: Prof. John Pless)
9:00 a.m. – “Be Fruitful and Multiply: When It Doesn’t Work” – Rev. William Cwirla
10:00 a.m. – coffee break
10:30 a.m. – “Survey of Reproductive Counseling Practices in the Lutheran Church” – Rev. Dr. Kevin E. Voss
11:30 a.m. – “IVF: from Created to Creator” – Rev. Dr. James Lamb
12:30 p.m. – lunch
1:45 p.m. – “Embryo Adoption: Helping or Hurting My Neighbor?” – Rev. Dr. Robert W. Weise
2:45 p.m. – “Pastoral Care for Those Experiencing Infertility” – Rev. Christopher Esget
3:45 p.m. – break
4:00 p.m. – “The LCMS and Infertility Ethics” – Rev. Peter Brock
5:00 p.m. – Closing Worship – Rev. William Weedon (Homily: Dr. Jeff Gibbs)
5:30 p.m. – GemĂĽtlichkeit
Heidi invited me to feast on the Word, specifically on this:
[T]he surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil (2 Corinthians 4:7-5:10 ESV).
Thank you, Heidi.
We’re confused about something in this generation. There’s the mistaken belief that loving someone means permitting them to do whatever they want, that love equals acceptance and tolerance.
Case in point, religion according to Lady Gaga instructs us to embrace and celebrate people as they are today – to tolerate and accept their feelings and actions – because they’re simply born that way. “I’m beautiful in my own way,” she sings. “I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way. Don’t hide yourself in regret. Just love yourself, and you’re set.” She expounds, “Oh, there ain’t no other way.”
If this were true, then a government which loves its citizens would provide a hotel room rather than a jail cell for the man in his forties who desires to bed preteen girls. After all, he was simply born that way.
If everyone is “on the right track, baby,” then we would not limit abortion to just babies in the womb. We would cease such unloving discrimination by age and, instead, allow adults to abort other adults who don’t fit into their own life plan.
If “loving yourself” is all that’s required to be set in life, then paying taxes to support the livelihood of policemen and firemen and soldiers and other civil servants would be bogus.
If we are to avoid hiding ourselves “in regret” for our in-born passions, then racists and terrorists and sociopaths should be hired to run our daycare facilities, schools, and businesses.
If “there ain’t no other way” than loving yourself, then parents should not be bothered with loving and protecting their children. They should create as many embryos through IVF as they want and do with them whatever they want. The important thing is to see their own desires answered and their own dreams fulfilled, not those of their kids.
Lady Gaga, in her effort to trumpet and memorialize and idolize the very passions with which we are all born, endorses the very opposite of love, for true love doesn’t tolerate and accept and serve the self. True love denies the self and its passions and dies for the good of their children.
“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13 [ESV]).”
Sometimes, the greatest act of love we barren mothers can perform for our children is to suffer the absence of them rather than create them to die.
I cannot dig myself out of any grief pit. In my grief, I must wait on the LORD to pull me out:
“I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD [Psalm 40:1-3].”
I want so badly to do something in my grief, something to save myself from all of this mucky darkness; but, then, I think that is the point of suffering. It reminds us that we can do nothing to save ourselves. We must be saved. By Jesus. He is the One who sets our feet upon a rock and puts a new song in our mouths.
Grief is simply waiting on the LORD, turning in repentance and faith to the only One who can save us.
Have mercy, Lord Jesus. Come quickly!
He Remembers the Barren 