Collect: May 13, 2012

It is our privilege to pray with and for you.  If you would like to submit a personal petition to be included in our prayers, please send your request via the “Submit a Question” page on this site.

Collect of the Week:

Let us pray…

Heavenly Father, we take great comfort in knowing that the prayer of a righteous person has much power. We confess that we are in no way righteous by our own merits, for we indeed sin much and deserve nothing but punishment. Yet in your mercy, you sent your only Son to win for us the robe of his righteousness, given to us in our baptism, which allows us full access to come to you as dear children approach their dear fathers. Thank you for hearing our prayers and listening to the Holy Spirit, who also intercedes for us when we do not have the words to utter. Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

A Love Letter to Mothers

Dear Mothers,

There are so many things I like about you.

I like it that you give birth to and adopt children, no matter how painful or gross or inconvenient or time-consuming or expensive or politically incorrect it may be.

I like it that you bring your children to the waters of Holy Baptism so they can be reborn into God’s family. One of the greatest joys in my life is witnessing those baptisms and shouting out, “Amen!” Thank you for that opportunity.

I like it that you bring your children to church every Sunday. Seriously. Don’t worry when they scream or cry or bang their heads on the pews. Kids are noisy, but as baptized children of God they need to hear the Word and grow up in the church.

I like it that you hand your babies to me to hold and snuggle and console and put to sleep when you can’t. It is a huge confidence booster.

I like it that you know how to make homemade yogurt.

I like it that you talk straight to me about your life as a mother. I may not be able to fully understand it, but I learn so much through your experiences (and feel special that you confide in me).

I like it that you ask me questions about my life and celebrate the things that make me different from you.

I like it that you invite me into your home on feast days, so that I can experience the gift of family even when it is not my own.

I like it that you teach your children to call me “Mrs.” or “Miss” or “Aunt” Katie, because every time they speak my name they are reminded that I am worthy of respect.

I like it that you let me be barren and remind me of the good gifts God gives to me every day.

I like it that you selflessly (willingly!) die to self every day and then get up the next morning to do it all over again.

I thank God for you, and I pray for you. A blessed Mother’s Day to all of you!

Love, Katie

Barren Children

A dear sister in Christ wrote this thoughtful response to the post, Mother’s Day. Let’s remember in prayer tomorrow all in the body of Christ, especially those who are estranged from or are without a mother to celebrate:

There are also “barren” children who wish for that mother who is always talked about on Mothers Day. You know, that “mom” who is perfect and has given unconditional love and is always there for them; who took them to church, who put on bandaids, who saw all of their piano recitals or basketball games, and on and on…

I was fortunate and blessed to have a loving mother, even though at times I felt like the unloved child. My mom was not perfect and still is not, and neither am I. As an adult, I have become very attached to her, especially since my dad has passed. However, I know some adult children who had a mother but not a “mom” and still wish for one to this day. 

Many children feel “barren” of that real mom. Just something to think about and remember this Mother’s Day…

What do I say this Mother’s Day?

Question Submitted: My friend and her husband were pregnant with their first child this year, but she miscarried.  I would like to know how to approach Mother’s Day for her.  I want to acknowledge the child that God created in her, but I also want to offer her sympathy in her loss. What words of encouragement would you suggest?

First, thank you for loving your friend enough to recognize that this may be a difficult day for her and for wanting to be there for her. She will treasure your thoughtfulness no matter what you say. I’m not terribly verbose myself, so I prefer the straightforward approach. What you wrote in your question was very sincere and completely appropriate. What if you said something like, “I know today may be tough for you. I’ve been thinking of you and how, even though it was for such a short time, God chose to make you a mother this past year. I’m sorry it was so brief. I just wanted you to know how much I care about you and pray for you, especially today. Can I (take you out for some dessert, come over for some tea, fill in the blank) to commemorate today?”

Maybe you were looking for something more encouraging or Scriptural, I don’t know. But speaking from personal experience, when people have come up to me to express sympathy and they give me a speech telling me things I already know, sharing with me some intellectual or spiritual knowledge, I don’t necessarily feel encouraged. I have the head knowledge, it’s just my heart that’s aching. When someone acknowledges the pain I’m in and tries to put themselves in my shoes in order to best reach out to me, followed by a kind action (or at least an offer) I see a sincere concern and I am comforted. I don’t feel alone then. This is, of course, assuming that your friend is regularly hearing God’s promises to her each week in church. If not, then it is absolutely appropriate to include these in your talk with her.

I’m sure that whatever you say she will be grateful.

Collect: May 9, 2012

It is our privilege to pray with and for you.  If you would like to submit a personal petition to be included in our prayers, please send your request via the “Submit a Question” page on this site. 

Collect of the Week:

Let us pray…

O God, You make the minds of Your faithful to be of one will. Grant that we may love what You have commanded and desire what You promise, that among the many changes of this world our hearts may be fixed where true joys are found; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

(Lutheran Service Book, Fifth Sunday of Easter)

 

Do You Know a Good Guy?

Rebecca and I were talking the other day.

We have this friend. She is the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow.

She is the catch of the century, and we want nothing more than to see her married and settled and loved and taken care of by a superstar husband. We want her dreams of being a housewife and mother fulfilled. We want the comfort of knowing that she has a man there to provide for her and protect her day and night. We want the open-ended question of her marriage status to be answered, closed, sealed, stamped, and delivered so that we can hear the swell of romantic music and feel those Anne-and-Gilbert warm fuzzies whenever we think of her.

Basically, we want her to have what we have, and it is hard not to flip through the little black books in our minds and try to set her up with Mr. Right.

Yet, God has not given our friend the gift of a husband today, and spending all of our time, energy, love, and attention trying to fix her marriage status is no different than others trying to fix our barrenness.

Lord, forgive us! Save our friend from our own wants and help her to rejoice in the good gifts You have given her today. Amen.

Dear Pastor

Question Submitted: How can I use gift language in the church?

There are many opportunities for pastors to start using gift language in the church. One pastor in Illinois recently suggested to me that he could begin talking with catechumens about how the presence of Sin in the world can affect their First Article gifts, including the gift of children. I think this is a wonderful idea, not to instill a fear of barrenness in our youth, but to anchor them in a theology of the cross which helps them better understand suffering when it comes to them, as well as how to understand the suffering of others.

Premarital counseling is another opportunity for a pastor to practice using gift language. A pastor can talk openly with couples about the fact that children are a gift to receive with thankfulness from the Lord, and he can also discuss with them what to do if God in His wisdom chooses not to grant them children. Rebecca suggested to me a couple of months ago that pastors could teach couples at this time how to make use of the catechism, hymnal, and Scripture in their home, so that they will continually be reminded of God’s promises for them in this life, whether parents or not. She also suggested that pastors use this time to teach couples how to pray, not just for a child, but for the contentment to live a life of service to Him on whatever path He may choose.

Whatever is in store for these couples, conversations like these will establish a relationship with the pastor which opens the door for them to come talk to him about all of the private and potentially embarrassing challenges that can arise in the struggle with barrenness. In preparation for such conversations, it is important that the pastor stay up-to-date on infertility medicine. He needs to be prepared to advise barren married couples on ethical issues surrounding certain procedures that break commandments of our Lord, as these couples may never hear such information from their doctors. Thankfully, resources like Lutherans for Life and LCMS World Relief and Human Care make this an easier task for all of us.

Mother’s Day, a secular holiday that has worked its way into our Sunday services, is another prime opportunity for using gift language. Pastors can remind their congregations every second Sunday in May to celebrate all of the women who serve as mothers in the church: godmothers, aunts, school teachers, babysitters, sewing circles, LWML, secretaries, altar guild, VBS bakers, and every woman who faithfully lives out her vocation in service to others. We don’t want to minimize or dismiss the love we have for the mothers who bore and raised us, but Mother’s Day is the perfect time to properly recognize that motherhood is a vocation given by God, not an achievement rewarded by men.

When I ask myself, a barren woman, what would be the best arena in which a pastor could teach his congregation to use gift language, I immediately think of a weekly Bible class. Maybe in between teaching classes on Romans and Ezekiel it would be helpful to include a study on the barren women of the Bible. Here’s why: I am an ignorant sheep. I need a pastor to tell me what the Bible says. When I look at the stories of Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth in the Bible, I can’t help but read into their stories some kind of theology of glory. Maybe if I pray as hard as Hannah did, maybe if I had more faith, God would reward me with a child? Praise be to God a pastor told me the good news that none of those women in the Bible conceived because they deserved it but because they are all a part of the story of Jesus coming into the world. In their stories, we find more than just the comfort of a God who gives barren women the gift of children. We find the comfort of a God who gives a barren, sinful world the gift of a Savior, Christ Jesus our Lord!

A Change of Heart – Part 3

A continuation of A Change of Heart -Part 2…

Keisha couldn’t give me a due date. At one point she said it was the end of March and another time she said it was the beginning of April. She asked me to attend a doctor’s appointment with her that no one at the doctor’s office seemed to know anything about.  Things were getting really strange. Then in January the contact with Keisha diminished considerably. She wouldn’t return calls from the agency. She had stopped contacting me. I left messages for her to explain what the agency needed in order to continue preparations for the adoption. She finally called back in February to explain that her phone had been stolen and things were not good with the boyfriend again. Her voice was strained and she sounded tired and overwhelmed. She said she would call me back when things settled down.

I never heard from her again.

Ben and I had, on several occasions, given Keisha suggestions on ways to get out of her chaotic lifestyle, to find help, find a job, move out of the stressful situation she was living in and make a better home for her children. The agency had resources in place for this, too, which is why we had encouraged her to utilize them. But she didn’t and we couldn’t make her, nor did we feel comfortable stepping in and taking over the decisions that were hers to make.

March came and went and so did April. There was no last-minute phone call from the hospital, announcing that she had had the baby and was now ready to finish the adoption process. We had to face it: she had certainly had the baby by then and we were not going to be the parents.

The Lord, in His mercy, had protected our hearts from too much anticipation during this whole ordeal. On many occasions Ben and I discussed how this experience was more than likely just an opportunity to pray for this mother and her children, regardless of the outcome. The agency had warned us that these unusual “matchings” rarely resulted in a placement. We appreciated their candidness and acted on their advice on how to deal with Keisha. This caution kept us from experiencing a real heartbreak when the relationship gradually ceased. We were sincerely concerned for Keisha and her welfare, for the future of this new child and the other children, but we knew that we had done what we could to help and it wasn’t in our hands anymore. To this day we have no idea if Keisha had a boy or girl or if she’s raising the child herself. We sometimes wonder if she was ever really pregnant and if not, why did she act like it? We will probably never know. We just trust that she and her family are in the hands of our loving Heavenly Father, in whom she confessed a strong faith.

I still see the very young single moms at the bus stops and parks and grocery stores, but I look at them differently now. I consider what their pasts may have been like and what options they see for themselves for the future. Now I see not just what they have that I don’t, but I see what’s missing–what I have that they might not. I wonder if it’s a Keisha I’m passing by.

Seeing these women now stirs up compassion instead of jealousy. I have a new perspective that I didn’t have before I met Keisha and was welcomed into her life for such a brief period of time. Even though we invested so much of ourselves into this potential adoption without the joy of bringing a baby home, I still have to thank God for using this experience to open my eyes. I thank God for giving me a change of heart.

The Cross of Barrenness

What is the cross of barrenness? Surely it is one of loss and death and grief, but many in the church don’t realize that the cross of barrenness is also one of warring against the world’s religion of control. The world expects us to manage and control our fertility, so, naturally, that same world also expects us to manage and control our infertility – never mind whether or not we really can.

It is not uncommon for friends, even strangers, to school me in this art of control, this “sure science” of making a baby. A woman standing behind a school lunch counter once told me, “Be sure to keep your cervix lifted for at least thirty minutes after intercourse.” A lady at a party said to me in front of a circle of friends, “Your husband could be shooting blanks. Get his sperm’s motility checked out.” A stranger sitting to my left at a women’s luncheon leaned over and announced during the main course, “My daughter was infertile, but she finally had a baby last spring through In Vitro Fertilization. You should go to her doctor.” A woman at a local farmer’s market stopped me to tell me that taking her suggested brand of vitamin supplements would even out my hormone levels and result in a pregnancy.

I don’t know what to say in return to those who publicly offer advice on sexual techniques or medically misdiagnose my husband’s fertility or tell me to engage in medical procedures that break the First and Fifth Commandments of my Lord. Giving a verbal response to those comments feels like I am somehow validating the very existence of them. If I share with the woman at the market that my hormone levels are already stable, then I am engaging her in conversation about something that is so personal and painful. I am inviting her to continue making suggestions and diagnoses and comments about my barrenness. I am giving her permission to continue trying to find a fix for my problem. I am handing her the salt well and telling her to rub it in my open wound. So, instead of telling her the truth, I simply thank her for her advice, and I keep walking. Then, I go home, and I cry.

I cry, because every time a well-meaning person tells me how to make a baby, I am tempted to believe that I can control my barrenness, that my present childlessness is my own doing, my own fault. I must be doing something wrong. I must be missing a key nutrient in my diet; I must be exercising too much or too little; I must have high levels of prolactin or low levels of progesterone; I must not be producing enough Type E mucus to sustain the lives of the sperm in my uterus; I must not be going to the right doctor. I must, I must, I must. When a well-meaning person makes suggestions to me in my pain and grief, I feel the weight, the burden, the law of my barrenness fully on my own shoulders.

Yet, I cannot control my barrenness. I know this, because God tells me in His Word that children are a heritage from Him – a gift – and that good gift is received, not manufactured or made. God is the Giver, and I am the receiver. And, at the end of the day, my faith must believe what God tells me in His Word, not what the woman tells me at the market.