“Hope deferred
makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
-Proverbs 13:12
Growing up, I always wanted to be
primarily a stay-at-home wife and mom.
As I was strongly encouraged by the public school system to look at
career paths, the only possibilities that really interested me were being an
author or doing something that involved ministry, music, kids, or some
combination thereof [Bible college later helped to fine-tune and cement both ministry
(in the areas of music, children, and/or youth) and writing as secondary calls
in my life]. I thought all of these
aspirations, especially marriage and parenthood, would be achieved by the time
I was twenty. I would get married at the
age of eighteen and have my first child when I was twenty. After all, you have to start early if you
want to have three to five kids before the age of thirty-five with a little bit
of space in between each one! If not by
twenty, then surely I would have it all settled by twenty-two. Maybe the writing part and the level of
ministry involvement could wait until the kids were a little older.
When I had my heart completely
shattered at eighteen and then found myself without a boyfriend (much less an
engagement or wedding ring) on my twentieth birthday, I started to realize that
my plan was definitely not going to pan out.
I ended up getting married at the age of twenty-two (which I now realize is
still young, but it was later than what I had wanted), I’ve written only very
sporadically for my blog, I’ve already shared where we are with the ministry
side of things, and now I find myself still childless at the age of twenty-six
(twenty-seven in just a few months).
I’ve wrestled with whether or not to share this very personal part of
our story. My intention in sharing it is
not to try to solicit pity but to encourage those who are experiencing the same
issue. If there is anything that has become
perfectly clear to me in twenty-three months of deferred hopes, early-morning
temperatures, Google searches, negative pregnancy tests, and tortuous
two-week-waits which have consistently ended with exceedingly unwelcome “shark
weeks” (as my husband has so affectionately dubbed them), it is the fact that
we are not the only ones who are going through this.
Before infertility (the scary word
that is assigned to anyone who has been trying to get pregnant without success for more than a year), I assumed that pregnancy would come easily. After all, people have unplanned pregnancies all the time. How difficult could it be? Now, the more we have opened up about our story, the more we have discovered that it is fairly common to have a hard time getting pregnant. Really, I am amazed at the sheer number of people who have struggled in the past or who are currently struggling to get pregnant with their first child or even with their second or third. Beyond just the people we have met personally, there is an entire online community of people with their own language of abbreviations to describe all the many facets of “ttc” (trying to conceive). To extend the reach even further, infertility isn’t a new problem. There are women in all generations who have ached in their hearts for a child only to be disappointed month after month after month. Consider how many women in the Bible were barren for a time: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth, just to name some of the well-known ones.
Hannah’s story (1 Samuel 1-2) has
particularly struck a chord with me. The
Bible gives such a vivid account of her anguish over her plight. Unlike Sarah and Elizabeth, Hannah had not
yet reached an age where she had given up any hope of ever being able to bear a
child. Yet, year after year she still
had to face the constant disappointment, the social stigmas that were attached to barren women in her time and
culture, and the harassment from her husband’s merciless
second wife. At times, it all became too
much to bear, and she was overtaken with tears and bitterness of heart to the
point where she refused to eat and could barely speak. Though her husband loved her dearly, he did not
fully understand her agony. Fortunately,
Hannah knew someone who did understand her: the only One who had the power to
open her womb. She fervently poured out
her heart to Him and made a vow to give the child back to Him if He gave her one. Her prayer was so passionate that she appeared to the high priest to be drunk. After accusing and rebuking her, he listened to her explanation and then encouraged her by saying, "Go in peace; and may the God of Israel grant your petition that you have asked of Him" (1 Sam. 1:17). Hannah left the temple feeling comforted enough that she could eat again. The Bible does not tell us precisely how long Hannah had to wait, but God did
allow her to become pregnant. She
kept her vow and gave her son over to be raised in the temple after he was
weaned, but God didn’t stop there. In
His grace, He gave her three more sons and two daughters.
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