The Blessing of Barrenness

“So when are you guys going to have kids/ have more kids?”

I’d be very curious to know if there are any couples out there who appreciate this question.

For people who have no problem having children this question could seem a little prying, although it gets asked enough that they usually have stock response ready.  For people who have trouble having kids it can be heartbreaking.  I wonder sometimes, if a person had to re-phrase the question to be a little more accurate and say “When are you guys going to stop just having sex and start having kids?”  would they still ask it?  The fact is, if you are addressing a married couple, that’s what you are really asking, even if it’s not what you thought you were asking.  And isn’t that a little personal when you stop to think about it?

Within reason, I am usually a big fan of Christians being open and honest with one another in a loving manner.  I think that’s what real community is made of.  We should share each other’s burdens, encourage, and cry with one another, which means I think there can be a legitimate way discovering if a couple is struggling with infertility with an intent to help and without being hurtful.  A lot of times this problem is solved for you because if you are a close friend, the person struggling might choose to share her pain with you.  If not, before I go poking about, I try to remind myself to ask pointedly my motives for asking.  Am I just curious?  Am I harboring even the littlest bit of judgment deep down about why they haven’t had children/ more children?  I think some people are just so happy about having children of their own that they think everyone else should be too.  Of course they could be just concerned for a friend they think might be suffering silently, and want to come along side of her to be a comfort.

When you are a friend asking out of concern, hopefully will come across as it is meant.  I can’t quite remember how a friend of mine asked the question, something like “do you feel pretty okay with that (we had been on the subject of having kids/not being able to have kids), or has that been hard for you?”  There was no mistaking her concern for shear curiosity or judgement.  She then told me that she and her husband had already been praying for us about it.  They’d already been praying!  She’d suspected I was struggling because she’s a good friend and she knows me, and she’d already started doing something about it– without even having to ask or confirm first.  What a blessing that we have a Father who knows every struggle of our brothers and sisters and isn’t confused by our feeble prayers even if we don’t know all the details!

Even though it’s a much less intimate subject, I think approaching a single person’s love life can use a lot of the same tools.  Dating and relationships are a much more public affair, but it still takes sympathy when broaching the subject.  I don’t know of any single girls over the age of 25 who love being asked, “So are you dating anyone?/seeing anyone special?/any guys in your life?/(and my favorite– the back-handed compliment:) why isn’t a beautiful girl like you dating anyone?”

I sympathize with them because when people ask me when we were going to have kids, I have wanted to say, ”Don’t you believe God is in control of these things?  And if He is, wouldn’t I already have a child (or six) if that’s what He wanted for me?  So that must not be what He wants for me right now, right?”  Instead I sometimes just say “Yeah, it’s funny how we think we’re in control of things like that, and then we realize we aren’t…”

Sometimes when people have discovered that you are having trouble they will even suggest solutions.  “Why don’t you just adopt?” they might ask, but even my very limited knowledge leads me to believe that adoption is not a simple, solve-all answer.  There is a reason, after all, why people spend thousands of dollars out-of-pocket to get interventions that may or may not help them concieve their own child.  First there’s coming to grips with the fact that you can’t have children, then you have to face the fact that you will never get to see what a child from you and your spouse’s loving relationship would look and act like, you have to face the fear of discovering your love for another woman’s child is inadequate to the task of nightly feedings and lifelong commitment (even though that fear might be unjustified), you might have to help the child struggle through feelings of rejection– all things that don’t even come into play when you are “having your own child”.

Despite this, I don’t feel like I have had anything to complain about.  The journey through childless-ness has been nothing but a blessing.  I’ve been telling myself recently that there are several lessons I want to remember from it and never forget.

First, it has made me realize my own inability to plan or do anything on my own in a very powerful, very loving way.  It has humbled me to the silent struggles of others, and made me more cautious to assume anything about a person’s motives or condition.  It actually has made me weirdly sad for people who are allowed to think they are in control of their fertility their whole life and never learn God’s amazing care for them.  It also has made me feel like part of an elite class of women, again, as strange as that may sound– the barren women.  When I look back over the Old Testament, it is absolutely riddled with stories of women who are barren or have a lot of trouble conceiving.  Almost all of the women of note in the line of promise, and many, many of the women who had powerful roles and stories throughout the Bible struggled with this.  And the fact that so many of their struggles are included in the canon revealed to me that God must take a special interest in their pain, and that He certainly does take a special care of them and bless them tremendously.

It is certainly still hard but like a lot of trials, it has also been a huge blessing and has made me aware of areas I need to grow in– lessons I hope I don’t soon forget.