glenna marshall

When God Doesn’t Give You the Desires of Your Heart

I can’t remember the last time I took a pregnancy test. It’s been a year, maybe. You’d think that fourteen years of infertility would put an end to desperate test-taking, but somehow, the tiny seed of hope that bears no fruit still has roots running miles deep.

I wonder how many hundreds of pregnancy tests I’ve taken over the years, hoping every time that I was misreading the one lonesome line. I don’t want to tell you how often I’ve dug a test out of the trash and held it up to the light– just to be one-hundred percent certain that second line hadn’t showed up outside the allotted ten-minute window of reliable results.

Before adoption became common vernacular around my home, before I became a mother, before I stopped leaning so heavily upon those one-lined reminders of my barrenness, my heart ached with one desire: a child. There was nothing else that I could name that would bring me greater pleasure or relief. For years, every month was lived in two-week increments: two of hope, two of crushing despair. Followed by more fragile hope and inevitable despair. On and on the cycle of hope and despair stretched out for years until my heart was entombed by bitterness and despair.

I thought the Lord had failed to love me because He wasn’t giving me the desires of my heart. Children were a gift, Psalm 127 extolled. I wasn’t asking to be famous, wealthy, or powerful. I just wanted to be a mother. Surely God was withholding something good from me for no good reason. I couldn’t think of any.

It never once occurred to me during those early years of waiting that God might be doing something good in withholding children from me. That was definitely outside the realm of possibility. I didn’t think there was anything wrong in my desire for children; and indeed, there wasn’t anything wrong with the desire. What was wrong was where the desire ranked on the spectrum of importance. Because if “following Christ faithfully” was on the scale, it was miles down from where “motherhood” had lodged itself at the very tip top. And when I say “had lodged itself,” I mean that I climbed up really high to put it there with my own two hands and an idolatrous heart.

When I was a teenager, I “discovered” Psalm 37:4 and declared it to be my Life Verse at the time (please tell me you had one of those). “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” This is a formula I could follow for life, right? Delight in the Lord? Simple! He’s great, He’s awesome, He gets credit when things are going well. Now, I’ll wait expectantly for Him to do what I ask. This will work out great for when I want to go to that one specific college or marry that guy or have this job.

But this isn’t an equation. It’s not math and it’s not a formula. Lip-service to God doesn’t mean I can manipulate Him into giving me what I desire. Even sincere amazement at His goodness doesn’t equate with a check next to the boxes of unmet desires. I didn’t understand at fifteen that a heart truly delighted in God will desire what He desires, will love what He loves, will do what He purposes.

So a decade after my Psalm 37:4 epiphany, I could be found sobbing, face down on the bathroom floor with a hundredth negative pregnancy test in my hand and a hole in my heart. Had God failed to deliver what I thought He had promised? Could He be doing anything good in the years of fruitless waiting?

I hate leading questions, don’t you? The answers are obviously no and yes. He hadn’t failed to deliver on a promise because He had never promised me children. He was doing something good in the years of waiting because He does not work without purpose. He is intentional and also kind. And, while I didn’t know that He was being both intentional and kind in my infertility back then, I now know for certain that He was.

It took the years of longing, of aching with a desire I couldn’t answer, of walking around with an emptiness I couldn’t fix before I began to question what I knew of God’s character. I hadn’t been seeking Him for anything more than a child for so long, opening my Bible for any other reason felt odd. I get a similar feeling when I visit my hometown after having lived away for thirteen years. I forget the back roads and shortcuts until I drive around for a while. But muscle memory is funny thing, and when I began to go to Scripture to see why He might be withholding children from me, I found that He wasn’t so much withholding the desires of my heart as much as He was giving me new ones.

The gospel is good news unto salvation. It is also nourishment for our soul and keeps us from shipwrecked faith and adopting false teaching (1 Tim. 1:18-19, 4:6, 2 Tim. 3:15). Sometimes, the Lord uses His Word to both rebuke and bind us up with healing. As I searched the Scriptures for what I could learn about God’s character, my arms were still empty. But my heart began to be filled. I went to the Word day after day to set my eyes on the goodness of God, and I was filled with what I found. He was good, faithful, merciful, just, wise, sovereign, present. In dwelling on His character, I began to see that no desire, no matter how sweet or noble, could stand in the place of my Savior. I am a slave to Christ, and therefore, no other master will do. Not motherhood, not marriage, not status, not notoriety. Even good things can become idols if they fight for center stage in our hearts.

I am a slave to Christ, and therefore, no other master will do. Even good things can become idols if they fight for center stage in our hearts. Share on X

My son was born during those years. We traveled to meet him, brought him home a week later, became a legal family six months after that. More years passed, and the joy we found in our son revived the old ache in my heart. This time, I knew what I was missing. I couldn’t imagine that God would have us wait seven years for a second child, but He did. This time around, though, the ache drove me to the Lord immediately, and again I found that though my prayers for a child seemed to be met with silence, the ache for children was a gift. The ache was a scalpel that scraped away the surface of my desires and revealed that what my heart would always long for the most is God Himself. And because He is both intentional and kind, He gave us Himself in every way we have needed: Father, Son, and Spirit. From garden to temple to cross to Pentecost, God has given us Himself and given us record of it in His Word. One day we’ll see Him face-to-face completely unhindered, and then there will be an end to every yearning.

The ache in your heart might be similar to mine. Or maybe it’s loneliness that streaks your face with tears. Or a broken relationship. Maybe the threat of financial troubles keeps you up at night with a litany of desperate prayers. Perhaps you long for healing more than anything else you can think of. The ache we feel may be valid and real, but it can also be a lens through which you see what your heart longs for the most: the Giver of the gifts rather than the gifts itself. The One we pray to, not the thing we pray for.

Take it from me, a woman who is both barren and a mother: when God doesn’t give you the desires of your heart, He may be giving you the desire of His heart. He may use the absence of the gift you pray for to set your eyes on the Giver instead. It will always be Him. Let your yearning turn you to the One your heart was made to yearn for.

“But as for me, God’s presence is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell about all You do.” Psalm 73:28

When God doesn’t give you the desires of your heart, He may be giving you the desire of His heart. He may use the absence of the gift you pray for to set your eyes on the Giver instead. It will always be Him. Share on X

Photo by Antony Xia on Unsplash

Can I Trust God with My Child’s Suffering?

He was eating a waffle. Just sitting across the café table from me, all gangly arms and legs, eating a waffle that he’d covered in maple syrup. He’s just turned ten, and I’m increasingly aware of the mere three inches between our heights. I picked at my salad, trying to decide if a cup of coffee might soothe the pounding in my temples. The caffeine wouldn’t keep me up at night any more than the swirl of medical information I’d just absorbed. I listened to my son’s animated chatter about summer break and basketball, and then he stopped short and looked me in the eye and said, “Mom, I don’t want to do this.” I blinked hard and fast, not wanting him to see my tears. I didn’t want him to have to do it either.

It could be much worse. I’ve watched friends parent their children through cancer and chronic illnesses. My son is healthy in the ways that matter the most. But the future holds at least a decade of incredibly restrictive treatments that will further isolate an already timid child. He’s not in pain now, but he might be in the future.

My son’s words hung in the air for a moment too long. We’d been with doctors and specialists for hours. You’re the mom, I reminded myself. Jesus, help me be strong for my son. I offered some calming words while trying not to picture what the next ten years might look like. He’ll be twenty by then. I swallowed hard. He asked for a storytelling podcast on the two-hour trip home, and with the children’s hospital in our rear view mirror, we distracted ourselves with someone else’s imagination.

Hours later I allowed myself to buckle beneath the pressure of a brave face and a long uphill climb. I hid in the bathroom and cried. As much as I wanted to stay home, I knew I needed to drag myself to our mid-week church meeting that evening. I wept and shared the day’s news because I needed someone else to lift a corner of this burden so it’s not so heavy. It is one thing trust the Lord with your own suffering. I get that. I’ve been there more than once. I have a t-shirt. But it is an excruciating exercise of faith to trust the Lord with your child’s suffering.

It is one thing to trust the Lord with your own suffering. But it is an excruciating exercise of faith to trust Him with your child’s suffering. Share on X

I don’t want hard things for my kids. I want them to be happy and well-adjusted. I want them to know the sweetness of God’s goodness and the faithfulness of His presence. I want to protect them from evil and suffering and sadness. Basically, I want them to trust God like their life depends on it without their life actually depending on it. But I know in looking back on my own years of physical and emotional suffering that that’s not really an expectation I can logically hold on to. It is the hard stuff that teaches us about God’s faithfulness. It’s down in the valley of the shadow when we know that He is with us. We forget we need Him in the green pastures by the still waters. We are more inclined to call for Him when we’re scared and it’s dark and the road is uphill all the way.

“…we know that affliction produces endurance…” (Rom. 5:3)

The church prayed for us at the end of that long day of doctors and waffles and concern. They prayed for discernment, for more options, for wise parenting that comforts our son. I thought of Moses when his arms got tired. This is why you share your joys and your sorrows with the body of Christ: so your arms don’t get tired. When I tucked my son into bed that night, he whispered his fear into the dark. “Mom, I just want my old life back.”

His words knifed an actual pain in my chest. I felt it throb right next to my aorta. I curled up next to him and cupped my hand around his cheek so he’d look me in the eye. “This is hard stuff. No doubt about it, God is having you walk a hard road.” I paused. It would be a hard road for an adult, let alone a ten-year-old.

“Did you know that when your dad and I got married, we had a really hard road to walk, too? A doctor told me something was wrong with my body. She told me it was called infertility. It meant I couldn’t be a mom. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to have it. I just wanted my old life back. I was sad for a long time. But then one day, years later, your dad and I adopted you. And we love you so much. If I had gotten my old life back, I wouldn’t have you. In my really sad days, God was being good to me. He was teaching me to trust Him. So maybe, what we do is look for the ways God is being good to you with all this hard stuff. He’s really good at using our sadness for good because He loves us. Nobody can do that like God can.”

A small smile. “Okay, Mom.” He turned over to go to sleep.

“…endurance produces proven character…” (Rom 5:4)

I slipped from his room and closed the door quietly. I would trade places with him in an instant. I feel one-hundred percent out of control. Though I’ve spent the days since researching treatment options and second opinions, there is little I can do to stifle the blow of suffering my son will feel.

“..and proven character produces hope.” (Rom. 5:4)

And this is where I find myself staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night wondering if God is God enough to love my son through his suffering.

I know that He is.

How do I know? Well, to quote the most repeated song of my childhood, the Bible tells me so. If I’ve learned anything about suffering in Scripture over the past few years, it’s that God can use it to draw us close to Him. In James 1, Jesus’ brother tells us that maturity in Christ comes through the perseverance born of trials. You can’t really learn perseverance when life is easy and you don’t need to persevere. No, perseverance is learned in the refining fire of suffering, and as Peter says in his first epistle, the perseverance we learn in hardship brings praise, honor, and glory to Christ (1:7). Hope must be anchored in the grace of Christ, of His work for us at the cross—not in trouble-free lives marked by comfort or ease. Hope that is anchored in Christ doesn’t disappoint because it cannot be plucked from our hands the way that health, possessions, normalcy, and relationships can. Hope in Christ is eternally secure.

“This hope will not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Rom. 5:5)

Hope that is anchored in Christ doesn’t disappoint because it cannot be plucked from our hands the way that health, possessions, normalcy, and relationships can. Share on X

My son is a new believer in Jesus. We’ve taught him the gospel from infancy, but the blooming of general belief into real, fruit-bearing faith has been beautiful to behold. While he is learning to follow Jesus, we are still learning to follow Jesus when we wish we could have our old life back.

In the same way that we have walked through suffering of our own, we are trying to look for the ways God is being good to us. It’s difficult to look into the eyes of a child and explain why certain things happen when we don’t know the answers ourselves. But I believe that looking for the ways God is being good to us in suffering will ultimately point us to the cross where He was good to us in ways we cannot fully comprehend. At the bottom of all of this is the truth that God loves my son more than I do. He is the One who hung the stars in place and planned to send Jesus to carry our sins and our sorrows before He even put those stars in place. He has promised us that “affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Sprit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:3-5).

He is trustworthy when it comes to your own suffering. And He’s trustworthy when it comes to your child’s suffering. It might be hard to see His goodness when your child hurts, but your child will learn to trust Jesus by watching you learn to trust Jesus. While He may not give us the physical healing we desire for our kids, His hope does not disappoint. Ever. And really, that’s the hope we want for our children, right?

 

 

 

 

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Is it Sinful to Live in the Past?

I was juggling housework and a very energetic two-year-old yesterday morning when the phone rang. My friend on the other end, also dealing with a little one, had called with a very specific question about suffering and sin. As I’ve mulled it over, I decided to address her question publicly (with her permission).

She asked me, “Is it sinful to live in the past, even when the past wasn’t a result of poor choices but difficult circumstances not of our choosing?”

It’s a loaded question, really, and I told my friend that. When you dig into the root issues, you’re talking about God’s sovereignty and the problem of evil which are not easily explained in one blog post. And yet, there are some passages of Scripture that came to mind immediately when I considered whether or not it was sinful to dwell on a past marked by suffering. Specifically, I thought of Job and the apostle Paul.

If you’ve read my writing for very long, you know that I frequently address the topic of suffering. In one calendar year, we experienced a nearly failed adoption, the death of my grandmother, my persistent struggle with chronic illnesses, and my mother’s brain tumor and subsequent brain surgery. Because I’m a writer, I wrote about these difficulties as a way to both process and find hope. I shared them with you to help you connect the sufferings of your own life to what is true about God as revealed in Scripture. It’s the primary reason I write: to remind you to let Scripture inform your suffering, not the other way around. So often we work backwards, letting our circumstances dictate what is true about the character of God, which aids only in making God in our own image. What I hope to accomplish with my writing, speaking, and music is to point you to the Word of God first so that you can rightly view your hardships through a biblical lens that explains how God can be good, even in our suffering. Essentially, let’s let God tell us who He is. That said, I believe there are two thoughts to bear in mind when we consider our past sufferings.

The Past Can Serve Us 

My years of living with chronic pain and infertility are the vehicles I use to tell the story about God’s kindness and sovereignty, but they are just that: vehicles. The main story I tell is the one about God that comes from His Word, and the truth of the gospel must pierce every part of my testimony or else I’m just a resounding gong bemoaning the hard things that have happened to me. I’m not that unique; hard things happen to everyone. So, here is where I believe that my past experiences can serve as a place of ministry. When I stand at a podium and talk about how difficult it was to rock a baby to sleep every night for months without knowing if I could keep him, I share the ways my heart felt like broken shards of glass so that I can highlight how the faithfulness of God put all those pieces back together. When I write about the years that I cried out to the Lord for healing because of the disastrous effects of physical pain, I do so to explain how the Lord’s presence and the ministry of His Word persevered me through even the darkest nights of body and soul. The past experiences are merely the touch points for liberally handing out the greatest comfort, which is the truth of God’s unchanging, purposeful nature as seen in Scripture.

“…for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being content–whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)

I want to be able to say with Paul that I’ve learned contentment in every circumstance. I’m not there yet by a long shot, but with each round of small sufferings I’ve learned that when contentment is found in Christ, then the treasure is not so much the end of specific sufferings but rather His constancy in the midst of them. He is the treasure. In this way, our sufferings serve us as ways to recount God’s past faithfulness to us. You see this pattern in Scripture frequently. The psalmists often structured their songs about suffering by beginning with despair and ending in praise. How did they make this shift? The key is that they nearly always called to mind the past faithfulness of God in order to believe in His future faithfulness. The Psalms are rich with a beautifully relatable pattern of panicking about circumstances, lamenting what has happened, remembering God’s past faithfulness, and resolving to trust Him because of that past faithfulness. I don’t believe the psalmists are “living in the past,” but rather, are allowing the constancy of God’s goodness in the past help them to persevere through present and future sufferings.

The act of remembering God’s past faithfulness is one of the recurring themes of Scripture I’ve noticed in my Bible reading over the past few years, and I believe the practice is meant to remind us who God is as we are bent toward disbelief. Or, in the case of suffering or hardships, we’re bent to let those things tell us what is true about God. Remembering God’s past faithfulness must be done by knowing Him as He’s revealed Himself to us in Scripture and looking for the ways He’s kept His Word in our past difficulties. In this way, I believe we can safely allow our past hurts to highlight God’s goodness to us and give us a place of ministry to those who are currently suffering. It’s incredibly important to keep God as the hero of His story and yours to prevent what I believe can be the sinful aspect of “living in the past.”

The Past Can Enslave Us

There is nothing more annoying than listening to someone recount all the ways they’re victimized by their circumstances. Our culture feeds this self-entitled worldview by liberally spooning out the lies that we are basically good and therefore undeserving of anything bad that happens to us, even the consequences of poor or sinful choices. Here again, we must let Scripture inform the way we think about even the most basic of truths about humanity: the heart is desperately wicked and there is no one who is good or who seeks God (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 3:10-12).

Sometimes we suffer at the hands of our own sinfulness or at the hands of others. Sometimes we suffer because of our commitment to Christ. And sometimes we suffer and never know why. It is this last one that my friend was addressing in her question. Suffering that seems arbitrary is hard to swallow. I think of Job, who never knew what was behind the catastrophes that shattered his life. And yet, I am thankful for the account of Job’s suffering in Scripture because we are taught how to process suffering that we cannot understand or categorize.

The Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do anything and no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?’ Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…Therefore I take back my words and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-3, 6)

What was most comforting to Job in the end was not the cessation of his suffering but the strong, bold statements about the character of God–His wisdom, His authority, His universal sovereignty, even and especially in Job’s suffering. I wouldn’t say that Job “lived in his past,” but he let his experiences serve as a vehicle to grapple with what was true about God.

“Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead. I pursue as my goal the prize promised by Go’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Therefore, all who are mature should think this way.” (Philippians 3:12-15a)

Paul suffered a lot for his relentless preaching of the gospel, but I don’t see him as a victim of his past. Rather, I see a man who recounts them as a way to talk about the prize of pursuing Christ wholeheartedly. He presses forward for the treasure of Jesus, for maturity in the faith, for a citizenship anchored in heaven. The difference between living as a victim of your circumstances and rejoicing in them is again viewing God as the hero of the story. When we prop up ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, we count our sufferings as undeserved and unjust which puts us at odds with both God’s position of authority and sovereignty. Rather, I believe we should recognize that whatever God allows into our lives has first been filtered through fingers that are threading together a tapestry of redemption that we cannot fathom. Our sufferings may seem arbitrary at times, but what we don’t see is the way God may use them to display the power of the gospel to a watching a world. Avoiding self-victimization begins with trusting a good, sovereign God with our suffering. Maturity grows from the recognition that we’ve been taken hold of by Christ, not our sufferings.

Remembering God’s Faithfulness or Recounting My Miseries?

As people of the cross, the challenge lies in recounting God’s faithfulness in our past, rather than dwelling on how we felt about our suffering. Like most of our struggles as sojourners longing for our better country, we must challenge our feelings with the truth of Scripture. We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes.

We miss the ways God has worked things for our good when we dwell on our miseries rather than His good purposes. Share on X

So is it sinful to live in the past? It can be if we allow ourselves to be enslaved to a victim mentality. In so doing, we miss the way our past sufferings can serve as a rich palette for painting a picture of the Scriptural truths about God’s unending, faithful goodness to us. But we must first endeavor to see Him as both the treasure and the hero of our past, present, and future.

 

Photo by Moritz Schumacher on Unsplash

Recommended reading: Future Grace: the Purifying Power of the Promises of God by John Piper

There’s Blessing in the Longing

I want to run away from these words.  I hit “publish” so you wouldn’t feel alone when your hopes rise and fall in a tumble of confusing might-have-beens.

It’s embarrassing to admit after thirteen years of one-lined tests that sometimes I still find myself entertaining a glimmer of hope that my situation might change. It’s a small hope, nearly nothing really. But that doesn’t seem to matter. It will still swell and grow and cloud my memory of the way things have always been. I spent a week wondering if maybe everything I’d fought to squelch down over the past decade would find room to breathe in the way of Sarah or Rachel. Hannah. Elizabeth. Every alarm went off in my head—don’t do it. Don’t unlock that door. Hope doesn’t live there.

But I did it anyway. And now I’ve added an extra padlock to the door because the answer was no. The answer is always no. And deep down, I know that the answer will likely always be no because for some reason I cannot fathom, God is more glorified this way, in this continual no. I pressed down the feeling of disappointment as I tucked my kids into bed last night. There’s no reason or room for complaining here in this house where we tuck in our answered prayers with comforting regularity.

I just wanted to see You do it, I told the Lord later when I climbed into bed. I turned this way and that trying to find a position that lessened the familiar grip of physical pain clenching my lower back. It’s not that You can’t. I know You can. Why wouldn’t You do it? It’s not like it’s hard for You. I just wanted to see You do it.

How can a thirteen-year-old wound still reopen with such presence? I thought it was closed up tight. Most of the time it is. So when it opens after such a long time, I’m caught off guard by the way it rubs against my faith. I’m surprised that the remembered pain is just exactly the way it feels now. I turned over on my side and wedged a pillow between my knees to relieve the pressure of a painful back spasm that, to be honest, hurt a lot less than the ache in my heart. I turned out the light and prayed for sleep to come before the sadness swallowed me whole.

Morning dawned gray but not without mercy. I sat on the couch during the early morning hours with my coffee cup and my Bible. I pondered the words of Paul as I read all the way through Ephesians. I pictured him writing from jail. His chains were for our good, he said, and he was right. We needed him to sit in jail and pen the words about who we used to be before Jesus made our hearts new. We needed him to sit in one place and encourage us to be who we are, who we really are in Christ. Like his original readers, we need the reminder that God has given us Himself and that He is always enough.

Maybe the tears on my face haven’t dried up just yet. Maybe the no still stings as much at thirty-six as it did at twenty-four. Maybe the Lord’s path for me will never include the thing I only pray for when I think no one is looking. Maybe a year from now I’ll still feel disappointed in the no. Maybe.

But this I know to be true: God has blessed me with a lot of physical blessings as well as  every spiritual blessing. He has lavished His love upon me. He has breathed life into my dead body and resurrected my dead heart. He has secured my inheritance.

He withholds no good thing from His children, He says (Ps. 84:11). So how does that measure up when the good things I’ve longed for still go missing? If He had satisfied my every physical longing with every physical blessing, I might not feel the hollowness inside, might not learn to name it. Having every desire met might distort my vision of what it is I need. It might keep me from seeing just how much I need Him. Him. The Giver, not the gifts.

There’s blessing in the longing.

I feel like that’s the most upside-down sentence I’ve ever written, so I’ll say it again to make sure I believe it: There’s blessing in the longing.

Longing reminds me that the things I want in this life are unlikely to fill my heart. Good things, even, can turn my heart away from loving Christ the most. If their absence requires me to keep cracking open this heart of mine before the Lord and letting Him tell me what’s most important, then let them be absent. If it keeps sending me back to the Word for what I need the most, let the test always carry a single line.

There is blessing in the longing, it’s true. Oh, it hurts like someone’s bulldozed your imagined future until all that’s left is rubble and chaff. It hurts. But the ache, the longing, the desire for something to be sealed up is an internal reminder that what we long for the most is the One who spoke our very lives into being.

It’s always been Him beneath the ache. It will always be Him.

There is blessing in the longing, it’s true. Oh, it hurts like someone’s bulldozed your imagined future until all that’s left is rubble and chaff. It hurts. But the ache, the longing, the desire for something to be sealed up is an internal reminder that what we long for the most is the One who spoke our very lives into being. It’s always been Him beneath the ache. It will always be Him.

I don’t know what your heart is longing for today. I kind of hate the fact that the things I think I’ve conquered can pull me back to a place of mental reorganization. I slide the file labeled “infertility” back to its corner, hoping I don’t have to pull it out anytime soon. Maybe you feel that way about the thing you’ve just thought of without even trying. Didn’t take long to conjure up that void, did it?

Here’s the good news: it’s not really a void. It’s a reminder.

Paul says in Ephesians 3 that because of Jesus’ work at the cross we “may be filled with all the fullness of God.” So you see, it’s not really a void. Unmet desires make it feel like a void, but you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.

No, you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.

No, you can’t be empty when you’re filled with the fullness of God.  Share on X

 

 

Photo by pan xiaozhen on Unsplash

I am a Real Mom

I felt like an impostor.

No one had ever called me “mom” before, and I had no swollen belly, no stretch marks, and no attempts at breastfeeding to prove that I was a new mom. But the hospital attendant insisted that I sit in the wheelchair with this stranger-baby while he pushed the two of us through the hospital corridors from maternity ward to exit. “Hospital policy, ma’am,” he said. “Moms and babies ride in the chair.” My husband jogged ahead to retrieve our car, awkwardly balancing the new car seat in one arm and a diaper bag full of diapers and formula in the other. This new practice of carrying baby gear must have felt as strange to him as my effortless trip through the halls of the hospital.

I cried the whole way. Maybe the orderly thought it was some kind of post-partum hormonal bout of tears. Maybe he thought it was new-mom exhaustion or fear of taking care of a baby for the first time. It was neither. It was guilt. I felt like I had stolen someone else’s child and had requisitioned the title of “mother” without earning it.

I’m guest posting on adoption after infertility at Kindred Mom today. Click to read more!

It didn’t matter how my son came to be my son. He is my son, and I am his mother. I found my mothering self in the nooks and crannies of my days with an infant, a toddler, a preschooler, an elementary student. In the changing of diapers, in the cleaning of messes, in packing lunches and washing clothes, in the nourishing with food and prayer and stories and songs—I found the mother that God had called and equipped me to be. She was there all along. And she loved her son fiercely. Her son.

I Prayed for Healing. He Answered with His Presence.

These are slow summer days, stretching long at the ends from first light to last. We drink them in deep swallows, savoring the absence of hurried schedules. We sleep later than normal and wear pajamas longer than we should. The hours unspool without our notice or care. It seems a luxury. I’ve not had such a peaceful summer in years, and I couldn’t put my finger on the reason until I remembered the shroud of pain that used to wrap me up tight with fear and misery. The familiar heaviness of July heat has settled over our low corner of Missouri, a wool blanket dipped in boiling water and hung out to steam and dry above our heads. It’s hard to get a good breath when the air is so hot and wet. In being well these past 12 months, I’ve nearly forgotten the summers past when I struggled to separate the heat of a southern summer with the fire that encased my spine. It was always hot, inside and out.

Two summers past, I was on the brink of a breakdown. My health had deteriorated to the point I was losing my hair, struggling to remember things, sleeping only an hour or two at night, wrestling with pain like it was my full-time job. Physically, I was wrecked. I was also losing my grip on faith. I wasn’t just sick, I was heartsick. My husband and I were walking through a season of doubt about our vocational ministry while also watching our fourth year in the adoption process come to a fruitless close–a lot of loose ends, frayed and pulling at my confidence.

I was sorely tempted to hold hands with bitterness. She’d been a longtime companion, bitterness. But she is a difficult root to kill, the kind of plant nobody wants in their garden, a tangle of vines that spreads with ferocity. Bitterness is the kudzu of discontentment. At its best, kudzu cloaks the world in greenery, turning trees into stooped giants with draping, viney arms. It kills everything underneath, but it’s not until winter when we see the degree of damage. Kudzu inhabits what it covers. And I know from a ten year contention with it that bitterness works the same, inhabiting the heart with tightly wound tendrils that suffocate life and light.

I was afraid of the kudzu effects of bitterness again in my life. Desperate for health, for relief, for purpose, for contentment, I turned with halting steps and faltering prayers to Christ. I hesitated because it seemed too much. My health. My complete inability to have another child, no matter what avenue I tried. My internal wrestling with a decade of failing church ministry. The dizzying effects of everything at once.

The believing part of me knew Jesus was the one to run to, but the doubting part of me couldn’t hold His gaze. I was Peter sinking in the Sea of Galilee, unable to take my eyes off the choppy, churning waves. But Jesus was Jesus, chastising my weak faith while also holding on to me. His grip was stronger than bitterness, His gaze steadier than mine.

His strength overrode my weakness.

He held on to me while the pain engulfed my spine, when every rejection email from the adoption agency landed arrived, when Sunday morning rolled around and I dreaded being the pastor’s wife, when doubt felt bigger than faith.

How did it happen, you ask. How did He hold on to you?

And I would answer that He did it by walking the floors with me in the middle of the night that summer of heat and pain. Pain was the word reverberating through my body, throbbing in time with my pulse. Pain, pain, pain. 

But there was also Christ. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Reminding me of the words He’d said, of the promises He’d made, reminding me until His words were louder than my pain.

I am with you always. (Mt. 28:20)

I will never leave or forsake you. (Dt. 31:6, Heb. 13:5)

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. (Is.43:2)

I will be with you in trouble. (Ps. 91:15)

Nothing can separate you from My love, not things present or things to come. (Rom. 8:35, 38)

While I waited long for healing, for a child, for some kind of purpose, He held fast to me. He did it in every turn of the page in my worn Bible. He did it when I struggled to pin down the words to pray. He was present. Visibly, no. But in every way I needed, He was present because He has promised to be, even (and maybe especially) in pain and doubt. In the white-fisted vise of pain, I learned that Christ could sustain me. He could hold my gaze and teach me to hold His. He could deepen my faith when He reminded me who He was. I could walk on water because He was with me.

  I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

 I wasn’t healed that summer. My pain worsened, actually. It would be another year before I would begin to experience pain’s release. It slipped away slowly, hesitant to leave me, I guess. And then one morning at the beginning of last summer, I woke with a jolt and scrambled to name the startling absence I felt. It was nothing. I felt nothing. Instead of a body on fire, there was just a body. I turned to the clock in a room bathed in bright morning light and realized I’d slept all night for the first time in six years.

These past few weeks, I’ve let myself remember those days fogged up with heat and humidity and pain and doubt. I’ve had a bit of a flare-up, and while the ache settles into my joints, there’s a stifling muscle memory there, too. I feel those surges of anxiety that used to steal my breath when I tried to imagine a future shrouded in lifelong pain. I remember the dark, still nights and my splintering sanity. I remember the song I sang to keep me grounded.

I remember the way I called out to the Lord to heal me and the way He responded by being with me instead.  

I remember the words He spoke long ago that throb with truth in time with my pulse, whether there’s pain or just the memory of it. His words of promise and presence. Words I needed then, words I need now. Words that remind me that He is enough on these long, summer days that shimmer with the heat of pain and faithfulness.

My pain and God’s faithfulness. I am not sure I could know one without the other.

 

 Photo cred: Jake Givens with Unsplash

Story of the Song: I’ll Never Let You Go

I am a chronic worrier.

I worry about the past.
I worry about the present.
And of course, I worry about the future.

Mostly, I worry about what might happen.

When I was a kid, I took it upon myself to constantly remind my little sister to stay close when we were in stores or restaurants or amusement parks. I was so worried about losing her somewhere in a crowd; apparently, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I had two parents who absolutely knew where she was and whose actual job it was to keep tabs on her. I assumed their role because I worried that if I didn’t, my sister would get separated from us or kidnapped or something. (It was the 80’s. We were all concerned about being kidnapped by a stranger who promised us candy.) I thought that if I didn’t take on the worrying, overseeing position at the age of nine, then something really bad could happen.

It’s ridiculous now to think I was running the family at nine years old, but that’s how I viewed it. If I didn’t do the job, then everything would fall apart.

I think at it’s core, that’s what worrying is about.

It’s fretting about what might happen and assuming control to make sure the “might” doesn’t become reality. But whatever control we think we may have is just an illusion. No matter how much I like to think I can run my life, I’m not the one calling the shots.

To be clear, this isn’t about doing the things you should do to protect your kids or feed your family or to generally be a responsible person. No, I’m talking about dwelling on the “what-if’s” in life and not trusting God to do His job well. I’m talking about being a controlling person and running on frenetic activity to make sure my plans come to fruition because no one has thought this through like I have. What I’m talking about is living my life like I’m all-knowing, all-wise, and all-powerful.

Newsflash: I’m not. (And neither are you.)

The Song

I can’t remember when it was exactly when I wrote the song “I’ll Never Let You Go,” but I know where I was living at the time because I can see myself at the piano in that particular house when I wrote it, so it must have been sometime between 2005-2006. I also know I was completely consumed with my infertility at the time and had taken it upon myself to worry endlessly about my future. What if there were no kids in it? Could I really be okay with the prospect of never experiencing pregnancy? What if adoption turned out to be a dead end? Would we be lonely when we grew old? Would I ever be okay with the way my life was turning out to be? What if I never actually became a mother? What if my circumstances never changed?

So I worried and made plans which didn’t pan out because I’m not sovereign or wise, and it wasn’t ever in my job description to assume the role of my Creator.

I need songs to remind me of truth, so I set out to write a song from God’s point of view, which is a bit tricky since I’m not Him (though I definitely have acted like I thought I was Him). But since Jesus addressed worry head-on in His Sermon on the Mount, I had plenty of material to work with. In Matthew 6, Jesus says this:

This is why I tell you: Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: They don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they? Can any of you add a single cubit to his height by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Learn how the wildflowers of the field grown: they don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t He do much more for you—you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, “What will we eat? or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:25-36, HCSB)

Instead of fruitlessly trying to do His job, which we are ill-equipped to do, we should focus our attention on obedience for the sake of His kingdom. All our striving and frantic fretting is a big, huge waste of time as well an expression of unbelief in God's sovereign character.

 

It has to be one of the most practical paragraphs in the Bible, right? If the birds and the flowers have all their needs met by God, how much more can we trust God with our own care? As bearers of His image, we matter more to Him than flowers and birds. If He is so attentive to their hunger and physical needs, how much more attentive is He to us? Worrying doesn’t add to your height or your life span, He says. In other words, worrying about your life gains you nothing. It’s wasteful because He holds us in His hands, He knows what we need, and He is trustworthy. If we could move our attention from worry to seeking His kingdom, our time would be much better spent because we can trust that the Lord will provide for our needs. Instead of fruitlessly trying to do His job, which we are ill-equipped to do, we should focus our attention on obedience for the sake of His kingdom. All our striving and frantic fretting is a big, huge waste of time as well an expression of unbelief in God’s sovereign character.

We can rest in the fact that our sovereign God holds all things together. It’s not hard for Him. He’s not frantically pacing the heavens trying to figure out what to do next; He is not surprised by anything or caught off guard. He has ordained your days for you before you were even born (Psalm 139:16).  And what’s more, our hearts are eternally safe when we follow Christ. According to John 10, He’ll never let us go. He says it more than once: “My sheep hear My voice, I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish—ever! No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:27-29)

So, fretting is useless and worry is wasteful, when I’ve got you here in My hands.
Nothing can pass through My purposeful fingers that I did not intend.
And I will be faithful when you are faithless; there’s safety in trusting My Word
‘Cause I am sovereign and I’m always working, and—
I’ll never let you go.

   

You can purchase the song “I’ll Never Let You Go” at my Bandcamp Site or wherever you buy your music online.

You can listen here:

The Goodness of God in a Closed Womb

Her words were a sledge hammer to my future.

“It is unlikely that you will ever conceive.”

The doctor patted me on the shoulder awkwardly. Just like that, the future I had assumed and imagined ended in an explosion of grief.

Raining down on me for the next decade were shards of dreams, double-edged fissures of hope that sliced deep when they collided with my barrenness.

I prayed to conceive anyway. The Bible was full of stories of barren women who miraculously had children. I cried out to be one of them.

After a few years, bitterness trumped hope and those stories served as a reminder that God had stubbornly refused to include me in the group of the blessed, formerly-barren. No matter how I tried to trust Him, He refused to heal the brokenness of my body. In fact, my womb continued to fill with disease rather than a child—the most contrary answer to my prayer that I could imagine.

God’s goodness is wildly obvious in an open, fruitful womb. But is also devastatingly present in a closed, barren womb.

I recently began an in-depth study of 1 Samuel as it is the book our church will be working through for the next several months.

The book opens with Hannah’s story. Poor, barren Hannah.

Ridiculed by her fertile, sister-wife (why the Israelites thought polygamy was a good idea, I’ll never understand), Hannah was marked by her grief.

She goes to the tabernacle where she prays so feverishly that Eli the priest rebukes her for entering God’s dwelling place three sheets to the wind. She wasn’t drunk, of course. Only desperate and, in her words, “praying from the depth of [her] anguish and resentment.” (1 Sam. 1:16)

That part I get. And I am deeply grateful that her anguish is mentioned.

But Hannah prays, leaves the temple, is remembered by God, conceives, and gives birth to Samuel, the future-prophet. It’s the glowy, happy ending every barren woman longs for. But some of us never get that kind of ending.

In the early years of my entanglement with infertility I bristled at Hannah’s story. I remember someone gave me a book titled Hannah’s Prayer, or something like that, and I skimmed it with a mouth full of metallic-tasting resentment. There was no guarantee that I could have Hannah’s outcome. When well-intentioned people reminded me of her or Sarah or Elizabeth, I only withdrew further into my bitterness.

Those stories didn’t help me then.

But they should have.

Those stories should have encouraged me because the child each woman eventually gave birth to, though full of purpose and an integral part of God’s plan for His people, was not the point of the story.

The point was that God was sovereign in both His closing and opening of each woman’s womb. And though contrary to all we see and hear about blessing, there is a kindness in God’s refusals. It is difficult to grasp that it is kindness in the midst of loss and grief, but it is not untrue.

More than thirteen years after my initial introduction to barrenness, I can see the goodness of God in a closed womb. And it’s not simply because I have adopted two boys who are the children I was always longing for. They are, of course, the children I yearned for but didn’t know. Calling them “sons” is all the purpose I need in God’s refusal to open my womb, and on this side of it I can willfully submit to His “no” so that I could take part in His “yes.”  But that’s not the full breadth of God’s goodness in closing my womb.

In 1 Samuel 1:5 and again in 1:6, the Scriptures read “the Lord had kept [Hannah] from conceiving.” (HSCB) In the ESV, it’s worded “the Lord had closed her womb.” While I bucked against the Lord’s intentional closing of my womb for many years, this morning when I read these words, I was comforted by the very same sentiment: God was intentional in closing my womb. Yes, I now find comfort in His refusal to open my womb.

Here’s why: I used to read these passages looking for hope for me. I looked for some scrap of promise I could hold on to that might shed light on a future change of circumstances regarding my barrenness. In so doing, I missed the main focal point of the passage: the Lord. Looking for me, I missed Him.  Whenever I go to the Word looking for myself, I miss the wide arc of God’s faithful character.  It took many years to unlearn this approach to the Word, but the Lord has faithfully wrung out my self-searching tendencies. Now, when I read this passage, I see the Lord’s faithful character, even and especially in His refusal to open Hannah’s womb until He gave her Samuel.

Whenever I go to the Word looking for myself, I miss the wide arc of God's faithful character. Share on X

What I now see is a God with intent.

He is no arbitrary God, randomly closing one womb and opening another. If He intended to close a womb, it is because He had purposed that it would be more glorifying to Him in its closure. If He deemed it best to open a long-sealed womb, then it is because He showed more goodness in opening it than closing it. If barrenness was a life-long malady, then it must be because God would be high and lifted up in the longevity of such a refusal. The mainstay is God’s goodness in His decisions for His people.

For Hannah, the arrival of Samuel when he came was important for the future of Israel. In the broad scheme of things, we can trace the path toward the anointing of king David and his future descendent, Christ, who will reign forever. The timing of God’s work is utterly significant.

But, it was also important for Hannah to lament her grief before the Lord and to be noticed by Him. To have the inner workings of her grief written down for us is no small thing when we consider that Hannah lived in a culture that undervalued women. The pains taken to convey her grief and then her trust to leave her petition to the Lord’s sovereign hand should not be lost on us.

I can know that the Lord who saw Hannah’s grief also sees mine. And if He thought it best to keep my womb forever closed, then it must be because He has great purpose in His refusals.

God never withholds from his child that which his love and mercy call good…God’s refusals are always merciful—’severe mercies,’ but mercies all the same. -Elisabeth Elliot

In preparing to teach this text on Sunday, my husband asked me this morning, “What would you say about 1 Samuel 1 to a barren woman?” I’d been sitting on the couch in the quiet early morning hour meditating on just this very thing, so the words came tumbling out:

“The Lord sees you. He is not arbitrarily withholding something good from you. He is sovereign over your barren womb, and that is actually a good thing. There is kindness in a God who does things with purpose, though we may never understand the purpose on this side of heaven. Sometimes you know the purpose. Sometimes, you’re Job, and you never know. But He always sees you, and you can trust Him with your future.”

Though it isn’t the message I wanted to hear thirteen years ago, it is the message I needed. More than I needed a child, I needed the truth of a wise, always-working, faithful God who heard my grief and was present even—and especially—in His refusal to answer my prayer the way I wanted. Living for years upon years with His specific closure of my womb has taught me that the thing I most needed—more than motherhood—was to understand that He is good in His severe mercies.

God’s goodness is wildly obvious in an open, fruitful womb.

But is also devastatingly present in a closed, barren womb.

I would not know the sweetness of a desperate dependency on Him if not for my barrenness. I would not have learned to release the prideful assumption of the master plan I’d mapped for my life. I would not have found breath in the One who gives life when grief closes in tightly. I would not have learned to cling to Scriptures that speak what is true—that God is faithful, near, just. I would not know the dear faces of two children entrusted to me. I would not be the still-barren but joyful mother, a title that makes great sense in the redemptive economy of God. If not for my closed womb, I would not know the joy of God’s refusals.

And so I say with Hannah:

There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides You. And there is no rock like our God. Do not boast so proudly, or let arrogant words come out of your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and actions are weighed by Him. (1 Samuel 2:2-3)

Here is a song I wrote many years ago on this topic:

Still Waiting

In Lucy Maud Montgomery’s book, “Anne of Green Gables,” Anne Shirley bemoans her task of constant care for small children with the confession that “twins seem to be my lot in life.” That phrase has bubbled up to the surface of memories throughout my adult life because for me, waiting seems to be my lot in life.

I look backward at years upon years of infertility coupled with years of pain and illness, and I know that one of the Lord’s aims in my sanctification is to learn to wait well.

Oh, I’m bad at it.

And that’s why I jumped at the chance to be on the launch team for Ann Swindell’s new book, Still Waiting: Hope for When God Doesn’t Give You What You Want.

 

Ann’s book arrived on my doorstep a few weeks ago, and I devoured it in about 3 days. Each chapter begins with the continued, embellished story of the both well and little known Bleeding Woman mentioned in the gospel of Mark (ch. 5). Well known because we’re familiar with her story, but little known because Mark gave us only a few details about her. What we do know is that she waited for twelve long years to be healed and that Jesus was the one who finally healed her. With research and creativity, Ann paints a picture of what the Bleeding Woman’s life might have been like during those long twelve years.

Standing juxtaposed to the story of the Bleeding Woman is Ann’s story of her decades-long desire to be healed from a medical condition/compulsive disorder called trichotillomania. Ann walks us through her struggle with her condition and the ways she has longed for and sought out healing. Her story veers away from the Bleeding Woman, though, because Ann is still waiting for her healing.

And I think that is the very reason I found her book to be so comforting.

Ann wrote it from the position of still waiting, not done waiting.

I don’t want to write too much about the content because I really want you to read Ann’s book for yourself, but my favorite part of the book came near the end, from chapter 9, “Waiting with Grace.” At this point in the book, Ann has covered so much ground about waiting—how it makes us feel broken and weak, how we feel identified and named by our suffering, how waiting can feel humiliating and shameful. She points us to the cross of Christ repeatedly, which I cannot praise enough. The gospel is enough for us as we wait, and I say that a someone who is still waiting. In chapter 9, Ann recounts the story from her childhood when she broke her elbow. Her doctor-father’s presence in the midst of her pain is a beautiful parallel to the Lord’s promise of presence in our suffering.

She says:

That is grace. And that is the grace I’ve experienced with God in the midst of my struggle with [trichotillomania]. I’m not yet healed, but he has bound me up in a cast of his love. He has been present with me, and he has never left my side. Although at times I have felt alone and angry and frustrated, God is a good Father, and he has been with me through the pain and suffering [trichotillomania] has caused in my life Through it all, he has told me that he loves me and that he will never leave me. The grace I have received has not been the grace of healing. It has been the grace of his presence.

If I have learned anything in waiting it is that. Sometimes the Lord leads us through the valley of the shadow of death so that we know He is with us. I wouldn’t have known the presence of God the way I do if not for the long seasons of waiting in my life.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of Ann’s book. It sold out on Amazon immediately after being released last week, but lucky for you—it’s recently been restocked.

You can connect with Ann at her blog, and at Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Last fall I asked readers what their biggest struggles were, and waiting topped the list by a landslide. Here’s the post I wrote in response to that which goes along well with Ann’s book: The Weary Work of Waiting.

Mere Mortals

As you are reading this post, I’m sleeping deeply under general anesthesia.

For the third time in eight years, I’m having surgery in an attempt to undo the mess that my body has made in attacking itself over and over. The first time, I was twenty-seven and a new mom. Still bonding and getting to know the baby we had adopted, I was afraid of missing time with him while I recovered. The second time, I was afraid because one small complication would render me sterile—a step beyond my already fragile infertile status. The third time is only a charm because I know what to expect, and by that I mean expect nothing and everything.

Like anyone with a chronic illness, I’ve learned to use my good days for work and my bad days for rest. I’ve even planned out my post-op recovery time. There are some back issues of a favorite magazine to catch up on, a stack of library books that I need to read before my late fees reach embarrassing amounts, and I’ve got some articles to edit before submitting them. I’ll nap in between broadening my intellectual horizons.

What will actually happen is I’ll sleep an inordinate amount of time while my mother and husband take care of my kids. When I’m awake I’ll alternately watch Netflix and stare at the water stain on the ceiling, ruminating on whatever the outcome of the surgery turned out to be, all the while knowing that surgery number four is already looming in the distance when my kids are a bit older and I’m a bit more tired.

The trouble with being human is that we’re human.

How I respond is everything when it comes to moving from mere mortal captive to her body to follower of Jesus who will live forever. So, as I’m recovering and dealing with the fallout of disease, here are the things I’m reminding myself to keep my eyes fixed on what is eternal.

Mere mortals, we cannot tell our bodies to stop when the immune system fires on itself. We don’t have control when cancer cells break down a previously healthy body, when brain tumors make their dramatic presence known, when Alzheimer’s ravages the mind, when living long really just means barreling closer toward death with every aching joint. The trouble is that we have no control, and from the moment we’re born we’re inching closer to the end with each passing day.

I find it incredibly frustrating and humbling to have to bend to the host of autoimmune diseases that can wreck my day in an instant. But I have no choice when it comes to stopping the breaking of the human body, only in how I respond to the wreckage. How I respond is everything when it comes to moving from mere mortal captive to her body to follower of Jesus who will live forever.

So, as I’m recovering and dealing with the fallout of disease, here are the things I’m reminding myself to keep my eyes fixed on what is eternal.

 

Every pain-filled day is a groaning for Christ’s return.

In Romans 8, Paul says that the earth groans in anticipation of the coming day of Christ. We also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (8:22-23) It is not a bad thing to groan. Most of us are much consumed with present life and business. I am more earthly-minded than I should be, but pain is a reminder that Jesus will return and redeem and make all things new. There is blessing in being reminded that we are chaff.

Every opportunity to complain can become an opportunity to learn how to persevere.

“Consider it joy, my brothers, when you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:2-4)

What I love about James’ passage is the given nature of trials. When, not if. And though the Christians he wrote to were enduring persecution for following Christ, how blessed we are that he grouped trials of “various kinds” in with the necessary process of perseverance. Holding fast to joy in Christ means holding fast to the belief that we will be set free from all suffering when we see Jesus face to face. Until then, it is a worthy battle to fight against unbelief by reminding ourselves that we are secure in the love of God, even when we walk through valleys of shadow and death. He is with us.

 

Waiting to be well can be an education in longing for Christ.

At the bottom of the yearning to be whole is the longing for completeness in Christ. Though I have experienced seasons of healing and have hope for future times of relief, I know that my body will always be the rope in a game of tug-of-war between pain and relief. What I want is to be well, but a life without any suffering may not be the best way for the Lord to sanctify me. I think of when my disease was at its worst, and I know that Jesus was as near as my own breath. I do not want to live in that kind of daily pain again, but I wouldn’t trade the lesson of clinging to him minute by minute for anything. In thumbing through those years in my memory, I can see the integral stretching of my faith in the nights I paced the floor in stooped over pain, body on fire, breathlessly crying out to God. I learned to long for Christ on those dark, fiery nights. He never failed to be present in my pain.

 

Every manifestation of disease can remind me that my worth is bound up in Jesus. I am not my disease, nor am I a victim of it.

I belong to Christ. While the vise of pain feels strong some days, my heart is mastered only by the authority of Christ. Though there are times when I cannot be or do what I desire, I will not become a victim of my circumstances. Instead, I will fight bitterness by seeking the ways God can use my struggles for his glory and my good. (Rom. 8:28) He is able to make something from nothing (Gen. 1). Imagine what he can draw from the well of our physical suffering!

 

Suffering teaches me empathy for the suffering of others.

God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Cor. 1:4) This is the beauty of finding purpose in pain. There is ministry that comes from suffering, and by it we operate in the way we were meant to as the Body.

The conversations I’ve had with people in various trials have been precious and weighty when I can draw from my own memory of pain and encourage them from that place. When we seek to “weep with those who weep,” (Rom. 12:15) we must fight the temptation to “one-up” a brother or sister’s suffering by expounding upon our own. What we should do, however, is promise them that God is near. We can hold their hands and pledge to help them hold on tight to the steadfast love of God, though tears drip down both our faces. Comfort is not the absence of sorrow. It is presence in sorrow. Comfort is not the absence of sorrow. It is presence in sorrow. Share on X

Every longing to be healed reminds me that this is not my home.

There will be no endometriosis in heaven. My spine won’t be worn down with Ankylosing Spondylitis. I won’t fear the onset of uveitis when I get a headache behind my eyes because there will be no fear, headaches, or uveitis. There will be no tears over barren wombs that do nothing more than collapse with disease. No more brain fog or chronic fatigue.

There will be no more cancer in children, no mothers with brain tumors, no aneurysms, no Alzheimer’s, no lifelong diabetes, no heart disease, no breast cancer, no rheumatoid arthritis, no unexplained illness. No suffering in heaven. None.

These days now may feel long when they are punctuated with pain, but in comparison to the glory that awaits us in heaven, they are nothing more than a breath. Until the day we are resurrected and given new bodies, we’ll remain captive to these old, broken down versions. But we hold on to the hope that one day we’ll trade in these mere mortal shells for new bodies that radiate the glory of God forever. One day we’ll trade in these mere mortal shells for new bodies that radiate the glory of God forever. Share on X

 

Until then, we’ll remember that Jesus is our portion, and He is enough.

 

 

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