In God’s Care and Control
Hello everyone. I’m Hannah, contributing author, and it’s always such an honor to be able to minster to you all here on Dancing Upon Barren Land. To read more about who I am and why I’m here you can read the introduction post here. You can also head over to my blog where you can read the story of my infertility journey in my series called Waiting for Grace.
Today’s post ties into the study we are doing, Surviving Infertility by Beth Forbus, for HOPE infertility support at Lakewood Church. Each month I do a write up surrounding the topic of the chapter we studied that particular month. This month it was dealing with the lie that God doesn’t care about us or love us because we are going through the storm of infertility.
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I was driving home from church a few weeks ago with my sweet husband, Aaron, sitting in the passenger seat. We had just heard an excellent message from a guest speaker who talked about the depth of God’s love for us. He referenced Ephesians 3:18-19…
And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
As we were driving down the freeway Aaron asked what I thought about the message. I genuinely enjoyed it, especially since the scripture above has crept into my life quite a bit lately. I told Aaron one of the hardest things I struggled with in trying to have a baby is feeling that God doesn’t care and doesn’t love me because we have to go through the pain of infertility. In my heart I know He loves me, but it’s so hard to remember that when we are in the pit.
For me in the past, infertility has been God’s silence. I take this barren road just like the disciples took Jesus’ sleeping on the boat during the storm. “Don’t you care that we are about to drown?” asked the disciples (Mark 4:38). They couldn’t believe that he was sleeping during a perilous storm. I have felt the same way during this storm of infertility; I’ve wondered if He even cares that my body won’t cooperate or that our medication costs more than our paycheck. Often times it seems as though he’s silent during those perilous storms of infertility. However, we usually find in life that during the silence is when God is working the most. What was Jesus’ response to the disciples? He simply got up and said, “Peace, be still” and calm came to the storm. We can relate this to Jesus calming the storm in our lives. Whether it’s the solution to our infertility or just giving us that divine inner-peace that calms our emotional hurricanes, we can depend on Jesus to bring us through the storm.
In the meantime, we must check ourselves and ask the question, “Where am I putting my faith?” So many times it’s easy to put our faith in doctors, in medication, or in the next form of treatment because that’s something tangible that we can hold onto; It’s a plan and, I don’t know about you, but I like having a plan of action. But Jesus asks in Luke 8:25, “Where is your faith?” He’s saying, “Put your faith in me!” That is what we must condition ourselves to do while we are going through this battle. We need to take our faith and focus off the things of this world, and place our focus on Jesus because he truly does love us and will supply all of our needs.
As Aaron and I made our way down the freeway after this particular church service he shared with me his heart after what he had heard preached that morning. “God must really love and trust us to think we could handle this storm and wouldn’t turn against him. And I imagine Jesus up there, bursting with love for us, with our parenthood already on his calendar and saying, ‘Just hang in there guys. I’ve got your back until then. But I sure can’t wait to give it to you!” At that moment, I looked at my husband, soaked in the beautiful words that just came from his heart, and felt the love of Christ wash over me.
And he loves and cares for YOU just the same.