How Infertility Revealed My Idolatry
I always knew I wanted kids. Whenever I was asked about it, I would giggle and say I wanted four girls. Four girls with bright yellow hair that I could braid. Tiny feet to put shoes with bows on. Little dresses hanging in their closets. I always saw myself as a mother.
When we first started trying for a baby, we were equal parts nervous and excited. I pictured my husband’s large hands holding a tiny body, his face lighting up as their eyes met. When I laid down in bed at night I could almost hear their tiny feet pounding on the wooden floors as they ran around the house. It felt so close. So possible. So beautifully exciting.
But then, months passed and those two lines never appeared.
Suppressing Desires
So I started to suppress these thoughts in my mind. It hurt to think about their tiny feet and their blonde braided hair and their little hands holding my husband’s fingers. I mentally packed up those little dresses hanging in the closets and those tiny shoes with bows. It hurt too much to hope for them, to think about what could be.
I wanted desperately to have the bravery to believe for a child, no matter how long it took. I wanted to allow myself to hope for a future family. But I struggled to walk myself through the grief I felt month after month.
And then a year passed . . . and then another.
“Each month came with another “no” and another tailspin into heartbreak and tendencies toward despair.”
I struggled to understand God’s character in all of it. My faith felt shaky and uncertain. Each month came with another “no” and another tailspin into heartbreak and tendencies toward despair. Each disappointment made me question if I really, actually believed God was good.
Even on the days I was sure of God’s good character, I feared that his “best” for us would be months, or even years, of more “no’s” and more waiting. What if God’s good plan for us meant we would need to let go of our desire for a family?
When Good Desires Become Idolatry
It was this thought that stopped me in my tracks and revealed a deep, deep seed of idolatry. I never thought I could struggle with idolatry. I went to seminary to grow my understanding of who God is. I have a firm grasp on his character. In my head I know he is the only one worthy of my affection and worship.
But as I felt the depth of pain this question elicited, I realized my heart did not agree with my head in what I knew to be true. With shock, I realized just how deeply I desired the gift from God’s hand rather than God himself. I had shifted to longing for the kingdom—for my physical healing, my answered prayer—rather than for the King himself.
This temptation isn’t specific to the struggle of infertility. It can peek up its ugly head in any of our worldly desires.
How often do you, too, hope for the kingdom and not the King? Maybe you’re not desiring a baby, but you’re longing for a tangible provision, a comfort, a relationship, a home, a change in your life stage or situation. It’s too easy, isn’t it? Our desires are insatiable, at times uncontrollable, creeping to the top of our affections until we, in fact, are committing idolatry.
We long for things, often good things, thinking we will find satisfaction in them. We forget that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection has been the full provision for our salvation, that his perfection has forever put an end to all brokenness, that in him we can be fully and forever satisfied, that he is of infinitely more value than our answered prayers.
The Cycle of Grief; The Callous of Trust
So each month I rode the roller coaster of emotion that is infertility, swinging between the pendulum of grief and hope, brokenness and joy, disappointment and expectation. The cyclical rhythm of infertility has made it hard for me to ever feel settled, either in my grief or in my hope.
But in time I have realized that this cycle is doing something beautiful in me.
This rhythm of hope and grief, hope and grief, hope and grief . . . is growing a callous of trust in my heart. The skin is getting thicker. My spiritual muscles toughen as again I am invited to hope, again I am invited to lament, and again I am invited to trust God more this month than the last.
And isn’t that the Christian life? We are continuously rejoicing and continuously grieving. The beauty and brokenness is always coexisting. And in these places we have the opportunity, over and over again, to trust God in the midst of it all. Life will never be perfect on this side of heaven, but as we struggle we come to know God and trust him more.
“And isn’t that the Christian life? We are continuously rejoicing and continuously grieving.”
Like a blister acquired from a too-tight shoe, the difficulties of life squeeze and hurt us, but after days, weeks, months, and years of continued friction, the callous develops. The skin grows stronger. We are more and more able to withstand.
By his mercy, in this continual stretching and failing and wrestling and growing, we are pushed to trust God more. We are reminded that in all things, in both the hope and the grief, God is good. We learn to hold in tension the brokenness and the joy, the disappointment and the hope, the hard and the good.
How Then Should We Hope?
Still, we are creatures living in the already-but-not-yet. Our world is broken and we long for restoration. Even when our desires are rightly ordered, it is difficult to embrace this tension of hope and disappointment in all areas of life.
I hope for our journey of infertility to end, but I will likely continue to be disappointed. In previous seasons of depression and anxiety, I hoped for healing, but the fact remains that our bodies and minds are broken. I hope for my relationships and marriage to thrive, but there is always room for misunderstanding and conflict. I hope for complete victory over my sin, but again and again my flesh fails me.
On any given day, I find myself hoping for so many things, holding expectations of what I want to see happen. And, inevitably, when these hopes don’t come to pass I find myself disappointed, sometimes to the point of despair.
So what is the solution? How are we, as Christians, to hope for good things while not depending on them for our joy?
Because the reality is that our lives are broken. Our relationships are messy. Sometimes we pray really, really hard for good, God-glorifying things and are met with a “no” again and again and again.
It can be so easy, when your hopes are continuously dashed, to think that they are being dashed because God is distant, uncaring, or withholding some good from you. But the beautiful truth is that God is always kind, always good, and always faithful to work in our lives for our eternal good and his eternal glory. In him is the only surety we have of hoping and not being disappointed.
In him is a hope that does not disappoint (Rom. 5:3–5). In him is a hope not in this world, but in the grace offered through Christ that will be fully revealed at his return (1 Pet. 1:13). Scripture tells us that Christ in us is the hope of glory (Col. 1:27), and in Ephesians 1:18 Paul reminds us that the hope we have been called to is the riches of our glorious inheritance in Christ.
We can have hope because we serve a God who is faithful and good—not “good” in the sense that he will fulfill every one of our hopes; rather “good” in the sense that he will use all circumstances to refine us, draw us close, and make us more into his image.
So you see, even if the things we hope for in this world never come to pass, if our hope is in the risen Christ, we will never have reason to despair. Even if our prayers are never answered, we can know that more precious than our answered prayers is our nearness to God and our refined faith that, by God’s grace and strength, will endure.
Gospel Truths: A Balm for the Disappointed Heart
So here I am now, still in what seems to be a holding pattern of waiting and hope and disappointment. I’m sad to say this story doesn’t yet have a neat little bow on it. We are still waiting, still praying, still struggling to believe that even if God walks us through years more of waiting for a child, he is still deeply kind and unwaveringly good.
By his grace, even on the hardest and heaviest days, we have hope because of the truths of the gospel.
In 2 Corinthians 4:17–18, Paul writes that our “light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
“How can Paul possibly describe our sufferings as light? They don’t feel light or momentary; rather, they feel crushing and overwhelming.”
How can Paul possibly describe our sufferings as light? They don’t feel light or momentary; rather, they feel crushing and overwhelming.
But in fact, this is true. We can say confidently alongside Paul that God’s eternal glory and the unseen radiance of heaven will be infinitely superior. No matter what depth of pain you are walking through, in light of the glorious weight and beauty of eternity, our suffering will feel light and momentary. Consider the magnitude of goodness and grace and majesty and joy that you would have to experience for your pain to dim so much in comparison?
This, friends, is the hope we have in Christ, a Christ who is intimately near, to the point that he entered broken flesh, experienced deep suffering and distance from God so that you and I would never have to—so that you and I could be with God forever. This God suffered more than we ever will, died to atone for our wretchedness, and now is alive.
Because he is alive everything has changed. Because he is alive, no matter what pain or brokenness the Lord is walking you through, you can have hope.
Author’s Note: We’re now over three years into our journey of infertility, and it still feels too raw and too unprocessed to write about, but I share this journey in hope that those of you who are in a similar place of doubting, fear, disappointment, or waiting (whether for a child, a spouse, a job, a certain stage of life), will know that you are not alone in the days of disappointment and the struggle to believe God’s goodness. I share our story with the prayer that my words would point you toward the ever-faithful and always-sustaining hand of God—a God who cares for us deeply and promises to always hold us fast.
Lauren Bowerman has been privileged to call many cities, states, countries, and continents home. Her transient life has cultivated in her a deep love for diverse cultures and people. Lauren is passionate about encouraging God’s people through writing on her blog and through discipleship. You can connect with her on Instagram.