For Real Help

So I sat down at my desk to do some legit research on what the Bible tells us about infertility and what encouragement it gives us. So I fire up the old Google machine and search bible verses about infertility, “bible verses about not getting pregnant”, “what does the Bible say about infertility”. I can tell you as someone that has walked that path, the support and hope that the Bible provides is slim and is a hard find. You can cherry pick some verses here and there, like Psalm 113:9 that says “He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD”. Do we want to take a stab at the paradox of that phrase there? “He settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children”. So we can make some educated guesses that this woman didn’t have children but that God gave her something or someone else to care for and mother. Which sounds great, but when your heart’s desire is to get pregnant and give birth to a child some kind of a substitute “thing” to care for doesn’t really sound all that great. I know that in retrospect all of these things will make more sense and in a number of years you’ll be able to look back and see all of the great things that God was doing in your life and have some peace about it. But, as one of my favorite pastors always says Daniel wasn’t thinking “dude I’m going to be in the Bible someday” when they were throwing him in the lion’s den with a bunch of hungry monsters. So when you’re in the midst of that pain and hurt that doesn’t help. You can look at Abraham and Sarah’s story where she had to wait until she was 90 years old to give birth to Isaac. I’m 39 and the thought of having a newborn right now terrifies me so at 90, I don’t think that’s going to work. I get it they lived a lot longer than we do now, but still; context, context, context. So what then? Does the Bible offer us no help, hope or solace in this time of insane pain and grief? Of course it does. But it comes from a different place and in a different form than we think. As someone who has walked through the dude’s side of this here’s what I know and what helped me. John 16:33 Jesus says “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” When you look at the context that this is written Jesus is preparing his disciples for him to leave and go back to Heaven. He is encouraging them that when he leaves life isn’t going to be peachy and a bed of roses, but that they’re going to have troubles. But, he reminds them that He’s already overcome everything and conquered any hurt, pain or frustration that they will ever face. He didn’t want them to be lonely and feel discouraged because He knew that would cause them to become more isolated and do nothing to further His message of the Good News. I believe in my heart this is the most applicable piece of scripture for a time of struggling with infertility. It is so easy to feel alone in this struggle. You feel like you’re along and no one else in the world is dealing with what you’re going through and there’s a whole Kleenex box of other emotions rolled into what you’re processing. One of the hardest things for me to grasp in my walk of faith has been that freedom isn’t the absence of something but the presence of someone. I’ve heard that for the past 15 years sitting in the crowd at my home church but didn’t really know what it meant until my wife and I walked through our own journey with infertility. We wanted to be free from the barrenness we were struggling through, we prayed and prayed for a supernatural enactment of God, an immaculate conception of sorts if you will. We believed that the only way out of that depression was for God to give us a child, which He eventually did through a long and hard process. What I learned through that process was that it wasn’t until we really saw God in that process that we were free from the depression and pain of that struggle. When I say “saw” God, what I mean is allowing ourselves to truly experience his presence in those moments where we were the most depressed. The nights of crying myself to sleep because one procedure or another didn’t work and again felt like less of a man because I couldn’t get my wife pregnant. I had wrapped up so much of my identity in being a dad that I had convinced myself that if I couldn’t accomplish this one task that I wasn’t a man, or even a person worth loving and had convinced myself that God didnt’ love me, that my wife didn’t love me and there was no point in trying to believe that God would ever give me the desires of my heart. Once I started to understand that even in all of that Christ had already overcome any struggle I would face including the loneliness of this, it didn’t make me hurt any less. It didn’t make it any easier that we were still not getting pregnant. It didn’t make the appointments any less awkward, but what it did do was give me a feeling that someone was there with me. And honestly, in that moment, that was enough to make me want to keep taking that next step. There were so many times in the process that we wanted to give up completely on the whole dream of parenthood. But the belief that I didn’t have to take the next step on my own was enough to keep us going. I truly believe that this is a conversation that the church and community of faith need to be more open to having without throwing the standard faith based platitudes at. This is a real hurt that people are feeling and there is this massive awkwardness that people on both sides of the fence feel in a palpable way. No one wants to be that person that says the insensitive thing that triggers someone into a mood spiral, and at the same time you want to say something. You feel like you don’t have the ability to say something because if you do it will only be met with “well of course you feel that way you have kids and didn’t have any trouble getting pregnant, what do you know?”. The reality is there are a lot of emotions going through this process for both the man and woman in the equation, and with all of the treatments she’s going through you can rest assured those emotions are amplified thanks to the hormones and / or medications she’s having to take as part of the treatment process. So what kind of encouragement can you offer to your friends or family members that would be most helpful: 

Admit Your Ignorance

I’m not saying you’re dumb, stupid or unintelligent; you’re just ignorant unless you’ve personally experienced infertility yourself and even then your experience won’t be the same as someone else’s. It’s ok to admit that you don’t understand what he or she is going through. In fact, I can promise you that it will be refreshing to them for someone to be real and actually admit that in the midst of all the professional advice as well as all of the unsolicited keyboard and google doctors also known as friends and family have been hurling at them. The statement “I don’t have any idea what you’re going through, and if there’s anything that I can do to help, please let me know” will have a far greater impact than you will ever know. I promise you that your friends or family members have heard more than enough expert advice and having one more person weigh in on the situation unsolicited will not have the helpful impact you want. 

Be Present

It seems like an overstated “duh” thing. But what can be most people want is to have someone in the trench with them that’s just there for support. You don’t have to have all the answers, or produce some grand gesture to make everything right with the world for them. Just be there. Don’t be distracted and even take up a role of one that is fighting off things and people that would invade them with overwhelming content. The mental picture that comes to mind for me is the movie “American Sniper” where Chris Kyle always has someone with him when he’s sniping that spots for him as well as provide protective cover while he’s in a very vulnerable position with all his other sides because he is so hyper focused on one specific task. The sniper is able to be so focused on his mission because he has faith and trust in his partner that is providing the protection he needs to secure his total position. Be present and rather than attempting to pull the trigger for them, protect them from everything else so that they can be in the moment of their current fight. 

Understand Uniqueness

Noone’s situation is exactly the same. You may have had a friend that went through infertility in the past or even currently, but that doesn’t mean that the next friend you have in the middle of this fight will have the same experience. It is easy to try and copy and paste your interactions with them and offer advice based on what was successful and helpful for your other friends. I promise that even though you’re coming from the best intentions, it will alienate you from your friend because you’re falling back into the same path and traps of their other friends that just want to offer up fixes rather than support and encouragement. 

Wherever you find yourself in the middle of this struggle, know that God does care about your struggle and wants to be in the middle of it with you. If you’re a friend or family member of someone who is struggling through the fight know that there are things you can do to help even if it doesn’t feel like you’re doing enough. Be supportive not prescriptive, be present not presenting in your interactions with them, and understand that you don’t know what they’re going through because their experience is unique to them. If you can maintain that stance you’ll be far more helpful than you could ever imagine.