False Promises and False Hopes

I would be full term on Christmas Day, but we experienced our 3rd miscarriage in June...I prayed that we would be able to make a Christmas announcement this year and surprise everyone, but that isn't going to happen because I am not pregnant.  

Instead this week we are welcoming the start of a new cycle, rather than preparing to welcome a new baby.

There is a saying that gets shared a lot in the world of infertility..."All in God's perfect timing".  After 5 years battling infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss, this saying stabs at my heart...

I'm calling BULLSHIT

Choosing to trust Him through infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss means accepting that children may not be a part of His plan for us...sometimes He says "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."(1) 

Sometimes God's delay is His denial. Sometimes God says NO. Sometimes God's perfect timing is not in your lifetime.

One of the most commonly shared verses both in the world of fertile myrtles and those struggling with infertility is Jeremiah 29:11; "For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope".  Too often we take this verse out of context, we take God's name in vain and twist it hearing in it the promises we want to receive." (2)  

Nowhere in the Bible does God promise we'll all have children. "Just as we shouldn't conclude infertility is a particular punishment from God, nor should we conclude God is bound to bless us with fertility if we are obedient, godly Christians. Yes, the wombs of Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth were opened, but God was accomplishing special purposes that apply to them alone. We can't claim promises made to others in specific contexts we don't share. " (3)

Obviously I don't know what is in store for our future.  While God did not make any such covenant with me as he did with Sarah and Abraham regarding a baby, I can still "draw hope from the stories of the barren women in scripture—not because I expect a physical child nor believe one was promised to me—but because they show that God is always on the move with something bigger than we in our pain can see." (4)

In this season there is a birth I can celebrate; there is a promise I can cling to;  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life".

Merry Christmas,