Bearing Her Reproach

While On Vacation…

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2 years ago
by Jacob in , , ,

In light of the most recent posts, I thought I’d share this little bit of news…


Yes, we found out while in Disney World, which made the trip all that much more awesome!

We have been very excited and are very blessed by the news. God would be good whether we were to have children or not, but this is a blessing from his hand for our good that we’ve been praying for for a while. We found out Tuesday, and all day I felt rather speechless and overwhelmed with emotion. Of course this changes everything about our plans, but such interruptions are eagerly welcomed. I cannot describe the joy I now experience in seeing Michelle’s excitement in telling people around us. It feels, as best as I know, as a pure joy, completely at the sake of another’s enjoyment of blessing. Sure, I’ve desired to be a father with Michelle, but there’s a different aspect to this. To see the fulfillment and realization of the desires of my wife to be a mother is a consummation (of sorts) to the universe shaking redemptive grace from our Lord Jesus in her life. Often, it’s the sort of joy I can taste, the joy that’s deep and yet right on your tongue. Anyhow, I’ll stop gabbing.

Thanks for rejoicing with us. If you could, please pray for us and our baby; for both the health of Michelle and our baby. Pray for my own mind that I would have wisdom (James 1:5) because I lack it entirely in this area! Also, pray for me on the front of anxiety over misscarriage. We walked through a miscarriage with some close friends several months ago, so the memories are fresh and real. We are taking the posture that the more people who know, the more who can pray. We’re trusting God through this, but prayers on all of this are virtually expected of you!

Also: I took my blog off Facebook a couple weeks ago, partly because of the sensitive nature of the barrenness posts (where anybody – weird – could read the posts) and the fact that people find thing out way to fast via FB. So, I mention that just to say that I’d appreciate it if those who read here wouldn’t post anything yet on Facebook. Thanks!

No Fruit ∴ New Fruit

1
2 years ago
by Jacob in , , ,

As I mentioned last time, Michelle and I have been trying for a while with no “fruit of the loins” (I can’t help but laugh on the inside when that phrase is used). Frustrating? Yes. Disappointing? Especially.

When Michelle and I started dating back in high school, she was an ultra-focused young women who hardly wanted to get married, and especially didn’t want any children. Me. Well, I played too much Tony Hawk, dreamed of “making it” in a punk-rock band, and was rather apathetic to most things. (I actually had a mohawk when we started dating – that should immediately spell “mercy” as a major attribute of Michelle’s character!) About half way through college, Michelle and I had a simultaneous “awakening” of sorts to a love for the Scriptures. I’ve talked about that elsewhere, so I’ll move ahead here. In that process, God began to teach us about biblical manhood and womanhood, and for Michelle this began to awaken a transforming desire to be a mother. Instead of “children five to ten years down the road”, we were looking on the earlier side of things.

So, when I say that barrenness was slightly frustrating, it’s on that background that I speak. Here God had raised up godly desires in a rebellious couple to desire the blessing of children and yet withheld that desires fruition. But we serve a God who, as the first commandment teaches, is God alone – not Jacob. Not only this, but in his grace, he is a God who promises to work all things for our good in his plan. What’s his plan? Big families? No. Satisfied stomachs? No. Safe bank-accounts? No. Conformity to Christ. Those other things may come, and indeed the Bible blesses those things, but they aren’t essential. God blesses and gives gifts for the sake of magnifying Christ in our lives. So, instead of the fruit we desired – children – God has worked this time for the fruit he desires – conformity to Christ.

When Michelle and I talked about this a few weeks ago, the first fruit that came to mind was: Satisfaction in Christ. As we haven’t gotten what we set out to get, God has drawn us to himself more and more through repentance. Repenting of the idolization of the blessing of children, repenting of the jealously of other pregnancies; repenting of not really being happy for other people’s joy of new children; repenting of making sex about making babies; repenting of not romancing each other; repenting of defining our season by barrenness rather than by what Christ is doing. As Michelle said to me, “This has been the kindness of God that he will not let me be satisfied with lesser things.”

Through this time, the scriptures that have been pivotal in teaching us joy in Christ amidst the sorrow of barrenness have been Psalms 16 and 84.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

The Lord alone is my portion, and because I have him – children or no children – I have a beautiful inheritance. The road with the Lord is a beautiful road only because it’s painted with grace and it rests in Jesus.

For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!

To be with the Lord – in prayer and in his Word – is better than all the trivial temptations in the world, and it is better than having children. I haven’t had children yet, but I know because of who God is that he’s better than all the perfect children in the world clumped into one perfect little family. Moreover, I do believe that God will give us children – one way or another – because “No good thing does he withhold”. But that giving of children isn’t the aim, it can’t or shouldn’t be. The aim is the Lord Jesus – to know him more deeply in the depths of the soul. The the object of our souls the ideal family, or the Lord Jesus himself, who incidentally gives and closes families? If Christ, he is the measure of our souls, and the only source to fill it.

God has with held one thing so that he might form a deeper, better thing. What a joy it has been to walk next to my wife in this – feeling the truly godly sorrow about this season of barrenness – and at the same time see her grow so as to kiss the rod of our affliction and bless it as having been good for us. This is what Paul means at the end of Romans 8 – the power of the fall, Satan, sin, and death have all been subverted by the power of Jesus’ Gospel to be for our good now. Barrenness exposes sin, which invites grace, which produces conformity.

More to come. If you think of it, please pray for us, there are still very difficult times to walk through. Also, we will be in Disney World this coming week, so it’s highly unlikely that I’ll post anything for another week and a half, though I might get an itch that will need scratching.

(PS – Yes, that’s a logical sign in the tittle. It means, Therefore)

Barrenness and God’s Story

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2 years ago
by Jacob in , , ,

It is something strange to note that one of the ominous features of the first book of the Bible is barrenness. Or, to be more precise: Is it not a strangely divine script to see a story begin about a God who promises lots of offspring and makes a big deal about children all the while leading his first three main characters through barrenness? In the past I have heard the emphasis laid on Abraham and Sarah’s barrenness (and rightly so – he is the father of the children of grace, and gets specific mention on this issue in Romans 4). But if we look broadly, Abraham and Sarah struggle with barrenness until the ripe age of 100, Isaac prays for his wife’s barrenness for 20 years (until he’s 60 years old) until she conceives, and Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel is barren for a number of years before she contributes to his posterity.

It strikes me as strange, and yet, divinely written so as to underline one of God’s basic story lines in the Bible: I, God, do this fulfilling the promise thing – not you. And moreover, amidst the rest of the Jerry-Springer-like fiascos filling the pages of Genesis, this presence of barrenness makes the Bible all too much like real life to discredit it as fanciful stories.

Barrenness is something I’ve thought a lot about over the last several months. My wife and I have been “trying” for a while now, with no fulfillments of our desires. While we haven’t been trying for years, it has still produced a struggle for us, especially for my wife Michelle.

And yet one of the peculiar things we have learned in this season is that it’s ok, or better yet, it is a godly reaction to be sorrowful about barrenness. Now there could be a few qualifications put in here, but it should be plainly noted that it is ok to morn the effects of sin in the common world order. Couples should naturally just get pregnant – by the original design, it shouldn’t be delayed fulfillment to desire (queue “The Birds and the Bees” lesson here). It is a general curse from the fall for couples to wait a long time to get pregnant (or never get pregnant at all!), and in many ways morning over this reality is only the God-centered response to have.

This is how Jesus responds to death. Take a look at John 11. Here you have the story of Jesus saying, on one hand “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him” (v. 12) and then upon arriving “he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (v. 33). What we have here is a situation where Jesus says two things: 1) Sin is deeply disturbing, and 2) This is still my story. You see, God’s sovereignty doesn’t gut the moral sorrow from those things that he writes into his story that are sin and pain. In the death of Lazarus, we have to remember that it was Jesus who ordained his death, and at the same time it is Jesus who is deeply disturbed in his spirit by the effects of sin in the world. If this isn’t a category in our heads, I think we should just close up shop on being Christians.

God writes difficult things into his story, but we have to remember and enjoy this great truth: This is God’s story. For us, God has written a season of barrenness into our lives, yet through this time we have begun to learn some of what Paul meant when he said that we are “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10). Why do we rejoice? We have a hope that the Patriarchs only hoped for: Jesus Christ has overcome the world (John 16:33). He has turned the sting of death and sin into our tutors for godliness. Therefore, these struggles about barrenness have produced a reaping of godly fruit in our lives that we simply would not have otherwise.

So at this point I leave the post hanging. I will be posting in the days ahead about the lessons we have learned (and are learning!) through this time, and the fruit we have seen because of God’s story for our lives. But here, we start with God because God start’s with God. In the end, God is what matters, and the enjoyment of his glory most central. This is why, very aptly, the chief end of man is not to have lots of babies and change diapers forever, but to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

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