sorrow

I got into a discussion the other day with a friend about infertility regarding an article I sent his way, and he asked the sort of question that one feels awkward asking, but had been on his mind for a while: “So, what’s the big deal anyways?” I can appreciate the blunt honesty here. When thinking about infertility, the idea of infertility being a sorrowful experience seems, well, rather melodramatic.

There are a couple of things going into the question – at least as I’ve worked through it in my heart. For one, in our culture, children are often seen as a hassle. This is amplified all the more if you’re moderately in the DINK category – children, you know, will just get in the way of all that fun you’ll have! Children cry a lot, they stink, they poop, they don’t make money, they drool, etc. (Of course, I do all these things, but as an adult I’ve managed social tricks to hide them… namely looking the other way and being as horrified at the smell as the one next to me.) So, in some ways, if a couple is unable to conceive children, they’re being given a divine hall pass to skip all of these things. God has different plans for them. Maybe they can travel more. Maybe they can go to Disney more often. (Ahem, ahem… I’ll be installing a donation button soon to make these dreams come true.)

However, there’s another angle of approach to the question. For those who’ve never faced infertility (either due to lack of marriage, or ease of fertility), the question comes from a desire to understand a foreign experience. There’s no physical trail to follow, no list of explanations as to why things got to be this way, and some times, just no real reason for why things are the way they are. And yet, there’s a loss, a sorrow, a deep anguish over missing someone you’ve never met that you can’t quiet explain. (The movie Facing the Giants perfectly displays this struggle.)

This is where my friend was coming. He’s a godly man who was asking an honest question; the sort I’ve probed my self with from time to time. This is how I’ve processed the question lately:

The Imago Dei
In the beginning chapters of Genesis, God lays out his creation by the simple utterance of his voice. To crown creation he creates man, but unique from the created order. God creates man in his image (Gen. 1:26). The image of God in man is one of analogy. We speak because God speaks; we think because God thinks; we love because God loves. (Animals, for all their personality, don’t do these things. Especially cats.) As the Psalmist says, “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” (Psalm 94:9). Our desires reflect God’sThis imago dei (the image of God) means that we have desires goverened and reflective of God’s desires.

God Loves Life
One thing we can note about God is that he loves life. God is life. The Apostle John tells us about Jesus that, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). We see this love of life in God most intensely in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity. The trinity is God loving life. The Father loves the life of the Son; the Son loves the life of the Father; the Spirit expresses and embodies their love of life perfectly.

Therefore, We love life.
Thus, when God created man, he was formed to express this desire of God. Loving life is an expression of the image of God in man. Unlike God, we are not an eternal, self-contained being. When God loves life, he looks to himself for fullest expression and satisfaction of that desire. When we love life and desire to see more of it, the lights get dimmed and we get that little twinkle in our eye. The reason we desire children and families is because God loves life and loves to see life grow and expressed. We love life because God lives life. In this desire, God is glorified.

Thus, for couples who are infertile and barren, the sorrow comes as a sting of the Fall in refusing their inherent God-glorifying desires. Infertility says “No” to a core aspect of what it means for us to say “Yes!” to life. It is right to be sorrowful at this. The God-glorifying response to unmet God-glorifying desires is sorrow. Jesus wept at the effects of the fall at the grave of Lazarus, you should weep at the effects of the fall in a barren womb.

The Gospel
Here’s how the Gospel plays into this. In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, he makes this statement:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:28-29)

This is Paul applying the massive truth of the Gospel to weak people’s lives. I’m weak. More weak than you know. Weaker than the last guy picked for dodge-ball. But Jesus is strong. So strong that he controls everything. The Gospel comes into our weak state and takes all those curses of the Fall (like barrenness) and flips it upside down. Note what Paul says, “all things”. What is the good God has in mind? Being “conformed to the image of his Son”. Not only are we created in God’s image (which we destroyed like a rock to a mirror), but we are now being conformed to the image of his Son. We are being conformed to be God-lovers. Infertility and a barren womb is just as much included in this “all things” as that nasty look I gave Michelle on the way out the door the other morning. All things, yes, even the painful things; especially the painful things. God takes up the tools of our every-day circumstances and widdles them on us to make us look like his Son.

So what does the Gospel say about infertility? It says, “Look to the fertility that God is working in you in your barrenness. There’s fruit here that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.” It says that there is a purpose, a Gospel purpose, a Jesus purpose. In barrenness, as sons and daughters of a good God, we do “not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thes. 4:13). We grieve; but we grieve with Jesus.