Trusting God in Infertility

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

Faith in the Face of Infertility"

"When God Seems Silent"

------------------------

Dannah Gresh: Maybe you or someone you know can identify with the roller coaster of emotions Kristen Clark has gone through. She married her husband in 2011.

Kristen Clark: Honestly, it felt like a fairy tale. I felt like I was living a dream.

Dannah: They talked about having children, and chose to let the Lord decide on the timing.

Kristen: If He gives us kids right away, we’ll accept that. If He doesn’t, we’ll accept that.

Dannah: Little did Kristen and Zack know what that would mean.

Kristen: And so, the first year of our marriage goes by. We celebrate one year anniversary not pregnant. I’m thinking, God’s got it. I was trusting Him.

And then, as we hit our second anniversary, honestly, at that point I was starting to get a little concerned, but I still wasn’t super-super concerned about it.

I think it was a week or two after our two-year anniversary, I found out I was pregnant. We were so excited. I just thought, Oh, God’s timing is so perfect. It’s all working out just the way He wanted it to. I felt like I was trusting the Lord. Everything was great again—fairy-tale life continuing on.

Then exactly six-and-one-half weeks into the pregnancy, I miscarried. It was so abrupt.

Dannah: A few months later, Kristen’s hopes were up . . . cautiously. She was pregnant again. 

Kristen: They did an ultrasound, and I saw the heartbeat. They said, “Oh, it’s really early, but we can see the little heartbeat.” And then that night, four hours later—miscarried.

And so, to see the heartbeat on the screen, to see that little baby, to have that app (you know, all the pregnancy apps), and then to go home and to know it’s all over again. Delete the app. Back to square one. That was so devastating again.

Dannah: Infertility. “Emotional roller coaster” is a severe understatement. 

You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m your host, Dannah Gresh.

We’ll hear more from Kristen Clark in a bit. We’ll hear how she counseled her soul from God’s Word in the midst of that difficult time.

Even though infertility isn’t something my husband, Bob, and I have had to navigate personally, we know many who have. In fact, Kristen is a friend who I prayed with and for. And, I just really want you to hear how the story has unfolded from her. So, no spoiler alerts here. But this is one every woman who has ever struggled or who is walking with someone who is struggling with infertility needs to hear.

Today we’re talking about how we can handle that kind of severe disappointment. The kind we feel when it seems like God is withholding a good thing from us.

Kristen and Zack Clark wrestled with those emotional ups and downs for more than ten years. They considered adoption, and eventually did adopt, but they were careful to make sure they weren’t adopting merely to fill a hole that only God should fill. 

She recorded this before they had children at a gathering of women at the Revive Our Hearts headquarters in southwest Michigan. She was reflecting on yet another miscarriage, seven years into their marriage. This one was later in the pregnancy, so it was even more traumatic and difficult. 

Listen to how Kristen processed her emotions in a God-honoring and biblical way. 

Kristen: And so in those darkest moments following that miscarriage that weekend, I just felt like I could barely think. I would just cry. We would go on a walk, and I would just cry the whole walk. I could hardly contain myself. But I knew God would pull us through that dark valley because He had time and time again.

And we as humans, we always want to ask, “Why?” in those moments. And I was asking, “Why? Why, God?” My husband and I had some really good conversations around that time, and he told me, “We don’t understand all the whys, and even if we had the answer to our why questions, it wouldn’t provide peace. Even if God said, ‘This is exactly what I’m doing,’ would it really provide the peace that our hearts are longing for?”

And then, as he’s holding me, he said, “If we’re honest, what we really want when asking God why is for Him to change our circumstances. That’s what we’re really wanting. We’re saying, ‘Why are You doing this, God? Can You change this? Can You just take this away?’ But we have to trust.”

Here I am today, still no children, no physical children. God is growing my understanding of what it means to be fruitful and to produce life in a lot of other ways. But it’s hard. I feel weary on this journey. I feel tired so often. I just want to be done. “God, can I have a different road, please?”

I’m from a big family. Eight kids. I never imagined this would be my story. I never imagined this would be the journey that God would have for me. But I have learned that He is so good, and He is so trustworthy.

I know that I’m not the only person in this room listening to this who faces unfulfilled longings. Every single one of us, in some season or another, faces an unfulfilled longing. Even right now you may have something in your life that’s disappointing, a longing that’s even good that God just has not chosen to fulfill in your life right now.

I have learned through the fire that how we choose to respond to these hard circumstances will either lead us down a path of sorrow and anxiety, or down a path of joy and contentment. And when we face that unfulfilled longing, that desire, we have a choice we have to make. It’s either going to take us down sorrow and anxiety or joy and contentment in Christ. And how we respond, how we look to the Lord, that’s going to determine the path that we walk on.

For me, right now my struggle, my unfulfilled longing, is for children and infertility. But for you, maybe it’s something else.I  know some of you are suffering with ongoing physical health challenges, and you’re longing to be healed.

Maybe you’re watching a family member suffer with a life-altering disease, and you’re crying out to God for healing.

Maybe you’re longing for a wayward child or other family member to know Christ. And it’s so hard to watch them walk in darkness.

Maybe you’re desperate for God to restore your broken marriage. You’re crying out to Him to fulfill that longing.

Maybe you’re feeling lonely and wishing you had just one good, close friend. You’re saying, “God, please. Would You fulfill this?”

Maybe you’re struggling in singleness and longing for marriage. A good, beautiful thing, and God is saying, “Not yet. It’s not what I have for you yet.”

Maybe you have a job that you really want to get, and it’s just not happening.

Or longing to be more involved in ministry in some way, and that’s just not what God has for you right now.

I don’t know the journey that you’re on or what you’re facing, but I can assure you that God does. He knows. He sees. He loves you, and He cares about you so deeply. He is walking with you through that right now.

One of the big lies that the enemy wants us to believe, that he wants to trap us in—and I have seen this over and over again in my own life, in my own heart—is the crippling lie that I cannot be satisfied until I get ______(blank). I cannot be satisfied until I have children of my own. And that’s the lie that the enemy tells us, that unless I get that thing my heart is longing for, I can’t be fully satisfied.

Fill in the blank for whatever it is for you, but here is the truth: true joy and fulfillment doesn’t come from getting what you want but from surrendering your entire life to what God wants and trusting that His plan is truly good.

That has been the anthem for my life. True joy and fulfillment doesn’t come from getting what you want but from surrendering your entire life to what God wants and trusting that His plan is truly good.

I want you to open your Bibles, if you have them, to Psalm 138:8. And this verse has been a beacon of hope and light in my journey as I have walked this hard season of unfulfilled longing. It says in Psalm 138, verse 8:

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me;
your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.

“The Lord will fulfill His purpose”—not my purpose, not what I want on this earth. “He will fulfill His purpose for me.”

And then my heart can respond to that truth and say, “Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.”

And that is a truth that my heart can cling to and is clinging to even right now. As I’m speaking, this verse has been such an anchor for me.

So how do we find joy in the midst of unfulfilled longings? We all face them. We all know someone who’s facing one. So how do we, as Christian women, find joy? How do we balance that desire for something so much, a good thing, and at the same time walk in joy where God has us right now, in the midst of not giving us that desire?

And I just want to quickly share with you three things that God has taught me in the darkest days on this journey, the hardest times on this journey that I’m walking on. I hope they’re an encouragement to you.

This is how we as Christians can find true joy and fulfillment in the midst of our unfulfilled longings:

Number one: When we humbly submit to God’s story in our lives.

The friction in my heart often arises because I’m more passionate about getting my story for my life than God’s story for my life. When I focus on building my kingdom and what I want rather than what God wants, my focus gets way off.

Early on in this struggle, a friend very graciously, very kindly, asked me, “If God never gave you biological children of your own, would Christ be enough?”

And instantly I responded, “Well, of course. I love Jesus with all my heart, soul, and mind,” you know, just the instant Christian answer. Then I went away and thought about it. “If God never, ever gave me biological children of my own, would Christ be enough?”

And, ladies, we have to wrestle at that heart level. That exposes what is on the throne of our hearts? That exposes who the king of our heart is. It exposes our idols.

And for me, in that moment I could not honestly answer that Jesus would be enough. That exposed an area that I needed to grow in. God has used that question to push me to Christ and to show me that Jesus is enough.

Isaiah 46:9b says, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me.”

Our God has a good story for our lives, but it may be a hard story, a challenging story, but it’s His story. He’s building His kingdom. When we humbly submit to that, then we can embrace what He has for us. We can embrace what’s in front of us.

Back to Psalm 138:8, “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.”

That is our greatest purpose. It is to trust the Lord to build His kingdom. He gets to decide how we build it. That was a big thing I had to surrender. I don’t get to decide. I would have decided way differently than the journey I’m on. God gets to decide how we build His kingdom, and then it’s our job to humbly submit to His decisions.

So the first way that we find true joy and fulfillment as Christian women is to humbly submit to God’s story for our lives.

And number two: Trust that God’s plan is for our good. We have to trust that His plan is for our good at a heart level.

I think in our day and age, when we hear the word “good”—at least for me—we think happy, getting what we want, having everything go our way. We think of good as all of our dreams coming true. Right? The American dream, that’s what we think of.

But God’s version of good isn’t surface level like that. It is so much deeper because God knows that true satisfaction can only come from a thriving and genuine relationship with Christ. That’s how we’re satisfied. That is what’s truly good.

So if God, being all-knowing, is writing our life’s stories, He will sovereignly bring in trials and give us unfulfilled longings because they show us our need for Him. He knows that as we look to Him in those desires, He knows He will satisfy us in ways that those earthly desires never could. And that’s God’s good plan for us, and we can trust that. He is drawing us to Himself and helping us to become more like Christ.

Over the past eight years of this journey, I have had many family members get pregnant, many friends. My sister that I love so much found out she was pregnant a week after my miscarriage. And those are hard. You’re balancing celebration and sorrow at the same time. But God is good, and He helps us walk through that.

As I’ve been surrounded by so many wonderful moms and pregnant women, God is helping me to see that I can celebrate with others. As I trust that His plan is good for me, I can celebrate that His plan is good for them, too. He has us all in different seasons. We cannot compare our life story, what God is doing in our life, to someone else. We have to walk in our way faithfully and say, “Thank You, God, for what You’re doing in my life. Thank You, God, for what you’re doing in their life.”

He is good, and He has a unique story for each one of us. Psalm 119:68 reminds us of this. I’ve heard Nancy say this verse so many times, it’s become a theme in my own life.

You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.

That is a promise we can cling to that our God is good.

Dannah: Our God is good! Amen. That’s Kristen Clark, who, along with her husband, longed for children for many years before God added to their family, through the adoption of two boys from Ukraine. I remember when those boys came home. I loved seeing her face light up with joy. The Lord put these boys into her heart and home. And God, through adoption, made her a mother.

But since then, oh wow! Guess what? The Lord has filled Kristen’s womb. She never stopped praying and believing, even though she settled contentedly into a heart that could celebrate other moms. And last year, my friend gave birth to a precious girl. 

All along the way, though, God taught her and her husband to trust in His plan, His timing.

Let me introduce you to another couple. Randall and Rachel Payleitner. Here’s how they realized that God’s plan for their family was different from what they had been thinking. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So how long was it into your marriage before you realized that it was not going to be as easy or natural as you had thought?

Randall Payleitner: Very quickly, I’d say—months or so—and then we were realizing that this wasn’t happening on the timetable that maybe we had envisioned or had pictured. And that was okay, but it was certainly about a year to a year-and-a-half in when we realized that maybe, without having necessarily this language to use at that time, maybe this story is going differently than we had thought it would.

Nancy: So do you remember, Rachel, when the term “infertility” first came to your consciousness, about when it came to your ability to have children?

Rachel Payleitner: I would say it was probably about a year after we had been married when we had kind of said, “Maybe we should be a little more intentional about trying to have a family.” And it’s only happened a few times in my life where I’ve kind of—I don’t know, intuition, God’s speaking to my heart—but I just had this moment where I was, “This might be hard. This might be a challenge. We might be going through something bigger than we expected here.”

Randall: That’s right. We’re on a different road than we thought that we’d be on. And maybe we’ve been on it, and we didn’t even know it.

Nancy: Right because at what point do you realize, “We’re not going to be able to have biological children”?

Was that harder for one of you than the other? Was it something you talked about easily? Can you just unpack a little bit about what your journey was in that season?

Rachel: I think we were very blessed to be able to easily talk about it. We were open with each other when we were sad, when we were angry at God, when we were frustrated. We’ve known other couples to struggle with infertility, and it divided them—for many different reasons.

Randall: Yes, that’s right. It never came between us. It was always something we could talk about. Some days were hard. Some days were very hard. Some days were okay. You think about it every day. It’s always there.

I love the piece of marriage counseling we got when we had premarital counseling: Whenever there’s an issue, whatever it might be—it might be a “Where does the cereal go?” or “Who takes the garbage out?” Or something way bigger than that—those are silly examples. But whatever the issue is, make sure it’s not between you. Make sure that it’s something that you can handle together. And as you picture that issue, picture it on the other side of the room, and the two of you are tackling it together rather than having it come between you.

Nancy: Not as enemies but as friends.

Randall: That’s right. And this is something that was an issue, of course, and something that we came to realize over the course of months or even a year there, but it never did come between us, although it did require us to be on the same page as we worked together.

It was very hard, and I would still say, for each of us, this is the hardest thing that we’ve dealt with in our lives. But it was always being dealt with together.

Nancy: Were you praying for children?

Randall: Yes!

Nancy: Did you pray together?

Randall: Yes.

Rachel: We did.

Nancy: And were there points at which God’s silence or lack of giving you children ever challenged your view of God or make you ask why? How did you process that with Him?

Rachel: I would say probably every day we asked why because it is difficult to understand. We know that God loves children and loves us. I think that one of the other ways—I’ll speak for myself—that I was blessed was that I never doubted God’s love for me, but I did question His silence or His perceived silence. I think believing that God loved me made a big difference because I still felt secure in that relationship.

Randall: He knew us. He knew what we were going through. We know from Scripture, and we know from our previous experiences in life, while this was the most difficult thing we went through, it wasn’t the first bump in the road or the first difficult thing.

So we knew that we had a track record with God as our Savior, as our Friend, as our Protector, as our Father in heaven. We knew that He loved us. And I agree with Rachel, of course, that that wasn’t really ever in doubt. But it was, “God, we know You love us. We love children. And here we are . . . where are they?”

Rachel: Yes. We’re kind. We love each other. We’re capable. We’re providing a good home.

Randall: That’s right. And we’re open to it. But it wasn’t happening.

Nancy: As I’ve been listening to you, I’m thinking, This is why it’s so important to get to know who God is and what He’s like before you hit the hard places.

Randall: Amen.

Rachel: Yes.

Nancy: Of course, in the hard places you come to know more of that.

Randall: That’s right, but that’s not the first step.

Nancy: Exactly. So, as we’ve talked about this book, You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, we’ve hoped that it would encourage people who are in a hard place that God is trustworthy and He’s faithful. But I’ve also hoped that it would help people who aren’t yet in a hard place, or aren’t currently in a hard place, to lay a foundation in their lives of the character of God and the trustworthiness of God. Because if that becomes your default concept that God does know what He’s doing, He doesn’t make mistakes, then when those hard things hit (they’re still hard—hard is hard) there’s context of the love of God, as you’ve said.

So that was part of what prepared you, not only for this journey with infertility, but for further chapters that were yet to be written, that you couldn’t have imagined at that point.

Randall: That’s right. A spiritual foundation as well as a relational one—relationships with our families, our extended families, relationships with friends, and in the local church as well. The idea that we were having this difficult season, these bumps in the road, this uncertain future that was certainly different than what we had planned, but we weren’t alone.

We weren’t alone, because God was with us. We weren’t alone, because we had each other. And we weren’t alone, because we did have a wider circle of influence and help.

Nancy: Yes, which is the family of God.

Randall: That’s it!

Nancy: How indispensable that is—for all of life, including going through these hard places.

The thing about the grace of God and trust in His faithfulness is that He invites us to face and experience the full hardness of loss, of pain, of grief—as He did for us. So we’re not saying that if you’re trusting God to write your story then these things don’t hurt.

Randall: Or it’s all good.

Nancy: Or it’s all good. We’re saying, “Even in the bad, God has purposes, and He is at work in us and around us.”

So this is an invitation to process, but always in the context of: We don’t do this alone, and we don’t do this apart from the presence and the grace and the faithfulness of Christ.

Randall: We’re not like those who don’t have hope. We do. We do have hope.

Nancy: Exactly.

Rachel: A lot of what we were talking about in those sessions was just being reminded about God’s faithfulness to us. He would often ask questions, like, “What are your feelings toward God as you’re kind of working through those emotions?” So you get to talk about . . . “I’m angry with God. I’m confused.”

Randall: “It’s uncertain. I don’t understand.”

Rachel: Yes. “Is He trustworthy? Can I trust Him to write my story?”

Nancy: And a sweet thing about that is that we can also trust Him with our rawness. We can be honest. We’re not having to go before God and saying, “I’m doing fine,” when we’re not. He can handle our emotional weakness or need or frustration. And in the end, we can’t be angry at God because God is good. But we can say, “God, here’s how I’m feeling, and I need You to help me think right about You.” So, God can handle that.

Listen to the entire episode, "When God Seems Silent." This comes from the series, "Trusting God through Infertility and Adoption."

Dannah: There’s more to Randall and Rachel Payleitner’s story. You can listen to it by clicking on a link at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. Find today’s program, and the link is there. 

Infertility was something that many in the Bible struggled with. Including Hannah, a woman who brought her desires before the Lord.

I hope you’ll listen to our daily radio program and podcast, Revive Our Hearts. Nancy’s in a series all about Hannah. You’ll be so encouraged by it. 

Also, if you’d like our prayer team to pray along with you about whatever’s on your heart, you can submit your prayer requests at this special page: ReviveOurHearts.com/prayer. I hope you’ll take advantage of this great way to share your prayer burdens with us.

Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth with some final thoughts.

Nancy: Before we close, I want to read again the passage that Kristen shared at the end of her message. You might want to look it up yourself. Psalm 138, verse 8. What a powerful verse! And you know, when we affirm God’s truth and counsel our hearts according to His Word, even when we don’t feel like it’s true, well, what happens then is we experience an infusion of God’s grace. So I want that for you right now.

Let me just take a moment to read that verse one more time. And I want you to repeat these words out loud, wherever you are—whether you’re in your car with some littles in the back seat, or walking on your treadmill, or getting dressed for the day. Don’t just nod your head as you listen. Affirm this truth with your heart and with your mouth. Let me read the verse.

Psalm 138, verse 8: “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.”

Now let me say it just one phrase at a time, and would you repeat that after me?

“The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.” Just say that.

And then, “Your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.” Say it: “Your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.”

Okay, what more could we need than that?

Now we have to ask ourselves: Do I really believe that? Do I believe that God has a purpose for me and that He will fulfill that purpose? Sometimes we believe it’s true, sometimes we don’t. But it really doesn’t matter, because it’s still true. Even when we don’t feel like it’s the case, that’s the time to go on record and to stand on the promises of God. “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever.” Amen.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.