Yesterday I received this email, the subject line of which read My spiritual crisis.
Hi John! I am writing you to get your insight on a struggle I am having. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church, and loved it. I had what most Christians would call a very close “relationship” with Jesus. Then I went to college. I started questioning things and decided that some of the things I had been taught just were not right. I became extremely more liberal in my views, but still very much involved in my Church and “strong” in my relationship with Christ.
Then I got married and tried for three long years to get pregnant. Three long years of painful, expensive, invasive fertility treatments. I can not even begin to explain to you the emotional sorrow that infertility caused me. It also caused me a huge spiritual crisis. How can an all-loving God bless drug addicts with babies that they don’t even want, while I sat crying with empty arms? Had I not been a good and faithful follower pretty much all my life? Why was I being passed up on the blessing of growing a family? I could not, and still do not understand it.
I eventually found a medication that worked for me, and was able to conceive a son. He is now three years old. For a while the joy of having him overshadowed what I had been through, but now it has been another three years of infertility, and I am going through it all over again to have another child. Only this time, it is worse in a couple of ways. This time, we have no insurance coverage for infertility and no money to afford treatment, so I am left feeling even more helpless than before. Worse than that, however, is that this time, I know firsthand what I am missing out on, so it seems to hurt even more if that is possible. Every time a friend or family member shares their good news that they are pregnant, a small part of me is happy for them, but I mostly just feel the sting of disparity. God is supposed to be fair and just… but I have a really hard time seeing it the longer I live. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this. Thank you!
Dear woman who wrote me this:
I’m uncomfortable answering your letter, because I don’t think you’ll like my response. Nontheless:
1. You did have a child. Clearly God fought you pretty hard on that, but ultimately you did receive the very blessing you desired. I’m not sure how not being granted the same amazing blessing twice serves as evidence that God is unfair and unjust. If you knew a poor man who begged, pleaded and prayed to God to bring him a million dollars, and then he got a million dollars, what would you think if he later claimed that God was unfair and unjust for not bringing him a second million dollars?
2. You believe that God has made you infertile; you believe that being a mother is God’s highest desire for you; you know that there are babies out there who need a mother at least as desperately as you want another baby. So maybe adoption might be something for you to look into?
Love to you. I know you’re suffering. But do consider the idea that if God blocks one path for you, it’s because he’s got something even better waiting for you down another.
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i myself cant have children
heck i was born intersex and without any female organs altogetherr
im asexual
what am i supposed to do? be single and alone?
i was told by not well meaning christians that God must have called me to be single to serve him instead and that he has other plans for me
ok and when exactly did God tell them that or why would God need to inform a complete stranger what he has for me or called me to do – geez some christians need to just shut up
and quit making things up my gosh its so damaging and whats worse they thought they were tying to help – help what geez
i cant have sex being intersex and being asexual dont want to
God has very much left me with no options here
i feel very isolated being an asexual and being intersex
life is very lonely to the point i cry on a daily basis im so lonely
you thought not having kids was hard
try being single at 37 and being asexual and being told this is Gods will
i dont trust that God, dont love that God want nothing to do with God then
why the heck did he make me this way? why!!!! nothing good has come from this
ive learned nothing etc
my gosh is my purpose in life to be a spectator while other people are married
i have never been on a date – not 1 !!!
im 37
my life has been a living hell because of gods so called plan
if God knits us in our mothers womb – did the needle slip with me?
what also hurt is to hear christians tell me God doesnt make mistakes? i would feel alot better if God did make mistakes because it angers me to even think my birth defect was done on purpose? on purpose why? for what? for whos benefit? certainly not mine!!!!
I really want to thank you for sharing this, Kathyrn. It’s extremely compelling. Your life is defined by dynamics so foreign to most people. If you’d ever care to share anymore about your life’s experience, please contact me (via the “Contact Me” tab atop my blog), and let’s talk about doing that. Thanks for your honesty and passion here.
Kathryn, your comment was probably one of the saddest I’ve ever read … I’m really sorry about your loneliness. Being part of a small minority is terrible, and the only way to cope with it is to quit trying to conform and actually look for other people who belong to your group. I urge you to connect with other asexual people (there’s plenty out there), look them up online, find a website, or start your own group. Why don’t you start a Facebook page or group? If necessary, move to a larger city, where your chances are better. Also, quit this Christian BS. The only thing they do is to put you down, so I urge you to free yourself from a toxic religion. Get off your couch and do something about it, you can’t let life pass you by like this.
I hope this helps! Good luck!
I don’t know if what I have to say will be at all helpful to you, but I can hopefully express myself well enough for you to know that I have deep compassion for your situation and some understanding of the fertility struggle.
I’m not sure every difficult or wonderful thing happens because God wills it to be so; certainly that CAN be the case, but there are many times that things happen because of the free will mankind has. One can never see the long term consequences of even the smallest actions, and people often suffer as a result of harm caused by other people’s choices, intent or error.
Though I struggled with fertility issues, eventually I did have two children. My youngest has autism and my oldest struggles with bipolar disorder, both have ADHD. We struggled a lot when they were toddlers and life is sometimes…challenging. I don’t want to up-play the difficulties of my kids’ issues, because honestly, I don’t want people to think that an autism diagnosis is the end of the world. Its not. But yes, sometimes things can be incredibly frustrating and difficult. And I wonder why my kids have to suffer and learn to cope and manage their behaviors in ways that neurotypical kids will never have to.
I suspect deep down that one of the reasons my kids have these problems – and one of the reasons women have so many fertility issues and there is more cancer and there is more asthma and more allergies and immune system disorders, I think these things are not because God wills them but because humans have spent a lot of years creating chemical compounds that turned out to be horribly toxic. Even though we are not still making all of them and even though we work to try to clean up their effects on our environment, they are still out there and new ones are being created all the time whose ultimate impact can’t be known. All these toxins are in our air, our water, the furniture we buy, the cleaners we use, the soil we grow our food in.
Does that make me feel better about my kids diagnosis or your fertility? No, it makes me somewhat angry. Mankind does much to destroy itself, and the decisions made generations ago by other people are affecting all of us now just as what we as a world do now will have unforeseen consequences for our children and grandchildren. But at the same time, it helps me to understand that this is not the will of God. I don’t need to be frustrated at or angry with God over the choices people make and the things they do whether on purpose or by accident. I’m sure the researchers who discovered how to create bleach never intended for anyone to be poisoned or harmed by their wonderful discovery — they just wanted to find a way to make things clean. The Wright brothers would likely never have imagined a time when untold thousands of improved versions of their flying machine would be crisscrossing the skies of our world — and sometimes crashing and killing or injuring hundreds of people or being used as weapons to reign devastation on other human beings.
If God didn’t allow suffering, if he didn’t allow people to choose to do the wrong thing or to make mistakes, then free will wouldn’t exist and neither would we.
It is a terrible emotional struggle when everything in you tells you that you want to have a baby and you can’t. Baby fever is something I’m not sure every woman gets and I’m pretty sure most men can’t understand, but for those of us who have in our lives been stricken with it, we understand its depth, breadth and all-encompassing nature. When it strikes, it is the ONLY thing we want to do and to be — a mother. To be faced with challenges when friends seem to easily have babies and women who probably shouldn’t be having children at all get pregnant it feels AWFUL.
We can’t see the other side of a struggle when we’re in the middle of it. I cannot predict what the outcome of your own struggle will be, though I hope very much for you that there are more babies whether your grow them the old-fashioned way or you adopt them. (I was adopted as an infant by the way, and it was a very great blessing for me). What I can guarantee you is that before this struggle, during this struggle and forevermore after this struggle, you will always have the unconditional love of God and you will also always have the love of a host of people who pray for you, care for you – some because they are present in your life and others who don’t even know you but love you because you are a fellow traveler in the great mystery called life.
It is not easy to get past being hurt and angry and grieving over the inability to reach something that calls out to you at the cellular level. I pray that you are able to find some peace and some okay-ness in the middle of your struggles.
Sorry this is so long. I didn’t mean to write an essay.
Thanks very much. That was beautifully written and very helpful!
Once, Rabbi Schmelke of Nikolsburg asked Dov Baer of Mizritch, the Great Magid [Preacher] to explain the Talmudic commandment that we should praise God for evil as much as we praise him for good. Dov Baer said, “Go to the House of Study and ask my student Zussya.” Shmelke went to the House of Study and found Zussya; emaciated, filthy, clothed in rags. Shmelke asked, “How can we praise God for evil as much as we praise him for good?”
“I can’t tell you,” Zussya repiled, “because nothing bad has ever happened to me.”
+1
whoa.
This:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=259024590799085
Thanks for that! It was very inspirational, indeed!
I hope it gives you what you needed.
When people ask questions like this, about how unfair it is that they should suffer when they’ve been a faithful observer all their lives, I have to ask: when they see other people suffering, do they therefore assume it’s fair and just, because that person must not be a good, faithful person? Do they think bad things aren’t supposed to happen to good people, so if bad things happen, then that’s not a good person? Why does having only one child cause you a spiritual crisis, while, say, knowing about genocide does not? Does it make you a good Christian to only think about your own suffering and disregard that of others? Plus, you’re saying your suffering is worse now, because you know what you’re missing out on? I see. So you’re saying that you, as a mother of one, are suffering more than a woman who has no children, and you would have been better off having no children than to have just one child, because it hurts so much more now? This is what you need to do: stop wallowing in your own self-pity and start appreciating what you DO have, rather than looking at what you DO have as justifications for you to feel even worse because they just make you want to have more.
How does talking about my suffering disregard others? I don’t assume anything about suffering. That’s why I am here asking about it. I want to know why and how an all loving & all powerful God can allow suffering. Yet mostly it seems people just want to talk about me and my particular situation and judge my feelings, when in reality, my specific situation is irrelevant to the question I pose. I totally get that all people suffer. Some more than others and it all seems very random to me. I guess I could just accept that its just one of those things that only God can comprehend and so I shouldn’t bother questioning about it. Some even say that it is blasphemous to question God. That is the conversation I was looking for. Btw, I already DO very much appreciate what I have and know that others suffer far greater than I ever have. That does not mean that my suffering is not still painful.
John’s written a lot about how a loving God can allow suffering, and you can see a microcosm of it in his response to you already–that the appropriate response is to see what you can do to help God bring good out of evil. I personally don’t get it, but there’s a lot I don’t get about God, and while I’m at it, trying to bring good out of evil is as good a course of action as any. Accept that you’ve got the desire for children but the physical incapability for it–there are a lot of ways you can go with that. Consider the unloved children of the world and try to link them up with love, yours or other people’s. Consider what it is about your desire for children that can make you more in to the person God wants you to be, even if it clearly doesn’t include more children of your own genes. How can this help you love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself? etc. I’m not trying to be glib, because I appreciate this is a source of pain for you. Sometimes all you can do with pain is wrestle with it.
This.
Perhaps somebody else has a clearer way to say this, but I’m going try again anyway.
The challenge, for me—I don’t know about anyone else’s interpretation—was the thought I read from your letter that God is missing your devotion and ignoring your pleas. For me that is a theological and spiritual discussion, not an emotional sharing of understanding. But again as I stated earlier my intention for my comments to you, Letter Writer, was by no means to discount your feelings. I felt there are many deeply supportive comments from women who have shared the same depth of experience that I have not. And yet I know exactly what it is to feel overlooked by God.
I think there are two different directions this discussion is taking: one in which God is seen to be not acting as we would want to believe He/She would, and the other which is a perceived lack of compassion towards the plight of the letter writer.
You’re right–I have taken issue with some aspects of what you have seemed to say in your letter. If I have misinterpreted their meaning, I apologize as it’s all I’ve had to work from.
It sounds to me now that perhaps you are more inclined toward seeking compassionate understanding. I wholly respect that, and ask for it myself when life puts me and my loved ones in the vice grip. And I say with the utmost sincerity that I am sorry that you are hurting, that you seem to feel alone inside with that hurt, and that you LONG for things to be different, better, more fruitful. You’re right too that it does seem damn random and deeply unfair.
Never stop questioning the intricacies of God, in my humble opinion. You will likely have to find your own peace with feeling ‘blasphemous’ (I spent some time in that fearful place of doubt). For what it’s worth—you are not bad, guilty, or disrespectful for deepening your personal relationship with God. That is your birthright. These kinds of questions you so courageously are asking ARE what a deep, spiritual, and contended relationship with God preface. You are choosing to create intimacy with your Creator by having such a discussion. There is nothing at all wrong or flawed by that. And you are in good company.
Perhaps others here can direct you to some further theological discussions about the allowance of suffering question?
“I want to know why and how an all loving & all powerful God can allow suffering.”
The way I answer that question for myself is to try to remember that this human life isn’t all their is to our existence, nor to our relationship with God.
Not in any way to minimize anyone’s pain, but there is a way in which that question is like questions like this:
“How could a loving parent let their child lose at Monopoly?”
“How could a loving parent let their child ruin their clothes while playing?”
“How could a loving parent make their child clean their room or do chores or go to school when that child would far prefer to play and enjoy the outdoors?”
In all those cases, while the immediate experience is negative and possibly painful, the answer is that the parent knows that there is a bigger picture, that the hurt or frustration will be temporary, and that what is being “hurt” isn’t what is important about their child – their child isn’t their clothes, or their success at a game, or even just a bundle of pleasurable emotions.
If we can believe that “when I was a child, I saw things as a child, but now that I am an adult, I have set aside childish things” – and that we can only now dimly sense the reality of what is to come for us, then we have to be open to the fact that our pain and suffering don’t define us, but that our choices about how to respond to it, and who we become as a result of them do.
I won’t presume to define your own experience for you, but I can say that some of the things about myself and my life that I cherish most deeply, and am the proudest of, are the direct results of things where I suffered unfairly, or didn’t get some result I wanted dearly, or was deeply hurt over. That doesn’t make those experiences good, or fair, or even “right.” But I can still thank God for helping me become the man I am today, and ask God to continue to help me grow.
A long time ago, I asked God to do God’s will with me and let me serve Him.
If I asked a personal trainer or exercise coach to make me stronger, it would inevitably mean I was going to have sore muscles.
If I ask God to make me compassionate, the only way I know to have that happen is for me to have enough pain in my life that I understand pain in others.
If I ask God to make me patient, the only way I know to have that happen is for me to have enough frustrations in my life that I learn to deal with them graciously.
If I ask God to make me tolerant, I’m going to have to deal with people who do things I object to.
And if I ask God to let me be His servant, who knows what training I’m asking for?
One of the hardest things for me in the middle of a painful experience is wanting to know what lesson it is that I am supposed to take from it – which is something that only time and life will let me choose to find out. That’s where faith comes in for me – trusting that time will let me choose to have that perspective.
It doesn’t make it any less painful, but it can give meaning to that pain.
Lymis,
Thank you for taking the time to write that! That was very helpful for me to read!!
Woman who wrote this,
You’ve entered into this conversation with a lot of courage and humility. I can feel how painful this is for you – I’m so sorry. I think of suffering like getting burned – there are some things we endure that seem so unfair and have no answers and it’s like growing new skin, we can’t ever go back to where we were before because of the loss (permanent loss) and that kind of healing is longer. I’ve been amazed at what beauty I pick up along the way but the process is excruciating.
I got the part that it was about suffering, and wanting to know why. But it also struck me as being somewhat strange that you described the trigger of that crisis as your struggle to conceive again. Maybe others found that strange as well and it steered the conversation in a way you didn’t intend. I didn’t address that part of your question (only to say I didn’t think God was being your infertility), because it seemed your struggle was narrowly anchored in that infertility (i.e. that the spiritual crisis would resolve if you did conceive). I didn’t get that it was about a broader struggle with why bad things happen (and, to a lesser extent, why bring a good Christian didn’t save you from that).
On the bigger question, I don’t think anyone has the answers. Some of our hurts do make us better and are good for us. Some clearly aren’t as much character-building as they are tramatizing. Often bad things have important silver linings, but sometimes that isn’t enough. Sometimes bad things seems to have a reason, and other times seem to be meaningless. For every scripture or pat answer or saying, there is an opposite to counter it. (To your quotes below, “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.”) They describe; they do not answer.
The only answer that I might offer is that I think letting yourself ask the questions is good, and certainly not blasphemous. Those questions unite us in our common human experience. But letting the questions overwhelm us… I do that, and from experience, not productive. Asking ourselves how we respond knowing there is suffering, is a much more… beneficial question.
(I’d ignore comments like these, this kind of hostility isn’t about you).
Gillian- Wow. You obviously have a lot of anger inside and have directed it at the woman who wrote this letter. She’s not discounting anyone else’s suffering, as far as I have read in her comments and such, nor is she wallowing in self-pity. She’s asking a very valid question- one that INCLUDES the topic of genocide, murder, or any other thing that causes suffering- WHY does it happen? She used her own life and her own grieving as an example.
And next time you are suffering, I wonder how you would feel if someone said to you what you just said to her: “This is what you need to do: stop wallowing in your own self-pity and start appreciating what you DO have, rather than looking at what you DO have as justifications for you to feel even worse because they just make you want to have more.”
Wow, you seem like a nice loving person (sarcasm) Talk misinterpretation, look, when people ask these kinds of questions their not discounting the suffering of others they are merely asking for some compassion and understanding. Also,i have to ask: Why are you so venomous towards this person? Would you be equally venomous if i asked why God has cursed me with an obsessive disorder? If so why?
This is such a gross and inappropriate comment. What is wrong with those of you who can’t deal with someone else’s grief that isn’t on your own terms? Good Lord. What a surprise from the members of this blog.
This is a topic that is extremely close to my heart, and therefore it’s a little hard for me to untangle it enough to think clearly about it.
I’ve known since I was 15 years old that for health reasons it would be exceptionally unfair for both myself and any children I may have, to have children. It would be better for me to find other ways of mothering- fostering, adoption, being an ‘aunt’, wherever the Universe decides to put me (I suppose for the sake of honesty I should admit that I’m not Christian, but I was raised in a conservative Baptist church).
Since I’ve had that knowledge since long before it was relevant to anything in my life most of the sting is gone. But. I do grieve for things that I wish I could have. Would I like to know what it means to be a biological mother? Yes. Would I like to crawl under a table every time anyone gushes about how they’re loving pregnancy? Yes. Do I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve not being like other people and fulfilling that relatively normal dream of ‘having a family’?
Of course I do. Of course there are other routes to family formation- I have a degree in family studies; it’s certainly not a lack of knowledge of alternatives that sometimes keeps me up at night. The fact that I know that just because of my extreme cancer risk and I can adopt doesn’t take that sting out of it.
It is sometimes necessary to simply grieve for something that has (or has not happened to us). Sometimes a cry of pain is just that, and needs to be accepted for what it is. I can’t (and have no interest in trying to) answer the God question, but sometimes just because the ‘obvious answer is adoption’ is overlooking the point of the conversation.
Right. But (you know, for the record and all) that was hardly the whole of my response to her.
@Gina-I want a movement dedicated to stopping people making movements out of stupid stuff like not wanting to have kids.
It seems to me (and I might be wrong) that it’s the letter-writer feelings that need to be validated. That she grieves. That she struggles. That most Christians have asked (and non-Christians), “WHY?” Even if one doesn’t understand the reason she grieves, validation of feelings is always important. And to those who think she SHOULDN’T feel the way she does, I have to ask how you would feel if someone said the same thing to you about something you’re dealing with?
Exactly.
As an ob /gyn I have struggled with this same problem. Why do crackhead teens get pregnant at the drop of a hat and my loving stable patients can’t? It breaks my heart. As for the writers comment that she is judged because she is not happy with having at least one child, it makes me think of author Susan Isaacs comment that, while she knows her problems are those of a “middle class white girl” , they are still her problems and they hurt. I would encourage her to look at God’s answer to Job when he asked why. At least to my brain,the answer was that there is so much we do not understand and we just need to hold on to God through it all. Jobs friends got it wrong when they said bad things happened for a reason or for a sin that Job committed. The writers problem is really the universal problem of pain.
YES – that is what I really wanted to ask about – the universal problem of pain/the problem of evil – that is- how to reconcile the existence of evil/pain with that of a deity who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.
Anyhow, thanks Judy for your reply and the reminder that Job did indeed struggle for seemingly no reason, but was rewarded in the end for staying faithful to God.
I have been there. In fact, I just wrote a 10 paragraph response, and my daughter asked for some juice, I bumped my computer, and it disappeared. Argghh.
Like Maria says in The Sound of Music, “Whenever God closes a door, he always opens a window.”
I come from a family and friend network of whom i affectionately refer to as “breeders.” I thought I would be one, too.
After cancer, infertility, and three failed adoption attempts, my husband and I successfully adopted our two children. I took my experience as “what am I doing wrong” and turned it into a learning opportunity in how to get “right with God.”. What did He want from me? They were the hardest years of my life, but also the biggest blessings. I am more patient, grateful, and aware that I am a mere speck of atoms in this Universe. By intentionally focusing outward and trying to live the love of Jesus, I have been saved.
I can’t give you the answer as to why you are experiencing this, but I hope what I write can help. I think we all stray away from the Lord as we grow, and we run into situations where we have the chance to turn it around. Do we do it or push away even further? Those without tragedy rarely understand the depth of God’s greatness. When everything else we hold dear has been torn from us, God is still there.
Those babies born to crack addicts and abusive parents have their turmoil from day one. I am thankful mine didn’t start until I was in my late 20s. We all have our pain in this life, and I try my best to not judge others because I have not, nor do I, live their life.
I am truly sorry you are experiencing such pain.
Oh – have you read The Shack? It may help somewhat….
Love and Hugs,
Kristi
I have rad the shack and it doesn’t help with anything. It poses the big questions and then gives the most pathetic cliche answers one could find which seem all the more pathetic given the horrific subject matter. But, you know, that’s just my opinion…
I’ve been there. I have asked these questions. I have sat in the fertility doc’s office and wondered the same things. I have felt the same sharp pangs of sadness when friends announced that they were pregnant – not once, but twice – as my husband and I tried for years to conceive. I went through years of infertility with nothing to show for it but a hefty drain on our savings. After seven years, we gave up. I felt defeated and, frankly, abandoned by God. Why did He do this to me? I was sad and angry at Him.
It took several years of deep reflection, prayer and soul searching to realize that He had different plans for me – and had all along. All those years of fertility I had been fighting Him. It felt like I had been pushing a boulder up a hill. But when I realized what His plan is for me, everything fell into place. I was supposed to adopt. It all became crystal clear one day. And when it did, I felt so light, so happy and so at peace. The process was relatively easy and everything fell into place. I felt God’s presence throughout it all and could feel His grace.
Our daughter is divine in every sense of the word. She is my gift from God and truly the answer to my prayers.
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