Family & Parenting
We have been trying for a baby for years and it is not happening. Where is God in this?
“And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.”
Hannah's story opens in a household where another woman had children and she did not, and where the yearly trip to worship was the most painful week of her calendar. What the text records is not serene faith but weeping, bitterness of soul, and prayer so raw that the priest assumed she was drunk. Scripture makes room for that. Your grief does not have to be tidied up before you bring it.
“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”
Paul wrote this to a church that had wounded him, and he opens not with instruction but with a description of God as the one who comforts. He had recently come through something in Asia so heavy he says he despaired of life itself. The comfort he describes is not an explanation for suffering. It is company inside it, and it eventually flows outward to others walking the same road.
A path forward
Tell one or two people the actual truth of where you are, including the months and the numbers if that helps. Infertility is unusually isolating because it is invisible, and carrying it silently often turns a couple into two people grieving alone in the same house.
Decide together, before the next holiday or baby shower, what you will do about family gatherings this year. Having a plan agreed in advance, including permission to leave early, removes about half the dread.
Pray specifically and honestly, including the anger if it is there. Hannah's prayer was not polite. Bring God the version of this that you actually feel rather than the version you think is acceptable to say out loud.
Closing verse
“Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah.”
- Psalm 62:8
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