I’m not sure if working through infertility as non-Christian is any easier than working through infertility as a Christian. It’s difficult to imagine how infertility could be part of God’s perfect plan. On one hand, you know that the God of everything is behind you and that his desire is for people to have children – wasn’t it God who told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply? But there’s no way you can deny that terrible things happen to believers all the time.
There are accounts of couples who struggled with infertility throughout the Bible. Sarah and Abram had their firstborn son when she was 90, John the Baptist was born when Elizabeth was already quite old, Rachel only had Benjamin and Joseph after many years of infertility, it was because of her husband’s ardent prayer that Rebekah finally conceived and Samson’s mother also battled with infertility for many years.
In these cases when a child was finally born people saw it as evidence that God was there for them so if you are a believer dealing with barrenness you might feel that God has deserted you.
This perception of God is, I feel, incorrect. when you become a Christian your sins are forgiven and you cannot be ‘punished’ for them.
As a believer, you may have queries about the morality of several infertility treatments. for instance, some believers believe that involving a third party in the conception process, for example by using donated eggs or sperm, or through surrogacy, is sinful.
Your stance on IVF will shaped by your stance on when life begins. If you feel that life begins at conception then you may not be happy with IVF (in vitro-fertilization), where a large number of eggs is fertilized but not all of them are used. A few might be frozen for later use, but may not end up being used at all. You could opt not to harvest any more eggs than you need for each cycle of treatment if you feel that discarding fertilized eggs is the same as abortion. You and your partner must ask God what his will is for your situation.
One thing I can say for sure is that you need to lean in to God and let this situation bring the two of you closer together rather than further apart. Friends and family members may unwittingly ask insensitive questions or make silly comments and that can really hurt. Some people might suggest that hidden sin is causing your infertility. If you are concerned about it then pray and ask God and he will show you if there is anything that must change. If you don’t hear anything then that isn’t the problem.
Despite the fact that Elizabeth and Zechariah were godly people, Elizabeth was childless for many years.
Some people might encourage you to ‘have faith’ – Sarah had very little faith when the angels informed her that she would have a son – but she still did – so I don’t think that we can fix all of life’s problems just by ‘having faith’. It can be difficult for people to understand that we live in a world ruined through the results of sin. I’m speaking about sin in general now, not each person’s individual sin. Disease, death, suffering and infertility were most certainly not part of his ideal plan, but when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, everything changed. So each day we live with the consequences of that disobedience – not punishment mind you, consequences. They are very different.
Don’t allow infertility to cripple you – study, pray, do whatever you can. If all else fails and you come to terms with not being able to conceive your own babies, consider fostering or adopting with the knowledge that we are all adopted into God’s family because of his love and that he does want to set the lonely in families.
Here is Infertility Information. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Infertility.